Fruugo’s Presentation From SIME

November 20th 2008
Miikka Kukkosuo

Taneli Tikka posted a video of Fruugo “launch” last week in SIME (there wasn’t any product launch as such, most things mentioned where the same as we reported before the event).

The video shows Fruugo’s VP marketing Janne Waltonen giving a presentation and then answering a few interview questions.

Fruugo talk in SIME by Taneli for http://tane.li from Taneli Tikka on Vimeo.

Fruugo will be present today at digital marketing seminar DiVia in Helsinki, and might tell a bit more, although they’ll still not show their actual product.

The Finnish business newspaper Kauppalehti released an article last Friday, stating that Fruugo has “forgotten” (as commented by Fruugo) to leave their financial statement to Trade Register at the end of August as required, but has just posted them a statement of losing the company’s share capital. That doesn’t necessarily mean the company wouldn’t have cash or other liquid assets to run their operations, though, but looks like they’re most likely looking for more money. Also, the previous CEO Reijo Syrjäläinen has left and Fruugo is now run by the company’s operational director Juha Usva.

New entrants top Deloitte’s Finnish Technology Fast 50 2007

October 29th 2007
Miikka Kukkosuo

DeloitteOpen Source service company Nomovok is the number one in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 list of 2007. The list ranks firms based on the revenue growth over the past five years (having at least 5 years of operations is thus one of the prerequisites). The revenue growth of Novomok over the past 5 years has been impressively over 2300 %. Only a bit behind comes Bluetooth technology provider Bluegiga Technologies. Third is Openbit, provider of mobile DRM solutions, with 1636 percent growth.

Last year’s first Sulake and third Digium have slightly dropped, although still in top 10. The 2006 number two Cidercone was just recently acquired by OMX-listed Ixonos.

Deloitte’s Tuomo Salmi, partner, Services, describes that according to the accompanying qualitative study the most critical factors affecting success have been concentrating on the core business, committing the personnel, and leadership-related factors, as seen by the management of the companies. Having and being able to keep skillful and entrepreneur-minded people was deemed even more important than customer accounts.

Deloitte Technology Fast 50 competition in Finland is arranged in cooperation with Kauppalehti, The Finnish Venture Capital Association, The Finnish Software Entrepreneurs Association, and Tekes. Top companies will automatically participate in EMEA Fast 500 competition. Last year Sulake positioned 12th in the EMEA Fast list with 8095 % growth, while Cidercone was 65th with growth of 2086 %.

This might implicate that this year’s top Finnish growth companies may not position anywhere in top 50 in EMEA. More arrogant and audacious growth entrepreneurs needed?