We’ve been looking closely at the startup scene in the Nordics and Baltics for the last two and a half years and I have to say, the amount of events on the market these days is very attractive. There are a lot of different kind of events and I’m sure there’s something for everyone. While these events have their own functions and drive their own agendas, there’s no getting round it – they’re great fun and will surely improve your business if not by any other means than at least by networking with the other visitors there.
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Summary Of Some Of This Spring’s Startup Events
Verne Global – Iceland’s Green Data Center
From Google over Apple to the Start-up next door, nearly every company today uses web hosting services or has huge server farms at their disposal so that their services can run smoothly. That much of this energy to run these data centers comes from fossil fuels or even nuclear energy is probably known, but ignored. However, “green” web hosting is growing at a rapid pace to become an important category, so its no surprise that more and more data centers and web hosting providers are looking at opportunities to green their services. Verne Global from Iceland is looking to shake up the game and provide a reliable, cheap and 100% green data centre solution starting from 2010.
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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Uppspretta To Help Battle Recession In Iceland
Uppspretta is an Icelandic startup focused in social lending. At the moment Uppspretta is only available in Iceland. It was co-founded by Ragnheiður Magnúsdóttir, one of the panelists in the ArcticEvening Iceland. The site works in such a way that it works as a facilitator between people who want a loan and people who are willing to lend some money. For the time being, the site is concentrating on smaller companies and startups as their market.
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Global Call Stirs Up The Market In Iceland
During my visit to Iceland earlier this week I met with a local VoIP company called Global Call. While there are many VoIP companies around, Global Call had managed to arouse some serious interest and hate towards them. First of all, many of their clients like them for their low rates where as the other telcos seriously hate them for competing with them. I talked to Benedikt Bjarnason and Höskuldur Darri Ellertsson about their business and how they’re doing.
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Thoughts On Iceland And Its Startup Scene
I’m in Reykjavik, Iceland, hosting an ArcticEvening event for the local startup scene tonight. I thought I’d do a little write up of the thoughts and discoveries regarding the startup scene up here. First of all, to put things into perspective, you need to understand the size of things we’re talking with. Iceland has a population of around 320 000 people and that’s scattered across the island. On the other hand, they’re a relatively wealthy bunch of people, despite the current economic crisis, with a GDP per capita a little over $40 000 USD for 2008. Talking about the econmic crisis, it is definitely the biggest subject in discussions these days. On my way to meet up with some local entrepreneurs last night, the cab driver said that he’s sure there will be something happening in the coming months. According to him, “regular people are tired of paying the mess of the large companies.” I can understand his rage completely.
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ArcticEvening Reykjavik – Reminder: Be There!
A quick reminder before the weekend regarding our ArcticEvening in Reykjavik coming up Tuesday the 12th of October. We’ll have a very interesting show planned for you so I strongly suggest all the locals and foreigners who happen to be in Iceland next week join in. The show will begin at 8pm at Grandagardi 2. You don’t have to sign up or anything, just show up!
Social Music Marketplace gogoyoko Launches in Scandinavia
Icelandic social music marketplace” gogoyoko has expanded their open Beta to cover the whole of Scandinavia. The service now works in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Faroe Islands and Greenland. gogoyoko’s tagline is bringing “Fair Play” back into the music business – through the service music fans can purchase music directly from the artists and labels. gogoyoko’s service consists of a music store, a social network, and free streaming music player.
http://go.gogoyoko.com/?p=767
For artists and other music right holders gogoyoko offers a platform for creating their online destination and managing the sale, promotion, and distribution of their music. Through the service music fans can interact directly with the artists and purchase music from gogoyoko’s music store without middlemen. Artists have full control over the pricing of their music, and get 100% of the profits. Users can access their music collection online or download it to any portable device – there is no DRM used.
gogoyoko also features a free streaming functionality, supported by advertising. Artists get a share of the advertisement revenues based on the streaming of their music. It is possible to use the streaming player also on other web sites.
The social networking features are aimed to encourage the interaction of artists, record labels, music professionals and music fans. All basic SNS features are supported from profiles and status updates to follow functionality. gogoyoko also plans to introduce more features later this year, like interactive music magazine and a worldwide music map providing concert listings and easy access to music and profiles.
I like the look and feel of the service a lot. The attitude is there as well – one cannot help smiling when receiving the account registration email greeting you “Welcome to gogoyoko, Your account creation was a huge success.” The site functions pretty well (there are some quite minor layout issues to polish here and there), and streaming seems fast and smooth. For purchasing songs you first need to buy “store credits” between 2 and 100 euros with a credit card (for keeping the transaction costs in control, I presume).
It is of course impossible to avoid comparison with Spotify. However, the big difference is that gogoyoko is targeted as more a grass-roots platform and medium for connecting directly artists and fans. Its focus is in supporting artist self publishing in good and bad – it might become a very good channel outside the record label driven model, though it also forces artists to be responsible for self marketing their music.
Despite the steaming functionality, gogoyoko offers the pay-per-download model for taking the music with you on a portable device. It is interesting to see what happens to that model going forward. Spotify’s offline streaming functionality is a big benefit and allows you to enjoy a whole bigger range of music on the go. On the other hand, the pay-per-download model does also provide good way of directly supporting artists you like.
However, I still believe there should be a feature like Richard Stallman’s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman
old idea (in one of his essays) of a easily available “donate” button, which would allow you to send amount of your choice to the artist whose work you are listening. More and more now as digital content can be easily copied with practically no distribution cost, why depend on the old pay-for-download model when it is very much one-off transaction that is also limited to a nominal fixed fee. As a fan, why not send the artist some love each time when you are on a great mood and enjoy a particular song? That would provide artists also much better recurring return on their creativity over time.
Icelandic social music marketplace gogoyoko has expanded their open Beta to cover the whole of Scandinavia. The service now works in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Faroe Islands and Greenland. gogoyoko’s tagline is bringing “Fair Play” back into the music business – through the service music fans can purchase music directly from the artists and labels. gogoyoko’s service consists of a music store, a social network, and free streaming music player.
ArcticStartup Goes Reykjavik
On October 13th we’ll kick off our autumn agenda for ArcticEvenings with an event in Reykjavik, Iceland. Our agenda for our event in Reykjavik is little different to our events before. We’re combining two very interesting concepts together, speed networking and a panel. Even though the country and city are small, we hear it’s a powerhouse of entrepreneurs compared to its size!
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CLARA Listens The Web Talking
CLARA is a Reykjavik, Iceland based young startup specializing in online business and marketing intelligence. The firm offers automatic monitoring and analysis tools for the web. With CLARA’s solution firms can keep track of online discussions around their brands, products, and services on the web. CLARA’s system brings data together from news, blogs, forums and comments, and other online content. The idea is to allow “listening” to the online discussion as it happens, and being able to see a clear summary to better understand the end customers.
Social Music Marketplace gogoyoko Raises ISK 100 Million
Despite of the downturn and bad overall economical situation in Iceland, the new social music service gogoyoko (see our previous intro) has secured 100 million Iceland Kronur (slightly more modest in euros: EUR 0,69M; USD 0,89M) in funding from Icelandic The New Venture Business Fund (90 %) and private investor Vilhjalmur Thorsteinsson (10 %).
The purpose of the funding was not disclosed, but in the company’s newsletter it is stated that the firm has been growing steadily and just moved to a bigger office. gogoyoko is still looking for more people and prepares for increasing international marketing activities this year. gogoyoko has gotten advice and steering for the fundraising and product development process from Norwegian “New Media Innovation House” Ignitas that also has taken an equity stake in gogoyoko. Ignitas has been previously involved in selling Norway’s #2 social network Biip.no to media enterprise Egmont/Nettavisen.
gogoyoko provides artists and other music right holders a social marketplace allowing them to sell music directly to consumers worldwide without middlemen. The service is currently running in closed beta, planned to be publicly opened in April. gogoyoko’s service is promised to include interesting features like a custom music player embedable to any site through which the users can stream (ad-funded) tracks and albums for free. The player is also supposed to include a music store interface. On gogoyoko’s portal, artists can create their personal sites, write news, blog entries, upload discography, pictures, videos, and enter gig information to gogoyoko’s global map.
The firm’s updated intro video:
Gogoyoko from Gogoyoko on Vimeo.
gogoyoko Introduces a Social Music Marketplace
gogoyoko is a startup building a new social music marketplace, founded by a group of artists, who after years of selling music got tired of middlemen eating most of the sales revenues. The company is based in Reykjavik, Iceland. gogoyoko’s music service was launched in closed Alpha on November 15, and is said to be launched in March 2009.
gogoyoko offers a platform for artists and audience to interact around music. Most importantly, naturally, it is possible to buy music from the service. gogoyoko creates a direct channel between the end users and artists, letting artists price their own music and keep 100 % of the sales revenues (after transaction costs). The music files will be DRM free.
An interesting feature is that via gogoyoko’s custom web player, users will be able to stream tracks and albums for free, which is apparently supported by ads (sounding similar to Spotify). gogoyoko states they pay artists and right holders 40% of the advertisement revenue made from the streaming of their music. Also, each artist can get an own customized store and music player, which can be embedded to the artist’s own blog and homepage, or any other site.
There is more than just a music store, however. Each artist can create a personal site, and allow the users to view latest news, blog entries, newsletters, discography, pictures, and videos while visiting the store. Artists will also be able to enter gigs, which will be placed on the service’s map. gogoyoko plans to provide also mobile access to the map in the future. The visitors and fans can also contribute to the community by rating and reviewing songs, blogging, and even getting their articles published in gogoyoko’s own online Music Magazine. gogoyoko will publish the Music Magazine announcing for example new releases, exclusive interviews, reviews, and special offers.
Similarly to Equal Dreams covered earlier, with gogoyoko an artist can also choose to automatically donate 10 % or more of their revenues to specific charity organizations, while the consumers can also choose to donate a sum of their choice. gogoyoko promises to donate 10% of its advertisement income to their partner international charity and environmental organizations.
gogoyoko’s introduction video:
Gogoyoko from Gogoyoko on Vimeo
gogoyoko boasts it offers artists the control of the sales, promotion and distribution of their music at single location without middlemen. This setup is becoming more and more used in different content services (online games, iPhone apps, etc. etc.), and of course offers the artists maximum the revenue, but on the other hand, it also hands them over all the work. Especially if you are not a professional artist and make music on your free time, the question is whether you’re able to devote enough time to market yourself to generate sales. Probably some lucky ones will get lots of fans by almost by accident, but the majority will probably would have to spend considerable amount of time marketing themselves to generate fan base and revenue. And that’s time away from creating new music, so the question is what will be the best trade-off these kinds of direct-to-consumer services can offer?
Betware, Another Gaming Solution From Iceland
Betware is also another of Library House’s nominees for the 100 hottest companies to change the media technology industry. Like the name suggests, Betware is into providing online gambling and gaming platforms through turnkey solutions. The company itself is relatively old as it has started operations already back in 1996.
Betware has had enough time to build a very respectable and admirable business proposition for its clients through it products and solutions. The platform truly offers all the necessary modules and tools required to start a gaming site and get it going – hence a true turnkey solution.
In terms of games, they have developed over 100 games categorized into number games, sports betting games, racing games, instant games, casino games, multiplayer games as well as live betting. Betware also claims that these games are all playable through the mobile phone, internet as well as in some cases in the future, the digital television.
There’s definitely a large ecosystem of different kind of gaming in the Nordic and Baltic region, be it mobile games, casual games or money games like in the case of Betware. What are your thoughts, should we cover these topics more in the future as well?
Icelandic Gaming Juggernaut CCP
Library House awarded the Icelandic gaming company CCP as one of the hottest mediatech companies most likely to change the media technology industry in the world. I decided to dig a little deeper into the company to see what they are up to. In short CCP is the developer and father of the MMORPG Eve Online.
Eve Online is a relatively old, but still some what popular, massive-multiplayer-online-role-playing-game (or MMORPG). According to Compete.com, CCP gathers just under 100k unique visitors a month. You need a client to play the game and it costs 19,95€ a for a 30 day period. Eve Online has over 200 000 subscribers, and with some quick calculations that makes at least 4M € a month, if all the subscribers are paying members.
CCP is a relatively large Icelandic company that merged back in 2006 with White Wolf Publishing Inc to create the largest virtual gaming universe, at least this was the case back in 2006 when World of Warcraft wasn’t quite as popular. White Wolf Publiching Inc was a popular published of offline role playing games and one of the reasons for the merger was to combine these talents into synergies that would yield better results both offline and online.
Furthermore the company has offices in UK, Iceland, US and a representative office in China. They also have more than 40 jobs open so they definitely see growth in this sector despite the downturn (according to Fox Business, they had more than 300 employees back in June).
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