Private Cloud Software Startup Eucalyptus Raises $30 M
Eucalyptus, led by the former Finnish CEO of MySQL Mårtin Mickos, has raised $30 million (€23 million) in series C funding. The round was led by Institutional Venture Partners, Benchmark Capital, BV Capital, and New Enterprise Associates, bringing the company's total funding to $55.5 million (€42.4 million).
Flowdock Receives Seed Funding From Crunchfund, Others
Last night we got the chance to talk with CEO Otto Hilska about Flowdock's $650,000 seed funding round. The team of 8, currently working out of Helsinki, develops a web and desktop application that allows teams to easily track issues and collaborate in real time.
Flowdock first began talks with investors at the beginning of September, and Hilska describes the funding round as more of a happy surprise than a standard Angellist deal. Hilska was working out of Silicon Valley doing customer demonstrations, when another startup spotted their product and mentioned it to one of their investors. Flowdock wasn't seriously looking for funding at the time, but was happy to accept a deal put together by Gil Penchina, CrunchFund, Marten Mickos, and IDG Ventures.
Business Insider: The Top 100 Digital Startups
Business Insider has gathered a list of 100 companies from all around the world (these lists are always skewed a little and it's almost impossible to make them globally valid). The list is naturally ranked with lots of US based startups, but quite a few Nordic ones are on the list as well. Company valuation is used to organise the companies.
When A Blog Post Won't Do Justice
Even though this blog post will most likely be a feeble attempt in covering the importance and the effect of Steve Blank's visit to Finland and the region last week - I'll still have an attempt at it. Last week was packed full of action and discussion where Steve Blank talked not only with entrepreneurs but politicians, MPs and academia. He also upped entrepreneurship a few notches on the editorial importance for some of Finland's newspapers as he talked to a group of editors-in-chief (including us) why entrepreneurship is of vital importance to nations' success.
Steve Blank was visiting Finland last week to promote the importance of a working entrepreneurial ecosystem to the region. I have a feeling his visit will go down in one of those turning points in history for this part of the world. Not only did he incite more flames into the "Finnish spring" as he referred to the entrepreneurial revolution taking place in Finland, but he did so in a manner that politicians, mainstream media and academics can understand.
Wrapping Up Slush2010
On more than 3000 m2 with more than 300 people attending, this October for the third year Helsinki hosted Slush , a two-day annual conference focused on entrepreneurship. The highlights included insightful key-note speeches by Allan Martinson and Mårten Mickos, Slush Seven pitching competition for early-stage start-ups with the prize of €7500 cash and Slush School of Angels. The event also included many presentations from local start-ups and some captivating panel discussions. The space was thoughtfully organized with plenty of booths and chairs, though some participants missed the smaller and more intimate lay-out of venues used in previous years.
Codento Partners With Mårten Mickos' Eucalyptus Systems
Since leaving MySQL, Mårten Mickos has been busy running another startup called Eucalyptus Systems. Eucalyptus Systems offers "private cloud computing", meaning develop open source cloud technology that can run on clients' own servers. According to Tietoviikko (in Finnish), Mickos' first tasks has been to put together the partner program at Eucalyptus Systems. Codento is a Finnish software company, that has recently been putting a lot of effort into the cloud computing phenomenon as well as startups. Codento will be Eucalyptus Systems' partner in the Nordics.
Erply Raises $2 Million In Funding
Erply, an Estonian startup specialising in providing a wide range of core business services to companies, has received a whopping $2 million in funding from Redpoint, Index Ventures, Marten Mickos, Zack Urlocker, Kenny van Zant, Aydin Senkut, David McClure and the Accelerator Group. The one year old company (founded 2009) has more than 2000 business customers and 8000 users. It is currently profitable with approximately 20% growth each month, according to TechCrunch.
Are The European VC Fund Sizes Going Down For Good? Perhaps, But Who Cares
Just recently Mårten Mickos, former CEO of MySQL, joined Index Ventures as an entrepreneur-in-residence. He also serves in a similar position with Benchmark Capital in US. We of course welcome this as a positive news for the European entrepreneurship. But just a little earlier in January Fred Destin and the whole Atlas Ventures packed up and moved to Boston, leaving just enough staff to support to current European investments.
What is going on in Europe? Are we going to see the existing VC model literally disappear? Just last week I came back from DLD conference in Munich, Germany where I talked numerous people influential in the industry from Israel, London, New York and Zurich about the situation on the ground and most concurred that what we used to know as A-round-sized-VC-firms are becoming fewer and fewer. The smart ones are either going towards smaller deals and much more hands-on model or gravitating towards private equity sized funds (not least because of the hefty management fees) ...well, or moving to Boston.
Week In Review: It Shall Be Released!
This week was all about the releases, new products, versions, and, er, some employees. Swedes-in-Berlin based startup SoundCloud launched their App Gallery, and we pronounced it good. Unfortunately, Sulake's release was in the form of 28 of their employees. Hopefully, when their Facebook application starts to take off, they can hire everyone back.
There were releases coming from the financial and government worlds this week too. The Icelandic, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish Ministries' collaboration known as the Nordic Game Program awarded a total of 3,000,000DKK (400,000€, 4,200,000SEK, 3,300,000NOK, 73,000,000ISK) funding to 8 winners to develop innovative games. The Finnish Software Entrepreneurs Association released a manifesto demanding a tax exemption for startups that fund their operations from their own profits and are owned by the entrepreneurs themselves. Lastly, one of the very few investment banks left on the Earth, released a huge report on the future of the mobile internet, and we "filleted" it for you as best we could.
Finally, in a MUST SEE video for all European entrepreneurs, Mårten Mickos releases his hard won wisdom on challenges that are in the way of building world’s biggest anything
The Bad And The Ugly: Entrepreneurship In Europe and In Northern Europe
This is one of those issues that is always topical and never gets a clear answer. Why do we comparatively suck so bad at building companies in Europe and especially here in the arctic latitudes vis-a-vis our cousins in the US. In the age of the Internet and 'born global' it has to be more than the size of the home market. Now, I'm not saying things have to be that way, nor am I saying that things are not changing. They are and we, but to what extent and what is it exactly that we need to change?
Here's a video of a group of prominent European and US entrepreneurs arguing around the topic. The one just below is from this year's LeWeb and the one below that from 2008 (when we took the Sauna Truck to France with a group of Finnish startups). Both videos are insightful, but even more than that they are entertaining. Make sure not to miss these.
The third video is Mårten Mickos' brilliant talk about entrepreneurship in general and entrepreneurship in Finland in particular from last night at Aalto Entrepreneurs Society gathering. The talk is a must see for every single entrepreneur regardless of the continent they are building their startup in, but it also sheds light into the cultural challenges that are in the way of building world's biggest anything.
Chat With Mårten Mickos (Video)
During our trip to the Silicon Valley we aimed to meet people who have experience from the Northern Europe on one hand, and from the Silicon Valley on the other to get the bottom of the differences between the two places. This is the third post of the series. See also the previous posts here and here.
We talked to Mårten Mickos about the his experiences in coming to Silicon Valley, How MySQL made the decision to establish a presence in the US and his advice to young entrepreneurs wondering where they should set up a shop. Mickos became known as the CEO of MySQL before Sun Microsystems acquired the company in 2008 for a whopping $ 1 billion. Now the buyer is being bought if the regulator in Europe allow Oracle to snap her up. Mickos is currently an Entrepreneur at Residence at Benchmark Capital.
