Fruugo Shutting Down Helsinki Office, Cites Bad Entrepreneurial Environment
Fruugo, the hugely ambitious but later financially troubled startup, is shutting down its office in Helsinki. We had a discussion with Fruugo's CEO Dominic Allonby (interview in full below) about the transition from Finland to England. While the reasons are financially backed, he also cites the bad entrepreneurial attitude towards his company as one of the reasons behind the move.
During the height of the company, before Allonby was the CEO, Fruugo employed some 150 people. Today, as the company is shutting down its Helsinki office, the move affects less than 10 people.
We covered the company's financial data in detail mid April as it had burned through some €37 million euros in entirety during its existence.
From Brink Of Bankruptcy Towards An IPO - The Evernote Story
Evernote is perhaps the single most persistent program I have open on my computer each day. I use it almost equally in comparison to Safari, my browser and Sparrow, my mail client. I caught up with Phil Libin the CEO of Evernote in Amsterdam last week, at TheNextWeb conference. I wanted to talk to him how he has guided the company through the early days into what it is today. Today, Evernote has over 25 million users using the service in more than 30 languages. About a million users are paying users who chip in around $5 a month.
The concept of the service is extremely simple. One could say that at its core it is a note taking application that works on multiple platforms and syncs your data to the cloud. You can access this data through the Evernote application on different platforms, be it Windows or Mac, iOS or Android, or through your browser. The service also accepts various kinds of content, text, audio, images and so forth. Perhaps the best part of all this is that it makes everything searchable through OCR.
For years the company kept growing quite moderately, but Libin said he always had hope in how the company would grow. This hope was based on the metrics the service usage created. He showed some of these metrics on stage in Amsterdam. Before getting into these though, I'll have to tell a story Libin shared with me. It's one that hasn't been heard too often. It's how Evernote was saved from the brink of bankruptcy at 3AM one morning by a user from Sweden.
#15 - Tine Thygesen of Everplaces
In our 15th episode we talk to Tine Thygesen of Everplaces, Copenhagen, Denmark based startup. We discuss location based services and how Tine got into entrepreneurship through her first startup in the e-commerce space in Australia. After selling that to an Australian company she came back to the Nordics to take on more entrepreneurial challenges first with Venture Cup Denmark and later with 23 Video before starting her own company Everplaces. She is also one of the founders of Founder's House, a co-working space in Copenhagen that now has 17 startups and some 70 people working there.
#13 - Carl Waldekranz of Tictail
In our thirteenth show we talk to Carl Waldekranz, the CEO and co-founder of Tictail. Tictail positions themselves as the easiest, prettiest and most social way to sell stuff online. In the show we talk to Carl about what led them to start Tictail and how they actually went about building the team. There are a lot of great small stories there, we strongly suggest you listen to them. In addition, the company has also worked with Spotify and Wrapp, designing their typeface for both of the companies.
We'd also like to thank our sponsor for this week - Kisko Labs, for supporting the show. Kisko Labs makes people happy by solving their problems with digital services. They've got a neat offering called Kisko Kickstart that will develop an idea into a minimum viable product in five weeks. This helps companies understand how the idea would work in a business environment.
#9 - The Amount Of Time Put Into That Blackhole
This week we talk to the CEO and Co-founder of Flattr, Linus Olsson. Flattr is a social micro payment system that has recently received a €1.6 million investment that values the company at €10 million. We talked to Olsson about the investment as well as their philosophy behind Flattr. The company has also recently announced partnerships with 5by5 Network as well as Instacast, both working in the space of podcasts. Carrying with the interview, we decided to implement flattring to our podcast as well. If you're using Instacast on the iOS platform to listen to podcasts - you can now flattr us through the arrow link at the bottom of the window.
This week we are supported by Gapps.fi - a Helsinki-based company that brings the Google productivity tools to your workplace. They've got a special offer for all those who ping them and say they came from ArcticStartup. Also, they are looking for talented people to work with them in the area of sales and technical implementation. Big thanks to Gapps for supporting the show.
#8 - Wrapp With Two P's
In our eighth episode we dive into discuss the new rising star of Sweden - Wrapp. We've reported on the company in the past, especially in them raising two rounds of financing worth more than $10 million. The rounds were raised from Atomico Ventures as well as Greylock Partners, both highly acclaimed investors. The first round invested into the company was by Creandum, the acclaimed Swedish investment house that has stakes also in companies such as Spotify. We talk to Carl Fritjofsson, the COO of Wrapp on how exactly the company got setup and what they are really after. Believe us, there is so much more to the company than simply gift cards. After listening to the show, you're going to understand exactly why the $10+ million makes a lot of sense.
This week we are supported by Gapps.fi - a Helsinki-based company that brings the Google productivity tools to your workplace. They've got a special offer for all those who ping them and say they came from ArcticStartup. Also, they are looking for talented people to work with them in the area of sales and technical implementation. Big thanks to Gapps for supporting the show.
#7 - Space Artifacts
In our seventh episode of Unfair Advantage we talk to Christoph Thur of Ovelin. Ovelin has created a game called Wildchords that has attracted a lot of interest both from consumers, but also from investors. Recently they closed a €1.1 million investment from True Ventures. We talked to Christoph to understand how Ovelin went about creating Wildchords, but also how the game has been distributed and what were the steps leading up to the closing of the investment from one of the top-tier investors in the US.
Our sponsor for this week is Gapps.fi - a Helsinki-based company that brings the Google productivity tools to your workplace. They've got a special offer for all those who ping them and say they came from ArcticStartup. Big thanks to Gapps for supporting the show.
#5 - Operating Systems Of Our Lives
In the fifth episode we talk to Estonian investor and serial entrepreneur Allan Martinson. Allan Martinson is the managing and founding partner of MTVP. MTVP is one of the more well known and successful investment companies operating in the Baltic region. In the show, we discuss numerous things about the Nordic and Baltic startup scene as well as the role of accelerators. Martinson also tells us what he thinks needs to be done on the regional scale to get things working better and more effectively.
We also want to thank our first sponsor of the show: Kippt.com - it makes bookmarking and reading the web easier (and we'd like to add beautiful). It works well on your browser as well as on your mobile devices like iPad and iPhone.
Finally - you're also able to now find us in the top navigation under Unfair Advantage. You'll find all the shows there for future reference.
Interview With Harry Nelis Of Accel Partners (Video)
We talked to Harry Nelis, a partner at Accel Partners, about startups, entrepreneurship and Europe as well as many other topics. When we shot the video, Nelis had just come down from the main stage at LeWeb where he participated in the traditional Money Panel. Accel has been able to discover and invest into some of the most successful startups out there. Some of their portfolio companies include Facebook, Groupon, Spotify and the list goes on.
Podcast: Interview With Klaus Nyengaard Of Just-Eat
I had the privilege of interviewing Klaus Nyengaard, the group CEO of Just-Eat, a Danish originated company that currently employs over 400 people with revenues in the tens of millions of euros. First I was supposed to interview Nyengaard for an article on ArcticStartup, but the discussion flowed quite nicely so I decided to make it into a podcast. We touched on quite a few items of Just-Eat's business, including how they see expansion as well as plans for an IPO. We covered Just-Eat just last week and I have to say - very, very few people have reacted which such pace as Nyengaard did (not to mention he's the group CEO) to get back to me on the article.
Interview With Markku Mehtälä of Mepin
I bumped into Markku Mehtälä at one of the startup events in the capital region of Finland when he first explained me the problem they're trying to solve. It's a very current one as well with more and more online services and accounts requiring users to remember their credentials, not to mention games and other entertainment destinations. It's definitely an interesting approach and could prove useful, especially among consumers who get the ease of use and hassle-free approach to signing in. At the bottom of the interview is a short video explaining the concept. Markku Mehtälä is the founder and CEO of Mepin.
Interview with Geir Freysson from Brand Regard
Last year an Iceland-based start-up Transmit launched a brand-managing software as a service tool Brand Regard. The service received undisclosed funding round in December and now has operations both in Iceland and UK. We talked with the company's founder and CEO, Geir Freysson, to learn how the company got started and what lessons can be learned from Geir's experience.
Geir received his education first in Physics in Iceland and then in Computer Science in UK, where he moved to in late 2002. After graduation he initially worked at British Telecom as a researcher. However, with time he got tired of 'writing reports that no one reads'. Around 2006, when the Web 2.0 started getting real traction in Europe, he got interested in doing something online so he quit his job at BT, moved to London and started working as a 'free-lance tech'. He also got involved in a couple of local start-ups as CTO but none of them took off. Though it was that experience that prompted Geir to build his own company.
Interviewing Software Entrepreneurs: Tuomas Holma Of CadFaster
This post belongs to a series of posts where we interview Finnish software entrepreneurs in co-operation with the Finnish Software Entrepreneurs. In this post we interview Tuomas Holma from CadFaster. The company creates products for the CAD industry to improve productivity and overcome obstacles in working more efficiently. You can read more about their products at the CadFaster website.
Interview With William Wolfram, CEO of DealDash
We decided to interview William Wolfram, the CEO of DealDash. A startup that's registered in Finland, but operates mainly in the US market. Not a very common sight, but then again neither is the business DealDash is in. The interview is quite a long one, but then again - we felt it should be published in its entirety as it contains a wealth of valuable information.
Interview With Johan Haataja, Founder TruthFeed
We talked about TruthFeed sometime back and its introduction of new features that included the Twitter Bot and the Historical Development. While we personally believe in doing our bit of reviews on startups and tools it is always a good idea to get in touch with people behind and interview one of the team members. We therefore decided to get in touch with TruthFeed’s founder; Johan Haataja to learn his part of story on the newly introduced features and TruthFeed itself.
Interviewing Software Entrepreneurs: Leena Klaavu of Enfide
This is a series of posts, written in co-operation with the Finnish Software Entrepreneurs to promote entrepreneurs working with software. This post is about Leena Klaavu from Enfide. This post is very different from the other posts in the series about larger companies. In this post Leena Klaavu explains how she started her company, where she employes herself and feels about running a business.
In this series, we try to dig deep into the backgrounds of the entrepreneurs and their companies. You can also win a ticket to Arctic15 by subscribing to the Finnish Software Entrepreneurs newsletter over here. Please note; the interview below is a translation from the original Finnish interview.
Interviewing Software Entrepreneurs: Teppo Kattilakoski, CEO Of Granite Partners
This is a series of posts, written in co-operation with the Finnish Software Entrepreneurs to promote entrepreneurs working with software. This post is about Teppo Kattilakoski, the CEO of Granite Partners. The company develops enterprise risk and security management software.
In this series, we try to dig deep into the backgrounds of the entrepreneurs and their companies. You can also win a ticket to Arctic15 by subscribing to the Finnish Software Entrepreneurs newsletter over here.
Interview With Mohamed El-Fatatry Of Muxlim (Part 2)
Yesterday we released the first part of the Muxlim Founder and CEO, Mohamed El-Fatatry interview. In the interview, El-Fatatry talks about the creation of their business and how they went on to grow it. In the second part of the interview El-Fatatry explains how they realised a completely new business area after discussions with Coca-Cola.
Interview With Mohamed El-Fatatry Of Muxlim (Part 1)
We haven't covered Muxlim at ArcticStartup in the way it deserves to be covered. So, what better way to do it than have a talk with the founder and CEO of the company, Mohamed El-Fatatry. El-Fatatry isn't your usual startup founder in Finland. He's of Egyptian background and went on to start the world's largest muslim-oriented site when still in school. Muxlim grew immensely fast in the early days they didn't really have any competition. One of the drivers of their growth can be attributed to excellent media coverage.
Interview With Mikko Välimäki of Tuxera
We've talked about Tuxera quite a long time back at Arctic Startup. The Finnish based company is the industry leader when it comes to providing NTFS, exFAT, HFS+ and other file system solutions that guarantee Windows, Mac and any electronic device interoperability. It had been quite a long time since we last talked about, hence we thought it would be good to follow up on the current situation with a brief interview. And it's good that we did - Mikko Välimäki, CEO, revealed that they multiplied their revenue 7 fold last year (which would mean it's closer to half a million euros based on the public records)*.
Interview With Vesa Perälä On Web Of Trust Lawsuit
We had reported about the lawsuit against Web of Trust (WOT) last week and had mentioned that we will be inquiring Vesa Perälä, CEO of WOT about the same. While talking about the lawsuit alone would have been a repetition, hence we thought of providing a well rounded information on WOT as well. I was quite impressed with its growth, its community is expected to grow to 50 million by the end of the current year.
Blog!Flow Is Applifier For Blogs
Applifier certainly sprung up some interesting competition in Facebook as it revealed just how successful it has been. Blog!Flow has taken this same concept to blogs, who would like to receive more visbility and readers. In short, they too, are promising new readers for free who use the Blog!Flow banner on their website. The cross promotion network takes some of these advertisements and sells them onwards to those wanting to buy more visibility.
The service has been launched into closed beta by the same team that worked on Videoflow. Teppo Hudson leads the team and we talked to him about their plans and where Blog!flow stands currently.
Interview: Ututi And Lithuanian Startup Scene
Ututi is a start-up from Lithuania that has built an online portal for university students to share course and study materials. Every 10th Lithuanian student uses it and the service's Polish version has attracted plenty of interest too. I interviewed Jaro Šatkevič, one of the founders, who revelaed that the team is now working on an international version of the service - Ututi.com. 'After many talks with universities we realized that they need another Ututi. They wanted to have studies-oriented social networks for university community, i.e. discussions, file sharing between students and teachers, teachers' personal pages etc. That's how new concept of Ututi was started. Official beta version is planned in the end of February' - states Jaro.
Video Interview Of Niklas Zennström - Part 1
Last week Niklas Zennström, together with Atomico visited Helsinki to talk to startups and promote their early stage investment company. I had the chance to sit down with Zennström and talk about the Nordic and Baltic investment environment, Atomico as well as some of their investments. Below is the first part of the video interview in a little over 7 minute clip.
Robert Scoble Interviews Finnish And Latvian Startups (Video)
Lots of activity taking place today. A few weeks ago 10 startups with the help of Aalto Venture Garage flew to Silicon Valley to network and raise awareness of the Nordic and Baltic startup ecosystem. That trip already bears fruit in the form of Robert Scoble interviewing some of the startups and the purpose of their trip.
Casey Pugh: from Vimeo to Star Wars Uncut
During last weekend's AltParty I had a chance to talk with Casey Pugh who told me about his journey from the early days of Vimeo towards his latest project Star Wars Uncut, which got him an Emmy award this year! Casey describes himself as a technologist and an entrepreneur at heart. He built his first website - a platform similar to Google Reader - while still at college and learned flash by working as a free-lance developer for high profile client websites like JanetJackson.com. Once he graduated in 2006, Casey moved from North Carolina to New York and joined Vimeo 'by pure luck'. In other words, he stumbled upon a job opening on LinkedIn, applied and got it. While at the company he helped with everything from backend to frontend but his main pride and joy is Vimeo's video player that he built himself.
Trulia Clearly Profitable - An Interview With Co-Founder Sami Inkinen
I interviewed Sami Inkinen last week about Trulia and how their company is currently doing. Trulia is a US based residential real estate search engine, which Sami Inkinen, a Finn, co-founded together with Pete Flint. I wanted to talk to him how Trulia is doing in the turmoil of the US economy, where the housing market was hit the hardest definitely affecting their business. I thought of writing a story from Inkinen's answers, but since he manages to best explain their business and his thoughts in his answers, I decided to publish the interview in full.
MediSapiens Bets On Big Data To Cure Cancer
"Harvard spinoff promises genome sequencing for $30"
This was the headline from FierceBiotech Research, a biotech journal. It's also a game changing development for the industry as a whole and part of a bigger trend of personalized cancer medicine. The first time scientists sequenced a human genome it cost $ 3 billion. Then it went to $ 6 million (2006), then $ 60,000 (2008), in June 2009 Illumina pushed it to $ 20,000, Nov 6 2009 Complete Genomics promised $ 4,400. The prediction for the coming year? $ 1,000 in 2-3 years and further down to $ 100 in 5-10 years.
The Future Of Early Stage Investing In Europe And Why You Should Apply To Seedcamp
Limited Partners or LPs, the people or institutional investors who invest their money in venture funds, are pulling away and the European investment climate is going from bad to worse. This is on one hand because of the dismal returns that the funds have generated and on the other hand because of the bloated management fees that some VCs collect without working much for their portfolio companies or for new deal flow.
Even if the general investment climate in Europe is getting darker Seedcamp is determined to make the early stage investing work in Europe. I talked with Reshma Sohoni, CEO of Seedcamp, at the Copenhagen Mini-Seedcamp about Seedcamp's past, present and future and what value they can offer for startups coming from the Nordics and Baltics.
Seedcamp model is to invest €50,000 in early stage startups in return for some 10 percent of equity. Beyond just the capital, they aim to connect entrerpeneurs with the best mentors across Europe, UK and US.
Microsoft Doing Its Part To Foster The Global Startup Ecosystem
Disclaimer: While Microsoft is one of our advertisers at the time of writing this, this blog post is not in any way paid for by Microsoft. Please see our Editorial Policy for information on sponsored blog posts.
Last week I had a chat with the Director of Emerging Business Teams at Microsoft, Sam Rosenbalm, about how Microsoft is working on a global level to improve the startup ecosystem. Sam Rosenbalm is responsible for the Bizspark and other startup programs globally. Many people know that Microsoft has engulfed upon an ambitious journey with its Bizspark program. The program is aimed to be nothing less than a global startup program to create a community of startups that reap the benefits of Microsoft products.
The program has been immensely successful and I have to say, after talking to Sam Rosenbalm about it - I am impressed. There are now around 30 000 startups enlisted in the program from over a 100 countries. Microsoft is working hard with many different stake holders in the startup ecosystem to move things forward. Sam Rosenbalm rightly said that there aren't many organisations that are able to give startups useful cross border possibilities, be that partnerships, financing and so on. Microsoft is definitely one of these organisations making these possibilities available to startups.
