Norwegians Are On A Shopping Spree - QuestBack Acquires Digium
Norwegian enterprise feedback management company QuestBack has just announced that they have acquired the Finnish SaaS company Digium Oy. Digium is perhaps the most well known company in this sector in Finland has proven that in their financials as well. In the financial year ending 2009, they turned over about 4 million euros while making over 650k€ in profit. In 2005 they made just about a million in revenue. The new company expects to tally a combined turnover of more than 22 MEUR for 2010. This makes it the largest player in the EFM industry in Europe.
QuestBack has been on a shopping spree lately. They have acquired Easyresearch AB from Sweden and Refleks AS from Norway. Both companies have been integrated fully to QuestBack's operations and thus adding to their turnover in a successful manner.
New entrants top Deloitte's Finnish Technology Fast 50 2007
Open Source service company Nomovok is the number one in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 list of 2007. The list ranks firms based on the revenue growth over the past five years (having at least 5 years of operations is thus one of the prerequisites). The revenue growth of Novomok over the past 5 years has been impressively over 2300 %. Only a bit behind comes Bluetooth technology provider Bluegiga Technologies. Third is Openbit, provider of mobile DRM solutions, with 1636 percent growth.
Last year's first Sulake and third Digium have slightly dropped, although still in top 10. The 2006 number two Cidercone was just recently acquired by OMX-listed Ixonos.
Deloitte's Tuomo Salmi, partner, Services, describes that according to the accompanying qualitative study the most critical factors affecting success have been concentrating on the core business, committing the personnel, and leadership-related factors, as seen by the management of the companies. Having and being able to keep skillful and entrepreneur-minded people was deemed even more important than customer accounts.
Deloitte Technology Fast 50 competition in Finland is arranged in cooperation with Kauppalehti, The Finnish Venture Capital Association, The Finnish Software Entrepreneurs Association, and Tekes. Top companies will automatically participate in EMEA Fast 500 competition. Last year Sulake positioned 12th in the EMEA Fast list with 8095 % growth, while Cidercone was 65th with growth of 2086 %.
This might implicate that this year's top Finnish growth companies may not position anywhere in top 50 in EMEA. More arrogant and audacious growth entrepreneurs needed?
