Muxlim Debate A Great Reminder - Startups Far From Mainstream
Much of the Finnish startup scene has been debating the aftermaths of an article Helsingin Sanomat (largest Finnish daily) published on Sunday about the CEO and founder of Muxlim Inc, Mohamed El-Fatatry. The title of the article, directly translated, is Mohamed's Bubble. We've covered Muxlim in the past as well. In the article, Helsingin Sanomat journalist Esa Mäkinen, paints quite a dim picture of the entrepreneur and how he received hundreds of thousands of euro in government support and then shut down the site.
Muxlim Shuts Down, Promotes Biography
The Helsinki-based social network site aimed at the world's muslim community, Muxlim, has shut down and now points to DisruptionManifesto.com, a teaser page for founder Mohamed El-Fatatry's new biography authored by David Cord. I spoke on the phone with El-Fatatry who gave me this official statement on the shutdown of the social network: "The Muxlim vision will carry on in a new way moving forward, and all the details of the story will be published in the book: Mohamed 2.0 - Disruption Manifesto."
Interview With Mohamed El-Fatatry Of Muxlim (Part 1)
We haven't covered Muxlim at ArcticStartup in the way it deserves to be covered. So, what better way to do it than have a talk with the founder and CEO of the company, Mohamed El-Fatatry. El-Fatatry isn't your usual startup founder in Finland. He's of Egyptian background and went on to start the world's largest muslim-oriented site when still in school. Muxlim grew immensely fast in the early days they didn't really have any competition. One of the drivers of their growth can be attributed to excellent media coverage.
Live From TechCrunch Brunch
Reporting live from TechCrunch Brunch in Helsinki the morning following Slush. The theme for the morning's panel discussions are the implications of regionality and unique features in the Nordic startup scene.
The event was kicked off by Mike Butcher from TechCrunch UK and Ville Vesterinen from ArcticStartup, chatting a bit about Slush, its background and the Nordic startup environment in general.
The panelists (from left to right in the picture below):
Kai Lemmetty, Founder of Floobs
Janne Waltonen, Marketing director Fruugo
Mark Sorsa-Leslie, Managing director of Hammerkit
Jussi Laakkonen, CEO and president Everyplay.com
Leo Koivulehto, Co-founder and chairman, TripSay
Mike set the scene asking how the panelists see the startup scene in the Nordics, whether the environment is going to stay a tough place to do a startup due to relatively high living costs, difficulties with angel and VC funding etc. A few highlights below.
Mark stated he moved from the UK three years ago, and has been impressed with enthusiasm people have, the great engineering skills, and the passion to get things done in a practical manner. Janne continued the people in Nordic countries are quite modest, which is somewhat hindering international expansion
.
Janne mentioned the Nordic market's been traditionally about local startups thinking of local markets (Swedes being maybe somewhat different), which should end. As Janne put it, we really have all it takes if we have the will to take over.
Peter Vesterbacka commented the downturn is a perfect time to start a company as you have less competition and could be able to take over a lot of the potential customers in a swift. Furthermore, it's perfect to start in the Nordics, as "if you can make it in the slush you can make it anywhere". The current global economic environment it's actually not even that much different from the "normal" challenges up here.
Mike commented in London the startup world is focusing nowadays on revenues much earlier in the game. According to Janne startups should start marketing as soon as possible, and not really wait until their product is "ready". Traditionally the startups have relied perhaps too much on virality (beta invites etc.). Janne compared his experience between Fruugo and two Swedish startups he's been in, and noted Fruugo has really concentrated on not showing anything in public before they are sure their technical back-end is top notch, whereas the Swedish ones were really open since the beginning without even much knowledge about the technical side.
Stephen Lee from Muxlim added, as an American who's lived in Finland for 10 years, that the governmental systems supporting startups are built around the concept of startups having to prove themselves in Finland first, before getting further money to go abroad. According to Stephen this model doesn't really work anymore, and the organizations (and startups) should turn their focus on going global from the beginning.
Jussi answered arguing the Finnish game industry has gone global since the very beginning. Nowadays the industry is healthy and buzzing with 50+ companies with over 90% export ratio, so it's been proved already we can make it from here. Jussi continued the process for pitching a game concept to a games publisher is really similar to pitching a company to VCs, so there are people who have been pitching successfully and know their stuff.
The second panel focused around the topics of finding funding and how to cope in the downturn market.
The panelists (from left to right):
Helene Auramo, CEO and partner of Zipipop
Heikki Mäkijärvi, Venture parter of Accel Partners
Mohamed El-Fatatry, Founder and CEO of Muxlim
Joakim Achrén, founder of IronStar Helsinki
Kristoffer Lawson from Scred
The panel kicked off going through the current status of the startups - Scred and Zipipop are bootstrapping and looking for funding. Mohamed told Muxlim got very well seed money from Finnish angels, which are quite active and willing to help, but for big rounds the money is difficult to get and momentum can be lost. Muxlim run through 500 international VCs in 6 months, and finally landed with one from Sweden.
Regarding the economy, Heikki from Accel Partners encouraged startups to look critically their business in the current economic situation - if the customers are not buying, it may be worthwhile to stop and rethink the business plan, rather than waiting for a sale or better times. They've had very good experiences of startups finding a great business model by refocusing this way.
Heikki also commented they are being more careful about the investments currently. He argued in the early stage companies the team is the most important thing, so that the investors can trust the team knowing what they're doing. Heikki also went on explaining one notable difference with Finnish startups compared to Silicon Valley is in the executive team. The ideas are typically good, but the executive teams are much more juvenile than in the Valley, whereas the board is typically very experienced. So Heikki would rather see people like the board members doing the execution, mentioning he'd like to see people learning business in big global firms, and then establishing startups in their 40s. He explained while you can build a good startup regardless of your age, in the end it will take great skill in execution to take a startup from 5 Million to 10M, and futher to 50M in revenues.
One Week To SIME Helsinki
Just over one week to go to SIME Helsinki event held in Teatteri. The reason we are mentioning this is of course the fact that you will receive a discount of 20% with the code arcticstartup when registering for your ticket. SIME Helsinki is held on the 17th of September.
There's an interesting line up present, a few interesting keynotes from statups' perspective could be the one of Stefan Glaenzer, founder of Last.fm as well as Mohamed El-Fatatry, founder of Muxlim.
I'll be present there and will be doing some interviews as well as blogging about the event at ArcticStartup of course. Do let us know if you are coming, would be nice to meet up!
Get 20% off SIME Helsinki with ArcticStartup
ArcticStartup has partnered with SIME Helsinki to give our readers and friends a unique chance to get 20% off the price of a ticket when you use the code ArcticStartup in the comments field when registering.
SIME Helsinki will be organised on the 17th of September in the Swedish Theater of Helsinki. More exact times and the schedule will be released later on.
SIME, known from organising internet oriented conferences in Stockholm, will be arranging smaller one day conferences in Helsinki and Copenhagen this year. Speakers in Helsinki will include Stefan Glaenzer (founder of Last.fm), Kurt Sillén (Global Head of Innovation and VP Mobility World, Ericsson), Ola Ahlvarsson (among others, CEO Result, co-founder of Boxman), Mohamed El-Fatatry (founder of Muxlim), Marko Ahtisaari (Blyk), Johan Siwers (CEO, Match.com Nordics) and many others. Check out SIME's website for the latest on these.
There's a good line up of people and a rare combination of entrepreneurs from overseas that shouldn't be missed. Take advantage of the discount and come to SIME Helsinki. I will be attending the event so drop me a note if you wish to meet up.
Educational seminars for entrepreneurs in Finnish
Laurea is arranging a series of seminars for entrepreneurs in Finnish. The first was actually held today, but the next one will be on 25th of March in Leppävaara. The speakers in the series of seminars are Joonas Turkama of CoreFinland and Mikko Silventola of Calcus Kustannus, Mohamed El Fatatry of Muxlim.com, Esko Alanko of Micromedia, Taneli Tikka of Wisdom Like Silence, Heidi Ekholm-Talas of BSG Marketing and finally but not least Eero Lehti from the The Federation of Finnish Enterprises.
Interesting line-up with interesting people! You can read more about the series of talks from here. As a short reminder, we (Arctic Startup and Open Coffee) will be hosting another event in April on entrepreneurship. The schedule and theme will be announced later.
