Kauppalehti reports that according financial data published into the government files, the price Sulake paid for the acquisition of IRC-Galleria a while back is 12,5 million euros. The company behind IRC-Galleria is Dynamoid, where the Finnish serial entrepreneur Taneli Tikka has also gathered some experience.

The price was 6,6 times their annual revenue which at that time was 1,89 million euros and 25 times their earnings of 500 000 euros.

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?

We have partnered with the Nordic Venture Forum to bring more visibility for Nordic and Baltic startups among the investors in the region.

Nordic Venture Forum is a day long conference in Copenhagen, Denmark that will give the 50 most promising companies that have qualified to the conference a chance to present their business model to a long list of business angels, VC funds and other investors. 

The Forum facilitates quality local and international deal flow, which aims to highlight the high level of growth companies in the Nordics and to increase the appeal of the Region for local and international venture capital and corporate investors as well as potential institutional investors in venture capital funds.

Nordic Venture Forum report that the impact studies of the Forum results show that 58% of the presenting companies managed to raise new investments following the event. An impressive percentage and if the raised funds are even in that ballpark it’s definitely something to look out for to those startups that fill the application criteria. To qualify a startups needs to 1) be an independent company with operational headquarters in the Nordics, 2) active in ICT, life sciences or clean technologies (energy & environment), and 3) seeking growth funding in the next 24 months.

The applications are closed for this year but be on the lookout for next year and talk to the the organizers to see if the conference is a good match with your startup.

I talked a while back to Gleb Kaplun, a Russian investor from St. Petersburg, about their company Web2People. We followed up on that and I got really excited with the possibilities it creates. Web2People is a venture company established to help young innovators start their business with the very basic resources and fundamentals. The focus on the innovation is on Internet services and web applications.

Web2People offers companies the physical office space and resources to get the idea of the ground. Once somewhat in the air, Web2People has mentors and professionals to help the entrepreneurs to make the idea fly. Web2People can help the companies with anywhere from paperwork to contacting investors from Europe to get further financing.

Although, Web2People does not give any funding for these companies, they consider themselves seed stage investors as they provide the basic facilities needed to get the idea off the ground. Thus, they don’t see themselves as another incubator without ambitious goals. The first startup centre is located just north of St. Petersburg.

Web2People runs projects divided into 2 sessions and 4 seasons. Each season lasts 3 months and is very specifically documented to create achievable goals and targets. Therefore the co-operation period with Web2People is usually 6 months - the first 3 months being put into growing the product into a prototype and the last 3 months allocated for fund gathering.

All in all, a very interesting concept and a very welcome I suppose with regards to the Russian market where there isn’t that much help from the government as we are used to here in the Nordic countries. I’m guessing Gleb will see himself a good pool of interesting ideas to take to the next level.

Supponor Ltd, a Finnish novel digital advertising technology provider founded in 2001, has raised 6 million euros in Series A funding. Supponor offers “digital billboard replacement” (DBR) solutions using a unique technology for real-time replacement of digital billboard ads, Supponor DBRLive. The ads are stated to appear as real as those seen on location, offering non-invasive and unintrusive new way of advertising. Live sports broadcasts are the main target for the company.

The investment round was led by a Nordic early stage venture capital firm Northzone Ventures, and a Finnish early stage technology venture capital firm Conor Venture Partners, in addition to an unnamed existing investor. The investment will be used to “leverage the business opportunities that Supponor DBRLive brings to digital advertising agencies and television right holders”. Supponor is aiming to launch DBRLive in Europe and the United States, the world’s leading markets in sports advertising.”

The investment is really big in the Finnish scale, and tells the opportunity the company is able to tackle is seen as very lucrative one so the company and investors want to move extremely fast to take on the international markets. The message to potential customers and partners brand owners, event organisers, and broadcasters is indeed very clear: Supponor promises more money, increased possibilities for segmentation and measurability, and dynamic cost-efficient content management.