#5 - Operating Systems Of Our Lives
In the fifth episode we talk to Estonian investor and serial entrepreneur Allan Martinson. Allan Martinson is the managing and founding partner of MTVP. MTVP is one of the more well known and successful investment companies operating in the Baltic region. In the show, we discuss numerous things about the Nordic and Baltic startup scene as well as the role of accelerators. Martinson also tells us what he thinks needs to be done on the regional scale to get things working better and more effectively.
We also want to thank our first sponsor of the show: Kippt.com - it makes bookmarking and reading the web easier (and we'd like to add beautiful). It works well on your browser as well as on your mobile devices like iPad and iPhone.
Finally - you're also able to now find us in the top navigation under Unfair Advantage. You'll find all the shows there for future reference.
Flirtic Raises Funding From Almaz Capital
The news today and this week seem to be all about Estonia and for a great reason too! Flirtic, another Estonain company is flying high - they have raised funding from Almaz Capital, a Russian VC firm. Flirtic is a new approach to online dating. It borrows a lot from social networks in terms of usability, but puts all this into an online dating context.
Ahem, So We Actually Meant That Cherry.ee Is The Real Estonian Groupon
Yesterday we covered Deal24, a company doing local discount coupon sales, similar to Groupon's concept, in the Nordics and Baltics. Unfortunately for us, this wasn't an Estonian company and certainly not the largest as our readers rightly commented both in Facebook and in the article comments. The real Groupon of Estonia is Cherry.ee which is the largest by both deals done and amount of business. This time we talked to the investors behind the company and there's some interesting data to back this up.
Lithuania - Punching Above Its Weight In ICT?
Guest post by Daiva Naravaite, co-founder of AlpinaSearch. AlpinaSearch is a provider of global Search, Selection & On-boarding services for innovative start-ups and their investors.
Who would have believed that the country with the highest mobile subscription rate worldwide (138% as per World Economic Forum's World Competitiveness report), the broadest high-speed mobile broadband coverage and the densest network of public internet access points in Europe is the small nation of Lithuania, sandwiched between Latvia, Belarus, Poland, Kaliningrad and the Baltic sea?
Prompted by comments I heard on numerous occasions (including geeky ArcticStartup and TechCrunch events), and equally inspired by the enthusiastic entrepreneurial community in Lithuania, I thought I’ll share a few facts.
Apaja closes 1.75 MEUR Round A financing
The Finnish Apaja Online Entertainment has closed a 1.75 million euro round A financing with Martinson Trigon Venture Partners. Apaja's main product is the online gaming community known in Finland by Aapeli and the international brand of Playray.
Discussions on the round were started during early summer and continued to closer discussions with MTVP during the autumn. According to Inka Mero, the CEO of Apaja, negotions were continued with MTVP as they have a strong understanding of the Eastern-European markets as well as Central European markets.
The investment is used for growth and internationalisation of the brand.
Disclaimer: The writer of this post has previously worked at Apaja Online Entertainment.
