Tinkercad Lands $1 Million In Seed Funding
Tinkercad, a Helsinki based company that allows you make solid CAD drawings directly in your browser, announced it has raised $1 million in seed funding from True Ventures and angels Eghosa Omoigui, Taher Haveliwala, jaiku founder Jyri Engestrom, and Joshua Schachter. The browser based service is designed to make 3D printing more accessible to a wider audience.
Lessons Learned: Launching Ditto
As a blogger, I have to give kudos to Jyri Engeström for the way he launched Ditto. You see, as a blogger we're contacted by many companies on their product launches and other activities. Some e-mail you once and almost call you back to ask why you haven't written about their company. Then there are people like Jyri who work to build up the relationship and explain in detail what the thinking behind the service is - over the period of couple of months before the launch. I had a chat with Jyri about the things that took place behind the scenes and how the run up to the launch went. This is one of the best company launches and I think it's worthwhile sharing with others.
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.
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.
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.
Esther Dyson And Anssi Vanjoki, Among Others, Invest Into Valkee
Valkee, the startup that is developing an ear light solution to curing seasonal affecting disorder (SAD), has closed a 400 000 euro investment round from many well known investors. Some names include the world renown Esther Dyson, Nokia's former director Anssi Vanjoki as well as Jyri Engeström a Jaiku co-founder as well as Lifeline Ventures. To add to all the success, Valkee has also received a special mention in the Finnish INNOSUOMI 2010 -competition.
Seedcamp Launches Seedsummit, A Service To Find Active Early Stage Investors
Seedcamp has just announced earlier today about their launch of a new service, seedsummit, which is aimed to help startups find investors more easily. It's in short, the AngelList for the rest of us. Seedsummit has no specific geographic focus and it has angels listed from Africa, Asia, Europe, Nordics and Baltics to name a few. While there are only a few names listed, I'm sure it will supply a need in demand.
Thinglink Raises 1M USD From Inventure And Lifeline Ventures
Thinglink, a Finnish product tagging startup based in Helsinki/Palo Alto (see our previous coverage), has just announced it has raised USD 1 million in funding from Nordic Inventure and Lifeline Ventures. The funding will be used to develop in-image product advertising network for brands, retailers and other product advertisers. The firm's reference customers include the Scandinavian media house Aller, the Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE (Wenzel’s Antique Road Show), and interior design brand Artek.
Engeström Closes $775k Seed Round For Pingpin
The Jaiku co-founder and former Google employee, Jyri Engeström has closed a $775k seed round for his new venture Pingpin. The company is registered in the US and at the same offices as BetaWorks. TechCrunch wrote an extensive story going about the details around the company, which still don't disclose too much information about what they might or might not be up to. BetaWorks and True Ventures as well as Jon Callaghan are listed as the financial backers in the SEC filing.
Thinglink Aims To Become Bit.ly For Images
Thinglink, a Finnish startup, has come out with a new focus. Little over a year ago we wrote about the company and how they were opening up their Beta. Ulla-Maaria Engeström's blog post goes on to explain how during that Beta phase they explored all the possible variations of linking together people, things and the information the things hold. Even if brief, It's an important account on how a startup can dig out the essence of a minimum viable product (MVP) on their way to product/market fit.
Sofanatics Closes Seed Round From Top Tier Angels
The Helsinki, Finland based Sofanatics, has closed a seed round from high profile angels. Among the new investors is Jyri Engeström, former Jaiku Co-Founder as well as Aki Riihilahti, former Crystal Palace midfielder. There are more, but Sofanatics will not disclose their names nor the sum invested into the company at this stage. Sofanatics is a social TV service for sports fans.
Jyri Engeström Joins Xiha Life's Board While Xiha Closes A $1m Seed Round
The Jaiku co-founder Jyri Engeström, who recently left Google (see our previous story here), has joined Xiha Life's board. Both Jaiku founders, Engeström and Petteri Koponen have switched into the dark side, namely after founding several companies of their own, they have now moved into investing in new startups.
Engeström has started to do angel investing in a chosen few companies, while Koponen co-founded Lifeline Ventures, one of the Finnish Vigo accelerators (see more on the Vigos here)
This might not seem like a big deal, but it is. Finland has been suffering from a deficit of investors that believe in and understand the consumer Internet. Just recently we wrote about the state of the Finnish venture capital and the picture was quite clear: We need more entrepreneurs that have succeeded in the consumer internet to share their experience, inspire(!) and invest in the young guns who want to reach for the stars, but don't have much more than a boat load of energy to start with. Jyri, along with Petteri, are clearly on the right path.
Calling All Nordic And Baltic Angel Investors
There's been a lot of talk lately about angel investing or the lack of thereof, and I think the time is finally ripe for it to raise its head here in the Nordics and Baltics.
I just recently talked to Petteri Koponen of Lifeline Ventures, who came back from the first SeedSummit that took place in London and was put together by the good people at Seedcamp. It's a new initiative that twice a year brings together a critical mass of Europe’s most active seed investors to try and establish a stronger, more cohesive network to support entrepreneurs across the continent.
We welcome the initiative. If its needed generally in Europe, the Nordics and Baltics are literally screaming for such an initiative.
The other angel investor coming from our neck of the woods who was present was who else than the other Jaiku co-founder, Jyri Engeström. Other angels present included Jeff Clavier, Martin Varsavsky, Brent Hoberman, Lukasz Gadowski, Stefan Glaenzer, Dave McClure, Andy Philips, William Reeve, Robin Klein and Sherry Coutu. A hefty list.
Two Years Is Up, Jaiku Founders Leave Google
We just heard yesterday that Jyri Engeström, Jaiku co-founder, is leaving his Product Manager job at Google after his two year earn out is up. Today Petteri Koponen, the other Jaiku co-founder announced that he is leaving Google and joining Lifeline Ventures, a Finnish startup accelerator that's part of the Vigo program (See our previous stories on Lifeline Venture here and here).
This not such a big jump as Petteri worked at Google in a wide variety of roles that gave him an ideal view into what was happening in the market. First Petteri worked at the Android product team and subsequently on Google's New Business team, which continuously searches for and works with startups that partner with Google. It's exciting to follow how the Vigo program evolves. At least Lifeline Ventures seem to be already hard at work. Petteri told me that they have already done some investments even though the whole program is just coming together.
Mindtrek's First Day - Full Of Variety
Check, check... mike working, reporting from the Mindtrek conference from Tampere where some 800 people are networking, discussing internet and digital media at large. The day has been action packed and there has been a lot of different content to consume. Furthermore, the audience saw some top notch speakers at Mindtrek this year, especially Chris Messina and Jyri Engeström, who were keynote speakers continuing on the post they wrote for ArcticStartup earlier.
The day began with a keynote by Chris Messina. He talked about identity as a platform. Judging on the amount of comments from people on the aisles in the conference, Chris hit top on with his presentation. Although there were some illogicalities, which he admits, it's always great to hear news from The Valley on the trends that are pumping there.
The Web At A New Crossroads
Guest post by Chris Messina and Jyri Engeström (thanks to Brynn Evans for editing and Brad Fitzpatrick for comments on the draft)
…………………
Around 2003, things began to change.
Technology was then the black sheep, having left overnight millionaires destitute and without change to afford their $4 lattes. Even the posers had left San Francisco and gone back to suburbia to be office managers at Walmart.
It was a sad time for everyone — that is, except the die-hards and the hackers. The web for them had never been about making money, but about reshaping culture and toppling the old order. 2003, therefore, was the perfect time for a resurgence: the people who kept pushing on in the Valley and elsewhere were a concentrated motley crew of innovators and builders. They cared about technology for technology's sake and about developing and advancing web culture.
What they didn’t realize, however, was that the services and technologies that they were destined to build would need to be cobbled and sewn together using a system that would fight them every step of the way — not out of spite — but because of its architecture. By definition the network available was decidedly anti-human: in 2003, there was only the document-centric web.
All New Thinglink In Closed Beta (We Have Invites)
Thinglink, a Finnish born service, has gone through a heavy redesign and landed in a private beta as a whole new service. What was before a product code that linked real world object via web to each other is now a conversational product catalog and platform.
The invitation-only beta officially launched on April 22nd at the Milan Furniture Fair with 10 design brands including Arabia Finland, Design Eero Aarnio, Fokus Fabrik, Helsinki Design Week, Iittala, Harri Koskinen, Martela, Selki Station, Ilmari Tapiovaara Design and Woodnotes. The service was also developed in cooperation with many of these Finnish design brands.
Those of use who remember thinglink.org as a product code service are up for a surprise when they enter the new site. The upgrade that launched in Milan added a whole new dimension to the Thinglink we knew as well as changed the .org into .com. Thinglink.com is a global catalog for design that enables designers, brands, and design enthusiasts to connect and converse on the web.
Google Ceases Development of Jaiku, Open Sources Platform
Google announced that they're closing or ceasing development of variety of services, including Jaiku.
As mentioned eariler, Jaiku has been in process of porting to Google App Engine and there have been some rumours of opening the Jaiku platform. Official release now states that Jaiku Engine will be open sourced under the Apache Licence, and supported by volunteer team of Googlers.
This probably means that Google will not have any plans of integrating or bringing Jaiku to other platforms like Android. Jaiku will transform into a general microblogging platform and the open source efforts will help keeping Jaiku.com development alive. Other than that, this is a huge hit on the Jaiku.com community, brand and service. There are benefits of building platforms, but usually a more intense community is not one of them.
Jyri Engeström, co-founder of Jaiku and now a Googler, stated in recent Jaiku discussion (1, 2) that current schedule for release is during this spring.
It will be also intresting to see what kind of changes App Engine will need to run the full feature set of Jaiku.
Will The Future iTunes Look Like Spotify?
Here's a Jaiku thread from last night (GMT +2) that basically outlines what the future of the worldwide music consuption might very well look like sooner than we think. The tread started when after Apple's announcement Jaiku Co-founder Jyri Engeström posed a questing to the Jaiku community "Wondering if DRM-free iTunes will affect Spotify's appeal"
Here's are some of the interesting thougths and ideas that were expressed. Pay especially attention to what Jyri concludes at the end of Spotify Co-founder Daniel Ek's answer. You can see the whole thread here.
Jyri Engeström: What does going drm-free tell us about Apple's future strategic direction for iTunes? I don't think it's out of the question that the future iTunes a little way down the road will look a lot like Spotify. If that was the case, where would it leave Spotify?Daniel Ek, Spotify Co-Founder: Thanks for caring Jyri. I just think there's a fundamental difference right now between us. iTunes is still about ownership and will still only work out of the box with iPod. It's not like they've enabled support for a bunch of new devices. We on the other hand is more about an access model and the future will tell if we will go the Apple way and have a closed system, or actually open up to a variety of use cases ;-)
[...]
Daniel Ek, Spotify Co-Founder: @jyri: You know, a wise man talked about social objects cough ;-). We think music data is social objects, and we focus on building tools around them. We don't necessarily want to be a social network ourselves. That's also a hint on the future :)
Adawale Oshineye: Let's look at the financial aspects. Spotify's premium account is £9.99 * 12 months. Apple won't go after Spotify's market unless they're making less than £120 per average user per year from Itunes.
The other big question is regarding Apple's long term aspirations:
- Option 1: they want lots of people (on the order of 100s of millions) buying lots of very cheap items from Apple. This has the advantage of being the same as their iPhone application strategy and lets them exploit economies of scale which would make it hard for anyone to compete with them. The bigger the market place the more customers you attract and the more customers the more likely people are to want to sell their products in your market place.
- Option 2: they want lots of people (on the order of 10s of millions) to move to a subscription model for their music. This number is smaller than the first number as subscription requires a bigger commitment and that kind of commitment is likely to lose them some of the market. This has the benefit of a nice stable stream of revenue but fewer barriers to entry. Anyone can set up an equivalent subscription service (once they've got the record companies on board) and the only lock-in is the minimal length of the subscription contract.
I think the record industry would like option 2 as they'd still have the power to take away their music from the users of any subscription service that didn't play by their rules.I think Apple are ambitious enough to seek option 1 as it potentially gives them control over a huge market in very cheap digital content: games, apps, music, ringtones, photos, micropayments for online services, etc. The systems they would need to make this work for music and iphone apps+games can be adapted fairly easily to lots of other small transactions once they've got their users comfortable with paying for things with their phone. The Japanese mobile phone market is a clear example of how this scenario can play out.
Jyri Engeström: @eldsjal I think I understand your approach fairly well although it's been a while since we discussed it -- which goes to show you're not visiting us often enough :)
As I recall pointing out before, Spotify's success against iTunes is affected to a significant degree by how well it can exploit the fact that Apple (awkwardly) wears two hats.
To be more precise, the interests of Apple the device manufacturer and Apple the online distributor are fundamentally misaligned. It's in the device manufacturer's interest to keep iTunes proprietary to the iPod; whereas it's in the online distributor's interest to sell music through as many channels as possible.
In the end this is a business equation. As long as Apple makes more money from devices, iTunes is likely to stay proprietary. But if the iTunes store grows into the de facto cash cow, or the iPod starts to lose market share, friction is bound to arise between the two units.
It's in Spotify's interest, therefore, that the iPod does well but not too well. Apple has to be compelled to keep iTunes proprietary, but worldwide sales of music players has to include a significant percentage of players that do not have iTunes. Spotify then has a shot at becoming the de facto music distribution platform 'for the rest of us'. Of course it'll face tough competition from other proprietary and open initiatives.
[...]
Jyri Engeström: @adewale I believe you're correct in that there are two business models, freemium subscription & per-item sales; however, they are not mutually exclusive. Of course Apple's not going to abandon sales of music tracks for ad-supported subscriptions. But it could easily add a free streaming/subscription mode to support its per-item sales (bait-and-switch like @oscar mentioned).
Daniel Ek, Spotify Co-Founder: +1 on @jyri :)
Jyri Engeström: @eldsjal reading the tealeaves from your "+1": the complementary nature of subscriptions and track sales means Spotify could just as well become iTunes ;)
Not only was this an interesting conversation on the future of worldwide music consuption and the direction of Spotify is heading, but this Jaiku conversation thread is also yet another evident that Jaiku is so much more than Twitter when it comes to conversations. Twitter surely has it's streghts, but Jaiku enables different kinds of communication. We need to have both(!), and as soon as Jaiku opens itself as well as its improved API to the public we will. Having Jaiku and Twitter sitting next to each other in a Tweetdeck would seriously change the way we communicate.
Twitter Moving Towards Jaiku?
The latest storm from the world of Nordic microblogging got me thinking a lot about Jaiku, Twitter, FriendFeed, the microblogging in general and the Open Stack that's trying to open up the silos, not just in microblogging, but the social web in large. We are looking into reaching the point where, just as Jyri Engeström put it, "[n]o single service, no matter how large and powerful, is the platform. The Web is the platform"
Now Many have realized that Twitter, which was competing head on with Jaiku and has won that race for now, should allow the service to develop towards what Jaiku did right when it launched, namely enable conversations. I believe those two services are different and perhaps should remain so and just talk to each other via open standards such as XMPP or an XMPP equivalent. Therefore I am not advocating Twitter becoming more Jaiku-like. Twitter should have its own future trajectory. What I am very strongly advocating is for the heavy users of FriendFeed and Twitter to start using Jaiku, the one service that does what services and apps using Twitter API are increasingly trying to do. TweeTree being the most recent example of that. Do I have a vested intrested in this? You can bet on it! I strongly believe Jaiku is a better service to engage in meaningful conversations and I am in Jaiku, but many people I would like to converse with are not.
Below Chris Messina below outlines his vision on where he sees activity streams going. He notes that activity streams need a "[l]ocation and context attached to or as attributes of social objects that are being created" and not just a lonely tweet which is not connected to anything. As Chris mentions in the video below [8min 27 sec into it], this is where Jaiku started from. Now we just need to get Google to realize the value it has in Jaiku and let Jyri & Co. to develop Jaiku further by incorporating filtering (by actor, action, social object, place, time, etc.), fast feed fetching, opening it up for the world to use and develop and voilá. Compare this to the #hashtags, which is about the only thing you can use to put your Tweet into a relevant context. This is really nothing but a poor hack compared to what Jaiku already can do for the conversations.
Talking Social Network Interop @ GSP East from Brian Oberkirch on Vimeo.
Since we are not yet living in a world where all the silos are broken and all the services can talk to each other, I think the Silicon Valley digerati should pull their heads from the California sand, see beyond their Valley bubble and give (yet again) Jaiku collectively a try to realize its value instead of complaining how the Twitter-cum-Jaiku attempts don't work. Yes it's closed, but the invitations are unlimited and I'm sure most of the microblogging heavy users already have an account. If not, I will personally send an invitation to anyone asking for one (you can email me at ville [at] arcticstartup.com). Twitter has the critical mass, but Jaiku still kicks its ass any day as a service to have meaningful conversations in. Since Twitter is not going to become Jaiku any time soon we all should give Jaiku another try. Struggling with two services is a drag, but things are changing fast, and once the users are there, Jaiku and Twitter can complement each other until the two services can openly talk to each other - or until a better option emerges.
Jaiku needs its critical mass and it needs to grow to become truly relevant to link people globally. I am advocating people to move there not only because I or some other people are there, but for the purposes of having conversations, it is a far better service than Twitter or FriendFeed. We should see and use the two services as the different services that they are, just as Eat.fi's founder @Spongefile commented here:
Jaiku is like a constant huge cocktail party hosted by your friends with interesting conversations to drop in on with semi-strangers.Twitter is like getting constant voicemail from everyone you know. You can reply via the same method, but that's no way to communicate.
So how about it Scoble? While we wait for the silos to come down, shall I send you a Jaiku invite?
Jaiku Picks Up. Android Integration Soon In The Plans?
We recently wrote about Jaiku losing users and subsequently got strong response from the Jaiku community telling us differently. Partly the reason why some users (link in Finnish) have moved to Twitter was Jaiku's feature pack was seriously couching: feeds not coming through and SMS messages were disabled.
Soon after Jaiku community stood up for their service the Jaiku team also woke up and already the next day feeds were back up, even if still a bit slow, and today SMS was also reactivated. The community effectively made itself heard and it worked at least to some extent.
There's also new feature's coming for example regarding the API that supports OAuth, but the gravest of the concerns' has yet to be answered by the Jaiku team, namely when are we going to see these changes happen and especially where is the service going.
Jyri Engeström commented in Jaikido blog way back in August when Jaiku was being ported to Google App Engine, "We appreciate your patience and can’t wait to open up Jaiku to everyone", but is Google's corporate wheel too slow to turn and is Google's silence policy regarding it's products development slowly pushing the Jaiku community's patience one step too far?
The same Jaikido blog entry talks about how 3rd party developers will have greater control over the system and can write applications that provide richer features to their users. This clearly shows that there are plans for the future. One could even speculate that Google has all along had a clear plan on what they are going to do with Jaiku. As Antti Akonniemi speculates, " Jaiku’s location based and phone profile features pre-installed on Google phones could change everything."
Now, if one wants to see this happening one easily could: Petteri Koponen has been working especifically on Android in Google's London office, while Jyri Engeström is in Mountainview working on Google's strategy for the social web. Has Google just waited until Android is ready to ramp up Jaiku development? Then again, last April Teemu Kurppa told (In Finnish) the Finnish crowd that Jaiku was being developed on the Google's infamous "20% time". Google would hardly make developers develop the corner stone of it's mobile strategy on their 'extra 20%'. Or would it? Jyri's silence despite the lively conversation and many requests regarding an update on what's happening could indicate that something's up.
This is not a new idea, but could the time start to be ripe for the launch as Jaiku's porting to Google App Engine is nearly finished which allows a rapid uptake of new users, and as Android is fully functioning and just starting to go after market share?
Edit 17.12.2008 at 3.36pm: Jyri Engeström posted today a new blog post in his blog where he carefully tells us about the future of Jaiku. Among other updates he says that "I regard the Jaiku community as friends, and your concern about the future of the service is legitimate. It warrants a response."
To indicate what is to come, he goes on by saying that they "[...]plan to open up its development to the user community more in the future." and that "People should be able to post and follow status updates across servers just like they send email. No single service, no matter how large and powerful, is the platform. The Web is the platform."
The best indication on what's to come is at the end of the blog post. I quote: "In spite of the decision to not throw resources at building Jaiku into an independent Web brand, recall that the acquisition announcement stated that 'Activity streams and mobile presence are important areas where we believe Google can add a lot of value for users.' Of course this statement still holds true, and you can bet your Android that there are completely new Wow!'s in store."
At ArcticStartup we believe that we will soon see something that involves Jaiku's microblogging model, Android and the Open Stack nicely mixed into a working solution for those handset manufacturers that decide to take upon Google's open offer.
Finnish Jaiku Community Fights Back. Hard!
I recently wrote about the Finnish Jaiku community moving to Twitter en mass. This got the community on barricades ready to defend their service teeth and nail against my claim. What is interesting here is the intensity with which the community defended its service against my argument and choice of words. They even came after me on ArcticStartup's journalistic standards. I got the same treatment as TheNextWeb contributing editor Zee M Kane, even if for different reasons. After the points have been made it is up to each and every individual to make their own judgement regarding the issue. The comment tread is here and a Jaiku thread here (In Finnish).
Regardless whether the wording was misleading or not, and I'm ready to pull my weight and stand behind the argument I made, what is true is that even if users are leaving Jaiku the service is not dead by no means given the resistance and passion ArcticStartup just witnessed. The users send a loud and clear message that, the ones that are staying with the service are really sticking up for their tight-knit community despite Twitter's or anyone else's international dominance.
This makes me very proud to be a fellow Finn as it probably does make the Jaiku founders Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen. They have all the reason to be proud with a community like this. I have never witnessed the power of online community this close, even though some examples across the Atlantic like Facebook Beacon come to mind. Now we only have to make Sergei Brin and Larry Page to understand what kind of dynamic community they are letting to fade. The only wish that the Jaiku community has is to know what is about to happen to their service. @jyri, do you hear us?
Image by Tambako the Jaguar (CC: by-nd)
Finland Finally Moving To Twitter
There has been a dynamic and active Jaiku community in Finland even after the service got acquired by Google in October 2007. Google acquisition has many times meant a kiss of death to many startups. The Jaiku community strongly believed Jaiku would be an exception. At least until now it did.
Among the Finnish Jaiku community there was talk about migrating to Twitter, a US based micro-blogging site, already a while back when Jaiku was down but yesterday (Link in Finnish) I saw people abandoning the ship in bigger numbers than ever before.
Why I believe this might really be the kiss of death to the Finnish born Jaiku is because I just recently shifted my own usage to become Twitter heavy without knowing about the mass exodus here in Helsinki. This is not due to one service being superior to the other, but due to something as simple as the network effect I got to witness at LeWeb in Paris. So many of my friends outside of Finland are having conversations that are relevant to me in Twitter that I can not afford to not be there.
Before I was adamant that Jaiku is a better service, but now I have come to believe that it's just different. Where as in Jaiku the users can have long discussions threads (think Gmail), which makes the short postings just starting points of the long winding conversations, in Twitter you can't but Tweet 140 characters at a time, making the latter service truly more limited. But the beaty of Twitter, I believe, is exactly the limitation and the fact that since it's limited it scales as a consumable vast stream of information, which you can mold according to your own preferences. In this I mean you can build your own personal filter for the vast amount of information that is generated daily in the web, thus effectively eliminating the spam and following not just what people are explicitly saying but also feeds from news services, blogs, so on and so forth. Leo Laporte just recently touched on the same topic in This Week in Tech. Laporte was also one of the first Silicon Valley luminaries who declared Jaiku as a better service than Twitter.
The mass exodus in Finland has been mainly attributed to the downsides and difficulties that Jaiku is currently having, for example feeds not coming through and a disabled SMS service, but I believe that the bigger reason why Jaiku would eventually lose the race even here in Finland is the potential upside in communicating with the whole world instead of just with other Finns and the odd faithfull foreigner still using the service. That said, Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen built an amazing service and I still hope I see a mass exodus from Twitter back to Jaiku even though I don't believe that happens.
How To Break From The Arctic Region
I've lately had many discussion on how the break from the Nordics & Baltics and make one's service or product really global. Just recently I had this discussion here at Nordkapp where I work, so it does not only concern software products but equally all the service provides with international ambitions.
For a technology startup this question focuses many times on the issue of whether they should pack their bags and move to the Silicon Valley or whether they should build a strong user base first at home. Another viable option might be to reach out to London, but then again, many think that will only slows you down in your quest to global market share and you should head straight to the eye of the storm where the battle for the critical masses are fought.
This is more of a ongoing conversation than something that can be answered with a clear Yes or No, but here are some thoughts to start with:
- If you know which market you want to get to think about getting a board member, an advisory board member or an investor from the market. Instead of trying to bombard firms operating in the given market with a requests for shallow partnerships or just opening an office there, by aligning someone's interest with yours ie. giving them a stake in your success you can instantly tab into their network of contacts. These people already know who are the people you don't want to work with, because even though someone might have a nice resume they also might have a bad reputation among the local players, which would make your market entry a disaster. And vice versa: They know exactly who are the perfect partners for you and you don't end up taking the one you happen to know from a Trade Show two years ago. To get these people on board you need to focus, do your research on who is the right fit with you, work hard, dedicate time to it and make the offer really worth their time.
- For any consumer technology startup, don't just visit US and get a sales guy in there. Move there permanently for a few years if that's the market you aim for. And if you're building the next consumer web service, that is most likely the market you should aim for to get the traction over competitors. That said, you should still cultivate your network back at home so you can also benefit from that and link other firms from back home to your new contacts. This goes for the time of high growth when you're just building your product, but especially for the time after you have made your millions. You can have a huge advantage by having a network in both ends whether you start another startup or decide turn into an investor.
- When choosing an investor, you want to be careful for not choosing some small local fund, because they might actually limit your company to reach its full potential since they'll hold you back in fearing that they might get squeezed out in the later investing rounds. Also, since cycle times for an exit are growing (what was an exit in 5 years, looks more like an exit in 8 years now) you need a big enough fund that can follow up without running out of money.
- Same goes for advisory board members: Some people active in the Finnish startup scene have voiced their concern about the quality of people present in many of the more informal investor get-togethers. You don't want some former technology company middle manager from the early 90's influencing your vision, because they advice you to take the path they are familiar with which more often than not is something different from going global from day one.
- Even though Silicon Valley is the epicenter of much of the activity in the consumer technology startup world don't only look at the US. Do see how fertile ground India, China or Asia might be for your product. When they all start to look good, remember to choose your battles. As a startup you have very limited resources and if you'd like to push through you need to focus your efforts.
What else should a startup consider when trying to go international?
Here's Jaiku founders' advice on how to choose between London and the Silicon Valley when building a successful startup (original post here)
Photo by oskay (CC:BY).
First Impression Of Nokia Friend View
I'm playing with the Nokia's new service Nokia Friend View as I type this. I downloaded the software on my phone this morning and been using it through out the day.
In short the service wants to be a location aware microbloggin service.
I'm not blown away, nor have I completely lost hope with Nokia. They are trying fairly hard. The service is very Nokia-like in that it's not very user friendly compared to some others that have emerged from the west coast of US. The UI is rather ugly and after you start using it feels that someone has designed it on paper, but never really used it herself as it's not logical all the way through. Similarly the service is still very buggy, not loading the map on the web browser, eating one's battery in no time ...the list goes on and has still some really retarded features like the fact that the nick name is case sensitive. I registered as villevesterinen and now wondering whether there will be another VilleVesterinen. Does not really help you finding your friends from the service if there's two of each name.
I won't go into the nitty gritty, data portability etc. yet as Nokia is still in developing the service and I haven't used it long enough to get down and dirty with the features. Similarly, I won't go into how it could be integrated with Nokia Chat and the Ovi.com service in general for the simple reason that I don't use Ovi.com, since it only replicates other services I use like Flickr and MobileMe. Who knows, maybe Friend View lures me to use all of Nokia's services, but I'm not there yet. Nor is Nokia for that matter.
It's not all downhill though and this, after all, is still an early Beta. I don't know how my Nokia Friend View usage will evolve and where it becomes the most useful. I'd imagine I'd like to use it when I'm traveling and planning to meet people in a city at a given time. It would be very nice to see where their train is coming or see their plane above the Atlantic, but there's still a bit go before that. That said, it would be nice to see when my girlfriend is coming from work and see when she's just behind the corner or if she hasn't left from the office yet. But as many (In Finnish) communicated, they'd like to be able to control the level of privacy between the different contacts. The more of these services advance, the more privacy they invade. Nevertheless, I can find uses for the service already.
The sad part of this new service is that Nokia once had 'the next big thing' right in front of it: Jaiku was build right on Nokia's front porch and is doing much of what Nokia Friend View tries to do without the location bit. Add location to Jaiku and Voilà! One of Jaiku's co-founders and the father of the idea, Jyri Engeström, even worked at Nokia at one time, but of course it was too risky for the mobile phone giant at the time: It could not possibly put its weight behind a venture that is not already ubiquitous like microbloggin services now. That would be risky, which does not go very well with the Finnish management ideology. To make the irony complete Jaiku conversation threads are currently the best places to find out about how the Friend View works (or does not work in many cases), and Jaiku is still better service than Nokia Friend View, Twitter, Plazes and FriendFeed combined.
Now that Nokia has found the new focus for its strategy from the online services arena to go along with the hardware business, it should also embrace the new ways of working. Jaiku went to Google and nothing wrong with that, but if Nokia wants to be an innovative player in the online services field it needs to embrace different kinds of risks compared to ones it has before. This does not deal with mobile phone design, but rather with new behavior in communication as the web evolves. This risk involves betting on smart people, but not in a way Nokia has done before. I'm not talking about hard core MBA heavy hitters that can manage the hell out of any firm, but rather people who are the real pirates of the Internet. I'm talking about entrepreneurs.
Nokia needs to look at how Google has approached this issue by acquiring early stage startups and getting a boat load of smart people along with it. Nokia should start seeing the value in these energetic and smart people who want to change the way we communicate and won't stop until they do.
Similarly, Stefan Constantinescu, who's telling about the service in the YouTube clip made by Nokia, is also one of the best evangelist Nokia could hope for as the guy is super active and vocal in for example Jaiku. Let's hope that Nokia has learned its lesson and sees the value in what Stefan is doing and tunes into the Jaiku channels for community feedback.
The European Landscape For Startups
Occasionally we intentionally divert from our primary focus on reviewing and reporting on internet and mobile software startups and growth entrepreneurship in and from the Nordic and Baltic countries to examine the European, the Baltic and the Nordic landscape for the entrepreneurs. Here's another take on the issue.
Dirk Van Quaquebeke, the founder of Tailor Nation (Facebook app here), talked to me about his experiences on running a startup while working at the same time in Deutsche Bank, where to set up your startup and whether London is the startup hub you should go to as an entrepreneur.
When I asked what would he do if given the chance to do a startup anywhere, Dirk said 1) do an MBA in IIM in India (given one is a business guy). 2) While at it build a team around you since you get access to the great talent pool while in India. 3) Given there's three founders, one stays offshore production center at India 4) pay people well & even incentivize some through equity 5) build a sales force through the founders located onshore like London (given its a product that needs a sales force).
Dirk emphasized that London is mainly a PR center where its rather expensive to live (something I can assure!), thus living in somewhere else like Copenhagen or Berlin might be equally good or even better option. He also pointed out that you can do development across the time zones, but if you can avoid it do so because you will be much more efficient.
I will disagree with Dirk especially on the MBA bit -if you do an MBA you will most likely rationalize yourself out of all the big ideas and dreams you had, and even if you can stick to your dreams the socialization effect among the MBA students will lure you to the nice (yet bored out of your mind) life at McKinsey. Naturally, there are exceptions for example if you have already started a couple of startups and you like to know a bit more about say finance. In the latter case, an MBA might be a good option to meet other like minded people in a place like Stanford and maybe even learn a bit. But as a rule of thump, avoid MBA schools!
What comes to the location, I believe one should build strong ties to the Silicon Valley (something Jyri Engeström, the Jaiku co-fouder, also reiterated) as it can significantly cut the time to market which might make a big difference from the time the window opens to the point where a competitor has already a critical mass and beyond your reach. That said, I still believe one should stick to the community s/he knows be it Copenhagen, London or Helsinki, since culture and support mechanisms like your family and friends make a big difference and if that is not a big enough reason you might loose not only time but also your money while trying to relocate and adjust.
A Chat With The Jaiku Founders At Seedcamp
I met the Jaiku founders (now at Google), Petteri Koponen and Jyri Engeström, yesterday at the Seedcamp evening party and asked them how they see the startup scene in Europe versus US and of course what they are up to nowadays.
Jaiku still to move to Google App Engine
We've been speculating about Jaiku moving the Google App Engine and on Wednesday when Jaiku came back up after a period of down time many believed the move had happened. Yet, Jyri clarified that this is not the case yet and the actual move is still ahead.
During the weekend and early this week when Jaiku was down, it was only moved as far as to the Google data center. Nevertheless, as it came back up it was already lighting fast compared to what it had been before and equally important the invitations opened up and are now unlimited.
And there's more in the cards. For example, the new Jaiku API will support OAuth, which in itself is already fantastic. If the service can also handle an ever increasing user traffic without slowing down significantly or crashing it will be interesting to see whether it can still make itself a serious competitor for Twitter. We certainly hope so.
Edit: If you'd like to have an invite, ask for one in the comments (and do leave your real e-mail in the field provided) - we're more than happy to spread the good around.
Apply to Seedcamp and get a guaranteed interview
Seedcamp, an intensive week long event held in September in London targeted at young entrepreneurs from across EMEA, is one of the biggest opportunities to entrepreneurs on this side of Atlantic and it's open for applications (here). Seedcamp's whole raison d'etre is to provide seed funding and world-class connections for startups in exchange of a relatively small equity stake.
I recommend applying well before the August 10th deadline, as this might be one of the best decision you do as a entrepreneur that can set the pace for the years to come. To make a great opportunity absolutely unbeatable, we at ArcticStartup want to sweeten the deal for all the Nordic & Baltic startups: This is a huge break for any start-up, and thus I will single handedly interview your start-up, any Nordic or Baltic start-up really, that applies to Seedcamp. In fact you have two options. Here goes.
When you apply to Seedcamp before the August 10th deadline you will get a guaranteed 2 minute video interview by me or optionally you can submit a 60 second video pitch of your start-up/product/service, which ever you prefer. Naturally these will be posted on ArcticStartup. In addition, when you apply to Seedcamp you will automatically enter a draw in which we at ArcticStartup will randomly choose two start-ups that can have their logo (125x125px) on ArcticStartup front page for the whole month of September October. Additionally any start-up that will be chosen to take part in the actual Seedcamp week gets also their logo (125x125px) on the front page for the whole month of September October.
So regardless of whether you get to go to London, you'll have a guaranteed way of getting a lot of visibility for your start-up just by applying (We are very flexible on what can be considered a start-up, but will use common sense to cut out any funny business and bad jokes if you try to intentionally game our generous offer). So, now only thing you need to do is apply(!) and write the following to the comments section after this blog post: '[your start-up's name here] has applied to Seedcamp and thus rocks!' or if you prefer you can email me at ville [at] arcticstartup [dot] com. Start applying and I will contact you after I get the confirmation that your application has reached the organizers.
Seedcamp Week 2007 from Seedcamp on Vimeo.
To recap, the Seedcamp format in brief is this: You apply to be able to enter a Seedcamp week, where you learn the ropes and get to know all the people that matter in the European entrepreneur scene. The week will take place in September 15-18 2008 in Central London at UCL. Seedcamp will be holding an open application available online. Based on this, up to 20 companies will be selected to participate in the event. Seecamp can provide you with seed capital and a world class network of mentors that among others include Jyri Engeström (Jaiku / Google), Niklas Zennström (Skype / Joost) and Brent Hoberman (Lastminute.com) to only name a few. Read all about the format here.
What's happening to Jaiku today?
Something's definitely happening in the UK and Mountain View today - according to Petteri's Jaiku post. Petteri is the co-founder of Jaiku working in the UK, while Jyri Engestrom is working in Mountain view with his wife and son.
Yesterday we got our 20 invites and Petteri even replied to his Jaiku announcing those invites as "OK, sounds good. Expect some news shortly :)" - we're on the lookout!
