Mindtrek Finalists Competing For 20 010€ Announced
Mindtrek is one of the notable technology and startup oriented conferences taking place in the Nordics that startups should pay attention to. Why? For one, they are giving away 20 010 € worth of prize money to most attractive startups that match their Launchpad criteria. This year's finalists, that will be pitching at the event, have been announced. They are listed in alphabetical order below.
Cross-Promotion Network Applifier Hit 55 Million Users In 4 Months
Applifier is a new Finnish startup that was pivoted from Everyplay, which was originally a social games developer. Applier is a cross-promotion network of independent social application developers on Facebook. It's user base has blow up over night and gone from zero to 55 million users in four months. The service currently represents over 100 social games and applications, and reaches more than 55 million monthly active users (MAUs). According to the company, it reaches more Facebook users than any social game publisher, except of course Zynga.
Nordic Game Program Passes Out Over 400k€ In Funding
Nordic Game Program has had its ceremony in Malmö Sweden where it gave out three million Danish Kronor worth of funding. The program was started by the joint decision between the Icelanding, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish Ministries of Culture to promote Nordic games. The program was founded in 2006 and has plans to run until 2012. A total of 84 projects were submitted and only eight received funding.
Mindtrek Launchpad Finalists Chosen
This year's Mindtrek Launchpad finalists have been chosen. The companies went through the detailed analysis of the pre-jury (disclosure: I was one of the pre-jury members voting for the finalists). The MindTrek Launchpad competition will award the most innovative Finnish digital media product, demo or concept – and the people behind it, who have the urge to make it big. Six finalists from the submitted The finalists, in alphabetical order, are:
Get In The Know With ArcticIndex
The second half of 2009 is well under way as the late comers have finally returned from their summer holidays and the focus is once again put back into work. While the economies around the world are showing slight rebound from the nasty recession, things are still uncertain. This however doesn't seem to be the case with startups - the uncertainty has not startups all that hard, compared to the bigger giants. One proof of this is that many startups are still recruiting.
Everyplay Comes Out Of Stealth, Launches Facebook Social App Kamu World
Everyplay, a Finnish social gaming startup founded last year, has come out of stealth mode and released a product called Kamu World on Facebook. It is a "virtual hangout place" featuring edgy "Kamu" characters ('kamu' also means 'a buddy' in Finnish).
Kamu World in its current form is essentially a collection of visualized virtual characters and chat rooms, with few game-like features. It has compelling and very polished look and feel already, though. When entering the world, players create their own Kamu creature, and choose a location around the world (e.g. a game arcade in Tokyo) to meet other Kamus in. Kamus appear as small, desktop-size creatures, smaller than for example a drinking glass.
Invest Tech Finland - From Wireless Power to Social Games
Espoo Otaniemi boomed of startups and investors when Invest Tech Finland was held for the first time on last Tuesday and Wednesday. There was a real mix of companies from all round consumer web, nano, medical and material tech.
We got some taste of new startups, more seasoned companies seeking growth and some familiar faces marching forward with their plans. There were quite a few interesting companies to write about, the full list can be found here - check these out. Note that most of companies presented at the event already had some prototypes, partnerships, customers or revenues. Here is some of my picks (not in any particular order):
Finnish Social Gaming - Calm Before The Storm
I met Jussi Laakkonen the other day and asked what is he cooking at the moment. Jussi is a Finnish social gaming long timer and a fresh CEO of EveryPlay.
Here's a video I shot with my Nokia N95 and subsequently uploaded to JayCut for editing via my laptop (see more on JayCut here). In the video itself Jussi Laakkonen tells about his new social gaming startup, which is still in stealth mode. Jussi asked me to mention that Everyplay is looking into hiring a sitebuilder that can handle Ajax and PHP. You can send your resumes to corporate [at] everyplay.fi
Another long time Finnish gaming master mind Asmo Halinenha s also announced that he's moving on from Apaja, a company he founded, but has only let us know about a few board positions his moving into at this point, namely at Eat.fi and at Grey Area.
Social gaming startups like for example Playfish is a great exemple how fast the industry is developing and what kind of opportunities (Link In Finnish) there are if one knows what he is doing.
Social gaming, unlike many other industries, can actually benefit from the gloomy economic environment, as people many times move towards inpexsive games played in the browser from the expensive console games, and in extreme cases have much more time to play and tinker with all kinds of stuff online if they get laid off. As harsh as this may sound, this is largely how for example Typepad got started when Ben and Mena Trott started Six Apart after they got laid off.
Further, Jussi promised us that he will shed light into how the Finnish gaming industry has evolved from an active demo scene by writing a guest blog post on the topic. Another strong player that has come this route is Scred.
Gaming Defies Down Turn With Venture Capital
Jussi Laakkonen, CEO of Everyplay, has done extensive research in terms of investments to the gaming industry in the recent years. We also covered Jussi's previous findings in ArcticStartup close to two months ago when he reported that approximately 2 to 4 million USD are invested into the casual gaming market each week.
Jussi has compiled a nice 2 blog post analysis into the market with discoveries such as investments peaking in July 2008 to the amount of 71M USD in total to the industry. He has also added the MMORPG market to the analysis. It's clear that the two largest segments in the gaming industry, receiving funding are the MMORPG and the casual gaming segments.
Some of the largest investments made were 9You's 100M USD, 83M USD into Big Fish Games, 29M USD into Zynga Games and Gaia's 11M USD financing rounds.
So with regards to my previous post on Betware from Iceland, I asked whether we should cover the gaming industry more, a clear answer from you was - yes, please. We'll get more insight into this industry in the future as the market is one of the most attractive ones in many ways, not only investments, at this moment.
However, have a read at the full analysis into the investments by Jussi Laakkonen of Everyplay - Part 1 and Part 2.
Photo by A*A*R*O*N (CC:by-nc-sa)
Casual Games Market Hot - 2-4M USD Invested Per Week
Jussi Laakkonen of Everyplay has compiled a very extensive list of investments to casual gaming startups in the US and Europe.
Laakkonen has compiled the list from public resources such as VentureBeat, TechCrunch, GigaOm, etc. He admits that there are possibly a lot of investments missing as they based on PR, which naturally works best in the US.
From the Nordics and Baltics, in the list are investments to Apaja Online Entertainment and Sulake, so I'm guessing there are many more smaller seed investments made to smaller Nordic and Baltic companies which aren't present in the list.
What's your take - is the casual gaming market the hottest corner of the internet industry at the moment?
