MindTrek Finalists Have Been Chosen
MindTrek Startup Launchpad finalists have been chosen. The following companies made the cut (in alphabetical order):
Floobs
HammerKit
MahShelf
One Did It
RunToShop
Star Wreck Studios
TripSay
Zipipop
There will be eight finalist in total in the pitch competition and each startup will have 6 minute pitch to present to the high profile jury. Read more about the Startup Launchpad here.
Congratulations and good luck to all the finalists!
The free bus ride for startups to the MindTrek and back from Helsinki on 8.-9.10.2008 will depart 8.10. Wednesday morning at 7.15am in fron of Kiasma (the bus has MindTrek sign on it).
The bus will head back to Helsinki on 9.10. Thursday at 4pm departing in front of Hotel Rosendahlin at Tampere. If you want to come along contact Hanne Lehtola at hanne.lehtola [at] culminatum.fi
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.
There should still be plenty of room in the bus, so drop Hanne a mail and come along.
At least five Nordic start-ups applied to Seedcamp
Seedcamp applications are now closed for 2008. We received all together five notifications from start-ups that are applying after we posted our own offer. The start-ups come from Finland and Sweden, namely These Are My Brands (Finland), Scred (Finland), BiznesPort (Finland), BuzzPal (Sweden/US) and Wonderswap.com (Sweden).
Seedcamp received most of the applications on the last minute (for more see here) just as we received the information on start-ups that applied. On the other hand we did not post our offer that much earlier either. Regardless, the main thing is that many companies got their application in. Congrats and good luck for everybody who submitted their application in time.
Even though the applications are now closed do let us know in comments if we missed you, but you still applied in time. The interview offer is valid even though we did not hear about you before the application window closed.
Edit 11.08.2008: That's six start-ups now: MahShelf (Finland) applied also in time. Congrats!
Mahshelf opens up to public
Odin Chen, the CEO of Mahshelf.com, has just informed us that they have moved on to a public beta. Users can now register and start sharing their documents on the service.
We covered Mahshelf in a previous post over here. We'll definitely keep following Mahshelf to see how their service is attracting interest.
MahShelf - Express your Shelf
MahShelf Ltd, founded February 2008 in Espoo Finland is wanting to become the "youtube of books" - a place where you can read and share books online.
The three students, managed by Odin Chen, began working on the concept in the end of 2007. They are pushing out a public beta in April, according to their blog.
MahShelf is in a very interesting area with their service, but they do have heavy competition from Scribd and similar services.
