Attend Arctic15 & Frozen Rails - Save 20%
We've partnered with another very cool conference held just before Arctic15, Frozen Rails, to offer a 20% discount on tickets for those who wish to attend both conferences. As you know, we're building Arctic15 to be the biggest startup launch conference in the Nordics this year. Frozen Rails on the other hand goes well with developers and others interested in Rails development.
New Improved ArcticStartup
If you're reading this through our e-mail newsletter or an RSS reader, you should come visit our site as we've done a small facelift with some additional features to the site. I've outlined some of the key improvements to the site in this post, to help our community take advantage of those. First and foremost though, I'd like to publicly thank our Karri Saarinen for putting in all the extra work to get this done. He's worked with Kisko Labs to get the site out and functional. Many thanks for the effort!
Toggl Is A Testbed for Sprint48, A Garage48 Kind Of Service Development Method
Toggl is an Estonian online service that enables freelancers to jot down their hours for client projects. The service has more than 15 million hours logged so far. A premium version of the service was launched in 2008 and in 2010 the service reached break even. With about 9500 daily users and about 1600 of them paying, Toggl is onto a steady, but strong growth path. Toggls is also a testbed for a Garage48 type of service development initiative by Mooncascade called Sprint48. Mooncascade is an Estonian software development company, where as Sprint48 is a new kind of web development process where Mooncascade will try to create concrete results in mere 48 hours.
Meet Our Little Social Analytics App - Funneld
This internet app story is going to be a little different. We're going to be covering our own little analytics app called Funneld that we've been working on behind the curtains this autumn. The origins of this app go back to problem we've had with understanding visitors coming to ArcticStartup. A lot of our readers come to the site from Twitter and Facebook for example, but the currently available tools fail to show us which stories are the ones that attract visitors. So, we went about and created a little app for that. In doing so, we realised that others might have the same problem and we decided to set it up as an app of its own and develop it like any other startup out there works on a product or a service of theirs.
New Job Openings
We have been slowly developing ArcticIndex with KiskoLabs to make it even more useful for the Nordic and Baltic entrepreneurship community, which seems to grow bigger and stronger by the day.
ArcticIndex is the primary information resource of Nordic and Baltic startups and the entrepreneurs behind them. It's effectively your one stop shop for getting the latest information on the companies and people region, whatever your need.
The platform has developed nicely and the latest addition to the service, a job board, is starting to get traction and we're seeing more and more activity in there.
Go and check out some very exciting opportunities that have been posted on the Job Board or post your own (here).
Twitbear Defies Twitter With Commenting
Three Finnish Jaiku fans have created a service called Twitbear that describes itself as "enabling conversations around tweets". Antti Akonniemi, CEO of Kisko Labs, Kai Lemmetty, co-founder of Floobs and Helene Auramo, CEO of Zipipop came up with the service after Jaiku had started crashing fairly often after Google announced it would pull the plug from it las January.
The service itself is based around threaded communication and is currently in closed beta. At the moment, it pulls tweets from Twitter and adds the comments to the service itself - enabling the threaded communication that many other services have tried to pull off, inluding Tweetree. In essence it is a microblogging platform that pulls part of its data from Twitter. According to the creators of Twitbear - services like Friendfeed are too manyfold and difficult to use, something that many former Jaiku fans can agree with, I'm sure.
Only a handful of users have received invitations to the service and each registered user is given 5 invitations to share. It's nice to still see innovation around threaded conversations, something that remains to be tackled with a proper service. Jaiku had a good try at it, but with Google buying the service - development came to a halt. I've personally noticed many Finns beginning to use Brightkite, a service similar to Jaiku. It remains to be seen which will be the service that will take off outside Twitterdom - or do we need one?
New Features At ArcticIndex
ArcticIndex, our database and a network of Nordic and Baltic startups, service providers and investors, has been growing steadily with new members. We have also added some new features together with Kisko Labs that have been asked for every now and then. Here's a little run down on what we've released and some plans where we intend to go with the service.
Some new additions to the service include:
- Availability to set a location for your company - this means you can choose a Nordic or a Baltic country from the drop down list to mark the home turf your company. This will come in handy in the future as we bring in more localised services to ArcticIndex.
- Possibility to filter out companies and people based on their nationality - this feature has been asked for quite a bit and we agree, it is only the beginning in adding better ways to drill down to the database with keywords of filters of your choice. However, now when you go to either the companies page or people page, you are able to filter the nationalities with the tool on the left hand side.
- Company specific URLs - this will help those smaller companies get more visibility through Google and other search engines. Unfortunately we can't write about every startup there is, but that is no barrier for good online visibility. Just enter your company name as it should be in the field provided and the service will render the company page URL so that it matches your company name. A small step towards better SEO.
- Company specific ArcticStartup blog posts - we matched the companies in the database together with the blog posts in ArcticStartup through tags. This means that, for example on Spotify's page you will now be able to see the latest ArcticStartup blog posts regarding Spotify. This will make the content more relevant for everyone and useful.
We have a roadmap of new features that are going to be implemented in the near future, but what are the things you'd like to see in the service - where would you like us to take it? We're going to be releasing embeddable boxes (like the one you see about Spotify and Kisko Labs below this post) to everyone in a bit, so other startup bloggers can also share the love. We've also been playing with the idea of bringing in tools for startups to take better control over their own page and start using it as a marketing platform, or a recruiting service. But now's your chance - give us your input, where would you like us to take the service and what are the features you'd like to see implemented?
ArcticIndex Growing Strong. Register Now!
We released ArcticIndex just two weeks ago and we have already nearly 80 registered startups and nearly 60 registered entrepreneurs in the index.
It's easy and free to register, just as it's easy and free to use the service.
We wanted to build the service because we strongly felt that the Nordic and Baltic startups deserve more visibility. I quote myself here:
We at ArcticStartup aim to encourage entrepreneurship and to help create a radically optimistic entrepreneurial culture here in the Nordics and Baltics, and thus have long wanted to bring more visibility to the market and most importantly give visibility to the many kick-ass startups we have here.Now, we’re excited to announce that we’re are one step closer to our common goal by introducing ArcticIndex. It’s an early beta and we’re are adding features and improving it as we go so please be patient. There’s a road map full of features coming, but we wanted the community to be able to use it as soon as possible.
We are happy to say that we have received nothing but support and 'thank yous' from the startups and entrepreneurs all over the arctic region. Still, we hope to build the service a far and wide to give full benefit for the startups and entrepreneurs in the region and to give a stronger standing for the whole arctic startup scene in the global arena.
If you're a startup or an entrepreneur and you're not in the ArcticIndex yet, make sure your customers, media and peers can find by registering (here!) and getting a great start to 2009. Thanks!
Image by Paul Keller (CC:)
Where Are All The Business Innovations?
I had an excellent lunch today with Antti Akonniemi, the CEO and founder of Kisko Labs and Ville Vesterinen. Among other things, we discussed business models and how stuck up companies are in their methods of innovation. I mean think about it, at least we've come across a ton of different companies with a ton of consumer internet applications for all sorts of needs. But when we discuss what their business model is - it is usually limited to advertising, freemium, subscription, premium or some sort of mix of these.
However, I had a talk with an anonymous for now, but very successful entrepreneur earlier on this week and we discussed his new business idea about a service concept where the innovation was in the business model for the consumer. The service concept usually would cost around 1500e and nobody in their right mind would pay such money - looking at the current market and the way things are done. However, when you package it with a financial company and a monthly payment plan of 49e the whole scheme is beginning to look a lot more appealing, extremely appealing actually. The beauty of the idea is that my friend's company does not have to take any of the financial risk as it's "sold" to the financial organisation partnering in the business plan. I'm sorry I can't disclose more here, but what I wanted to tell with this example is that with a simple business innovation you can create a lot more value for the consumer and thus create a lot better chance for the concept to fly.
Nevertheless, back to Kisko Labs - they've come up with an interesting concept for enabling new innovation in the Nordics. What Kisko Labs is trying is that they're taking a pro active approach to web development for start-ups. They're willing to do an equity swap in return for web development for start-ups with a great business idea. Kisko Labs has of course a healthy consulting and development business to support this cash flow-less venture. I believe this could prove a killer approach for startups with great ideas in a time when venture money is tight.
If you look at this from a larger scale - the last great business innovation (that flew big time in the consumer market) I saw, was the iTunes 0,99 USD/EUR for a track. You take the existing business and package it differently, economically. But seriously speaking - where are all the business innovations? Shouldn't times like these be good drivers for new packaging of existing and already proven business cases?
Disclosure: We have some small scale innovation going on with Kisko Labs, which we will disclose just before Le Web.
Image by Vermin Inc. (CC: by-nc-sa)
MindTrek 2008 coming up fast
MindTrek Conference 2008 is just around the corner, so if you're a startup make sure to apply to the Startup Launchpad competition if you haven't already. It's worth it.
Registration is open until September 19th. You can register here for the Startup Launchpad and here for the Conference itself. I'll be hosting the competition itself and the jury include Marc Davis from Yahoo! and Sharon C. Ballard to name only a few.
We’re organizing a free bus ride with Culminatum, Sombiz and Floobs to the to the conference leaving from Helsinki on the 8th and coming back on the evening of 9th.
The idea is to rent a bus and take off to Tampere together from Helsinki with a bus full of start-ups. Spend the Oct. 8th and 9th at the Conference and give the start-ups a possibility to pitch at Startup Launchpad competition.
Antti Akonniemi from Kisko Labs is also running an Ignite while we are driving up there. Antti wrote a short intro on what's on offer for the ride up:
If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? And what if your stage was an actual bus full of startup entrepreneurs? Fun of karaoke and excitement of Powerpoint combined. Sounds too much like the movie Speed? Introducing Ignite:Mobile. Join ArcticStartup's bus trip to MindTrek and experience the first ever Ignite:Mobile.
Even if you decide to not apply or will not make the cut, you're more than welcome to join us for the bus ride up and for the conference itself. Although for the conference you will need a ticket.
These Are My Brands opens Seedcamp application round
Antti Akonniemi, founder & CEO of Kisko Labs, has begun the Seedcamp application round we wrote about earlier (remember that we'll be giving each company/idea visibility in ArcticStartup so do let us know if you are applying).
Antti is apparently applying to Seedcamp with his new service called These Are My Brands. There is very little available on the website at this moment, which goes well with the rules of Seedcamp. Seedcamp rules suggest that your service should not have launched yet - however, you ought to have a prototype ready.
Good luck to Antti! We'll be providing an interview with him later on.
