SoundCloud Reaches 10 Million Users
SoundCloud has just announced it has reached 10 million users. SoundCloud is a music startup currently in Berlin, but its roots lay in Sweden where its two co-founders Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss are from. We've covered the music service in the past as well a couple of times and they've definitely been one of the more interesting startups in Europe in the recent months. Just a few weeks ago the company closed a, reportedly, $50 million finance round.
Hammerkit Nails €1.25 M In Funding
Hammerkit, the Finnish cloud technology provider, today received €1.25 million investment from the North West Fund, joining Veraventure and Tekes as investors. The company produces scalable digital solutions for the global PR and marketing industry, and will use the funding to open a sales and development center in Liverpool.
DealDash Recruiting Talent With Strong Growth And $1M Investment
Our January's recruiting partner is DealDash, a Helsinki, Finland based startup. They operate a "gamified" shopping site that we've been covering recently. Back in October we covered their growth in quite a bit of detail, but we're very happy to report that this growth has further continued and seems to continue into the future. To fuel this, they of course require the best of talent that is out there.
Currently DealDash is looking for front-end developers. If you've got your doubts about the financials of this particular startup, you need not worry.
GrabCAD Closes $4 Million Series A Financing
GrabCAD has closed a $4 million in Round A financing led by Matrix Partners. This is in addition to their seed round of $1.1 million they closed in June 2011. Other existing investors in GrabCAD participated in the round. According to Hardi Meybaum, the CEO and Co-Founder of GrabCAD, the investment will be used to improve the community and product at large.
SoundCloud Scores A $50 Million Round
Soundcloud, the Berlin-based startup founded by Swedes Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, has reportedly received a $50 million investment led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers including participation by GGV Capital. TechCrunch has estimated the round to be around $50 million, but Soundcloud did not confirm the round size in their press release about the investment.
Tradeshift Raises $17M At $137M Valuation From Russia
Tradeshift, originating from Denmark, has announced a $17M investment round from two Moscow based investors at a valuation of $137M , according to a recent press release. The investors in the round were ru-Net and Kite Ventures. The company stated the money will be used to speed up product development and expand into the North American market.
iZettle, Competitor To Square, Closes 8.2M Euro Investment
iZettle, a Sweden based company looking to crack the social payment problem, has closed an 8.2M euro investment from Index Ventures, Creandum and Charles Dunstone, CEO and Co-founder of The Carphone Warehouse. The round was lead by Index Ventures. iZettle's solution is very similar to that of the US leader's in this space, Square. They have an iOS app that users are able to download for free and then use that app, together with a small chip-card reader, to accept and pay for goods and services with your credit card.
Interview With Emil Eifrém Of Neo Technology (Video)
We interviewed Emil Eifrém of Neo Technology about a lot of things. He's the CEO and co-founder of the company and they just announced a nice $10.6M Series A round from Fidelity Growth Partners, Conor Venture Partners and Sunstone Capital. Neo Technology provides NoSQL, graph database solutions to its clients. Their clients are large, very large actually and they've signed on one Fortune 20 company as well.
Endomondo Raises $2.3M And Reaches 5M Downloads
Endomondo, the company developing a mobile sports tracker application by the same name, has announced its $2.3 million financing round from Denmark based SEED Capital. Endomondo was launched in September 2008. The company's mobile app has gained substantial traction since February, when we reported it reached a previous significant milestone of 2 million downloads.
Multitouch Closes 2 Million Euro Investment
The Finnish manufacturer and designer of touch based large screens, Multitouch, has secured a 2 million euro investment from the Finnish Industry Investment and Veritas Pension Insurance. The investment will be used to speed up the company's sales and marketing efforts including their international operations. Previous investors, founders and seed fund Vera will continue as owners in the company as well.
The company was founded in 2007 and has received a good start ever since. Earlier this year we covered the company as it designed the Twitter wall for CES. According to the press release, Multitouch has currently clients in 40 countries.
Jenkatehdas Get Initial Funding
The first Finnish online rock venue, Jenkatehdas, gets funded by Tekes and two business angels: Jyrki Kontio and Topi Löppönen. The amount of angel investment was not disclosed, though it is known that Tekes invested 140,000€ project money into the start-up. The money will speed up the company's growth and help it start international expansion. Jenkatehdas host live concerts in their studio which are streamed in real-time on their website. Users need to purchase tickets (priced at about 5€) in order to watch the concerts and interact with each other and the band.
Yandex Invests In Zenmoney
Yandex, has invested in one of the applicants and finalists that took part in its Yandex Start event on March 15th - Zenmoney.ru. Zenmoney is a personal finance startup developing an accounting and planning application.
Flirtic Raises Funding From Almaz Capital
The news today and this week seem to be all about Estonia and for a great reason too! Flirtic, another Estonain company is flying high - they have raised funding from Almaz Capital, a Russian VC firm. Flirtic is a new approach to online dating. It borrows a lot from social networks in terms of usability, but puts all this into an online dating context.
GrabCAD Scores A $1.1 Million In Funding
GrabCAD, one of the hot startups currently coming out from Estonia, has announced that they have landed a $1.1 million in funding from top-tier investors. Matrix Partners, Atlas Venture, Next View Ventures and angels John McEleney, Alex Ott, Angus Davis and Jon Stevenson invested into the company. GrabCAD has been a very active startup in the recent year or so as they've both taken part in Seedcamp, but also the TechStars programs.
Marketing And Selling: GameBook
In this series, we study companies on how they market and sell their products or services. In the this post we'll be looking to interview Kalle Väinölä, the co-founder and CEO of Freedrop Innovations Ltd. The company is behind the Gamebook concept that golfers can use to make the most of their round. We covered the company in January when they inked an investment agreement from Anssi Vanjoki. As this is the first story in the series, all kinds of feedback is naturally welcome regarding the questions.
New $60M Fund For European Startups Emerges In Britain
Big news coming out from Britain. Passion Capital, a new investment company has just announced that they've closed a $60 million fund from both private investors as well as the UK government. Private investors put in $20 million and the British government upped the ante with a $40 million. Passion Capital features three partners, Stefan Glaenzer, Eileen Burbidge and Robert Dighero. The trio is among the most high profile angel investors in Europe.
Jyri Engeström Launches Ditto (Formerly Known As Pingpin)
Back in September we wrote about Jyri Engeström and his team closing $775 000 in seed money for his new startup. Today, we're able to share with you that they're now launching Ditto - a new way to discover places, movies and other activities as well as share what you're planning to do or currently doing. It borrows from many services, but builds them all together in the most natural way possible.
Wikimart.ru Secures $7M Funding
Wikimart.ru is Runet's leading platform for online stores. Set up in 2009 by two Russian graduates from Stanford MBA, within a year it attracted over 2200 merchants and raised $5,7M finding from a group of Western business angels and Tiger Global Management. This week Vedomosti reported that Tiger Global invested another $7M into the venture. According to Kamil Kurmakayev, one of the founders, Wimimart was approached by a number of other investors, including Accel Partners and Index Ventures. The reason the company chose Tiger Global was simple: the group did not try enforcing their own vision onto the start-up or dictate how things should be done. Previous investments have been spent on expanding the operations, online marketing and SEO. This investment means Tiger Global has over 50% stake in Wikimart.
Four Reasons Index Ventures Invested In Grey Area
Earlier this week Grey Area announced a whopping 1.9 million euro series A round from Index Ventures, London Venture Partners and Initial Capital. This is one of the largest single rounds into the Finnish gaming companies in the recent years for sure. What makes this all the better for the whole country and Northern Europe for that matter, is that the financing came from overseas from globally respected investors. Ben Holmes from Index Ventures outlined four reasons why they invested in Grey Area. I think this is a good read for all entrepreneurs to keep in mind if they are looking for venture capital.
How A Russian Startup Got Funded By European Business Angels
Russian tourists are known around the world for many things, some of them quite embarrassing. Despite their many shortcomings Russian tourists are also a gold mine for the hospitality industry: they travel a lot and they like spending huge amounts of cash while at it. A new Russian start-up Hipclub.ru, backed by Skype's former CEO Michael van Swaaij and founder of eDreams Javier Pérez-Tenessa, launched an invitation-only travel club that offers exclusive short-term discounts on hotels and travel destinations, reports Quintura. No details of the investment have been disclosed. The service is a new project from the team behind Hipway.ru - a search portal for exotic travel tours. That project was founded in 2009 and received over $500 000 investment from European and American investors. Founders behind both of the projects offered interesting insight into the Russian VC market on their blog [in Russian].
Rdio's New Investment Analyzed
Rdio, an on-demand music streaming service from the Skype founders, took one more important step in the race for the hearts, minds and wallets of music-lovers. We wrote previously about the impressive team behind the start-up and their close ties to the four major music labels. On top of that influential human capital, this week Rdio added some monetary capital to advance their business - they closed a $17.5M funding round from new and existing investors. The money will go towards spreading the service to new platforms and new regions as well as for further R&D. How significant is this investment for the company and its competitors?
Applifier Signs $2M In Funding, Sees Huge Opportunities In Web Based Games
The news broke out today that Applifier has closed $2M in seed funding. The investors include MHS Capital, PROfounders Capital, Tekes, Lifeline Ventures, and angel investors Jyri Engeström, David Gardner and Lars Stenfeldt Hansen. The terms of the investment were not disclosed. Applifier is also announcing today that they have expanded their ad network into the web gaming space - where pain points are similar to that of Facebook; the market is fragmented, user acquisition costs are high and its becoming expensive to get users. We talked to Jussi Laakkonen about the expansion and they see huge opportunities in the space.
Nokia Growth Partners Invests $8 Million Into Voddler
Nokia Growth Partners is the leading investor in the latest financing round for Voddler, a video streaming service for the Nordics. Back in September, Elisa, a Finnish operator received approximately 10% of Voddler's stock for 40 million Swedish kronor. Back then, the company was valued at approximately 30 million euros.
TrustPilot Secures 5.5M DKK In Funding
TrustPilot, a Danish company review site, has closed 5.5 million Danish Kronor (almost 740 000 euros) in funding from SEED Capital. TrustPilot enables consumers to review and rate companies based on their experience and service they received. The site has half a million users on a monthly basis and the user base is constantly becoming more international. The business model is simple and almost obligatory for companies. With a monthly subscription, companies can engage in the reviews and comment back regarding individual reviews. The service has signed up more than a 1000 companies to date.
DST Uncovered: Russian Super VC Invests Into Groupon
Amid recent news of Groupon closing a $950M funding round, it might be easy to miss that Digital Sky Technologies was one of the main investors. The Russian super VC is on a serious shopping spree. Apart from the Groupon deal it recently invested $50M in Facebook and is said to be eyeing a stake in Twitter, who is likely to be the next web darling to close an investment round soon. Add that to DST's stakes in Zynga, Vkontakte, Nasza-klasa.pl (leading Polish social network), HeadHunter.ru (Russia's largest jobs website) and a complete ownership of ICQ, Mail.ru and Odnoklassniki and you'd see a meer part of DST's might.
Valkee's Recent Investment Round Values The Company At 4M€
Earlier this week we broke the 400 000 euro investment round that Valkee managed to close from some of the top tier angels around. Talouselämä, a Finnish weekly publication, has stated that the investment event that took place this week into Valkee has valued the company at 4 million euros. Esther Dyson, Anssi Vanjoki, Jyri Engeström and Lifeline Ventures received 10% of the company for their 400 000 euro investment. In total, there were six individuals and organisations who invested into the company.
Ahem, So We Actually Meant That Cherry.ee Is The Real Estonian Groupon
Yesterday we covered Deal24, a company doing local discount coupon sales, similar to Groupon's concept, in the Nordics and Baltics. Unfortunately for us, this wasn't an Estonian company and certainly not the largest as our readers rightly commented both in Facebook and in the article comments. The real Groupon of Estonia is Cherry.ee which is the largest by both deals done and amount of business. This time we talked to the investors behind the company and there's some interesting data to back this up.
Runa Capital: A $30M Early-Stage Fund From Russia
Such extensive venture funds are not commonplace in Russia. Created in August this year, Runa Capital positions itself as a qualitatively different player in the market. The fund's aim is to help talented Russian techies launch globally competitive products. The fund operates through an own incubator (Runapark) and looks for start-ups in the fields of cloud computing, mobile and Internet apps, machine learning and virtualization. Mihail Yshakov, junior partner, commented that priority will be given to projects with strong technological base to ensure they are hard to copy and while the main target group is Russian start-ups, they would be also be looking for cases in CIS and Sillicon Valley. Runa Capital is also planning to attract investors from USA and Europe to co-fund projects and share the expertise. Fund's founders and main investors add extra value for the projects since they include experienced and well-connected entrepreneurs like Serguei Beloussov (Chairman and CEO of Parallels) and Alexander Galitsky (founder Almaz Capital)
Netcycler Closes 725k€ Round, Expands to Germany
Netcycler announced today that they have closed a 725k€ investment round and while doing so, have also expanded their business to Germany. Investors in this round include the current owners, Cleantech Future Fund and the early stage fund Vera (Avera). Additionally, the company has been accepted into the Tekes YIC program, where Tekes is able to leverage costs up to one million euros.
'Happy Farmer' Looking For $20 Million
Online gaming is a booming industry worldwide and Russia is no exception. I-Jet Media, founded in 2005 is one of the pioneers and a current leader in the Russian market with more than 60 million registered users and 70+ games. The company is allegedly valuated at $100 million, though some investors estimate this figure to be exaggerated and valuate it closer to $30-50 million. I-Jet Media is currently looking for $20 million funding for 25% stake in the company, Vedomosti reported. Alexey Kostarev, one of the founders, explained that the funding is needed to hire more developers around the world. The likely investors include venture funds like Almaz Capital, DST and Finam. Company's biggest success, a social game called 'Happy Farmer' ('Счастливый Фермер'), was launched in 2009 and within one year attracted 10 million registered users. It also generated $20 million in revenue, though half of that money went to Vkontakte.ru - Russia's biggest social network where the game was launched.
