Even though Scred is surely familiar for most of our readers I had a chat with Kristoffer Lawson of Scred since I promised earlier on that I’d interview all the Nordic & Baltic startups that’ll apply to Seedcamp.

I ask Kristoffer for a quick pitch and then talk more generally about the experience in Seedcamp just before the final pitches to the room full of investors on Thursday morning. Good luck guys!

Editorial note: We’re publishing Kristoffer’s report from Seedcamp as they made it to the semi-finals for screening. Depending on the feedback we’ll see if we should make this a habit in the future as well. Please let us know in the comments. Thanks to Kristoffer for an excellent report!

On the left two founders from Uniki, Teemu and Tuomas from Scred and Adil and Anthony from Entrip.

Last week we got fantastic news. Scred had been shortlisted as one of only about 40 companies to be interviewed by Seedcamp’s distinguished panel — a group of prestigious international VCs. Considering that several hundred companies, from all around Europe (and even some from outside) had applied, this was huge for us. In fact Scred is the first Finnish company to make it that far, and was one of only two Nordic companies present.

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Scred, a Finnish community-oriented cost balancing tool, which initially focused on balancing debts and shared expenses among a group of friends announced that they are looking into new possibilities to leverage their back-end infrastructure.

Scred has partnered with Alternative Party which will be held in Helsinki in the coming October. Scred built an inexpensive bespoke ticketing service for the party with which you can reserve, buy and print the tickets straight from the web. Tickets are also machine verifiable which is more than many other service providers offer.

Kristoffer Lawson from Scred told us that the new service is currently not available for 3rd parties, but that they they will see how the first deployment will go and add some features before deciding whether it’s the right path to take. According to Kristoffer tickets can be currently bought via PayPal and ‘couple of banking services’, but the credit card option is on its way.

The party in itself is the second largest ‘demoscene-party’ in Finland after Assembly. Alternative Party aims to mix demos, music and art. Unlike Assembly, Alternative Party’s focus is more on artistic shows and activities and there is practically no gaming.

There is starting to be a lot of activity in the e-commerce infrastructure space coming from Finland. Scred seems to be gradually heading that direction and Fruugo is looking into becoming the “trusted 3rd party of ecommerce”. Based on Fruugo’s still mysterious website we will find out what they will actually offer in more detail later in 2008 when they’re planning to launch. This is something that might also be of interest to Scred since after knowing what Fruugo is aiming for Scred can better adjust their product offering to the market.

Kristoffer Lawson from Scred has told us that they are organising a Night of Code this Friday (25th) down at the Cable Factory. They are inviting all coders and designers to come down and share ideas what they are working on at the moment.

The event will start at 3pm and end around midnight. There will be no marketing pitches, no advertising or anything such - pure coding and sharing of ideas. If you’re interested, sign up to the event in Facebook or Upcoming. More info on Scred’s blog.

Scred, or Street Credit, is a consumer service created by a Finnish company Fishpool Creations where a group of friends can share costs for commonly purchased objects on a trip for example. Kristoffer Lawson, the CEO of Scred says that they have been using various
versions of Scred internally for years. The service is now open for public after a brief public beta which started in 2007.

After you register with the service, you are able to create your own pools - or groups for your you and your friends. You can use them for certain trips for example. Add all the receipts of that trip to the service and it will calculate how much each one owes each other after you’ve come home. The service even supports multiple currencies which helps groups of friends travelling in different countries. Quite a simple idea, but still capable to wreck relationships - just as Kristoffer states in their press release.

I find the idea very interesting and worthwhile. However, the UI still needs some tweaking for the masses. It still reminds me of the late 90s and open source software UIs that are still present to this day. Despite the shortcomings in the graphical side of the service, the idea is simple enough to catch on. They also have a JAVA-application for mobile phones where you can record your receipts on a day-to-day basis even when you’re offline.

A great idea that surely has unrealised demand. Good luck to Kristoffer and the guys at Fishpool!