TechCrunch ran a story on Spotify a couple of days ago, where Daniel Ek had commented on some very interesting issues. Daniel Ek, Spotify CEO, spoke at SXSW and told in his keynote that, Spotify as a service consumes more bandwidth than the whole of Sweden (on certain days that is). Those wondering why Spotify is built in a P2P manner now fully understand the need for such a solution. Ek also commented that it’s a million dollar question why Apple remains to deliver all its digital downloads from a “single source” generating huge amounts of traffic that also need to be paid for.
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financials
Spotify’s Monthly Revenues Around 3 Million Euros
Trials HD By RedLynx Reaches 500 000 Unit Sales Mark
The Finnish multi platform game developer RedLynx has announced that it has sold over half a million copies of its popular Trials HD game on the XBOX360 (via Kauppalehti). The game is worth about 1200 Microsoft points which accounts to about 15 USD totalling in 7,5 million USD in sales.
The company itself is also in very good shape financially. RedLynx is already showing some of the success in its finances as 2009 revenues are in the range of three million with a million in profit. Last time RedLynx was profitable was in 2004 with a 356 thousand euro profit. High fluctuations are natural in the gaming business as it takes a long time to build a game and very few are capable of pumping out new games on continuous basis to keep the company constantly profitable.
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Spotify Pays 30 Cents For 100 Album Playbacks
The Finnish Heavy Metal band Mokoma, has publicly thanked Spotify for their payout model. Their Facebook fan page states that for “every 100 album playbacks we get 30 euro cents from Spotify. Thanks Spotify.” The deals that Spotify has struck with different artists have been kept secret, so it is not known if this is the only payout model. However, if there were 1000 people listening to an album and to my understanding would listen it through, Mokoma would get 3 €.
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Verkkokauppa.com Founder A Private Investor In The Making
Today, Kauppalehti wrote that the Finnish computer electronics store founder and owner Samuli Seppälä is going to take the company public in a few years time. He’s doing this with the help of the Swedish private investment company Rite Internet Ventures who have invested 3 million euros to the company with a 15% stake. This brings the company’s valuation to a mere 20 million euros. Why do I say a mere 20 million euros, you might ask. The reason is simple, the company’s 2008 turnover was about 140 million euros with 2,4 million euro profit before taxes and amortisation.
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Easing Website Development Is A Big Money Business
I bumped into Mikko Nurminen a few years ago and was immediately fascinated with their business. He’s one of the co-founders of Ideakone and they own products such as Kotisivukone and Moogo as they’re known in English. They’re in the business of easing website development through modular plug and play features. We’ve recently written about one of their Estonian competitors Edicy and since there seems to be a lot of well developed business here, I thought of getting back in touch with Mikko and interview him on where they stand today.
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CCP Games – Iceland’s Pride
During my visit to Iceland a few weeks ago, I had the chance to visit one of the greatest “startups” in a while – CCP Games. CCP Games has its offices in the Silicon Docks area of Reykjavik. While the other startups are doing the proper bootstrapping and sharing offices next door, CCP Games has grown to cover three stories employing some 450 people at the moment. Those who aren’t that familiar with CCP Games, they are the developer of Eve Online one of the most popular MMORPGs out there. In short, there are over 300 000 registered players on Eve Online and almost everyone is paying about 15 USD a month for the membership (some have 14-day trial accounts). This in turn sky rockets their revenue well past 50 000 000 USD annually.
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Sulake To Lay Off 20% Of Helsinki Employees
Sulake has just announced that will initiate negotiations to lay off up to 20% of its workforce in Helsinki. Sulake is the Finnish company behind the successful teenage web service Habbo Hotel. Just yesterday we wrote that they have managed to create a one million euro profit with their 50 million euro revenue.
I actually talked about this yesterday with some net savy entrepreneurs and we all had only one question in mind. Where does the 50 million euros go to when you’re operating an internet service? A Finnish entrepreneur, of French origin, Ramine Darabiha did a very non-scientific analysis into this in his blog post last March. It may not seem a big thing, but once you break the numbers down – a lot of money is going somewhere.
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Sulake Enjoys A Slight Profit For 2008
According to Kauppalehti, Sulake Corporation’s 2008 was by a small margin a profitable one. The group of companies turned over 50,1 million euros and managed to create a 1 million euro profit on it. The company’s earnings before tax were still in the red, but the IFRS calculated tax receivables turned the company statements profitable. The company has been injected with some 45 million euros of investor money of which some 20 million euros have been put aside for the losses of the previous years.
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Fruugo Burned Through 14,5M€ In 2008
Fruugo has burned through 14,5 million euros in 2008, according to an article in Kauppalehti. Last year’s books show (in Finland these are public for all limited liability corporations) that Fruugo’s net loss for the year is 14,5 million euros and with no income, this is the investment Fruugo used in 2008.
Fruugo is the much debated startup from Finland that has gathered a lot of media attention in the recent year. One of the reasons they have done so is their attractive and well known board members that include Risto Siilasmaa (Founder, F-Secure), Jorma Ollila (former CEO and Chairman of Nokia) and many others. Fruugo’s main product is a webshop that would aggregate all the different webshops into one.
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Severa Eases Management’s Pains With New Version
Severa is a Finnish “startup” that focuses on creating one SaaS-solution to managing company’s billing, project management and sales. They have just released a new version of the service – Severa3. I have to admit, looking at their website and statistics – they are doing very well. Severa was founded in 2004 and has grown a staggering 1304% over the last four years.
According to Inoa, their 2007 revenue was around 790k euros with a 121k operating profit. Other stats on their site are also pretty impressive – they help manage 130 000 projects, around 42 000 invoices and 10 million hours of work. Their business model is also relatively inexpensive – 30 euros per user per month and the first person to sign up gets the service for free. I have to disclose, that this is not a paid blog post by Severa, but I seldom am this fascinated by management tools!
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Sulake Corporation Reports € 4.8M Profit
The Finnish corporation behind the overwhelmingly successful teen community site Habbo Hotel, Sulake, has reported a €4.8 million profit for the financial year 2008. The company also created record sales, up more than 20% in December, closing in at €50 million for the year 2008. Even though Sulake has made a nice profit, there is still plenty of downside to cover in the coming years to make up for all the loss it has accumulated over the years. This is the first year Sulake has reported a profit since its founding in 2000.
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