Wrapp Explodes Out Of Sweden, Taking Online Gift Cards To US With $5.5mm Funding
Another disruptive service is launching in Sweden today. Wrapp, a new social gifting service, has just received $5.5 Million Series A funding led by Atomico, the international venture capital firm formed by Niklas Zennström, the co-founder of Skype, Kazaa and other companies. The company plans on updating the gift card model to the current era by tying their service to smartphones and social networks. The service is now out of its test phase in Sweden and will be launching in the US and UK in the first quarter next year, with the rest of Europe soon to follow.
Rdio Looking To Avoid Apple's 30% Cut With APIs
Rdio, the online music straming company founded by the former Skype founders, Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, has announced that they will be releasing a set of APIs to developers, according to ReadWriteWeb. This comes as an attempt to try and go around Apple's counter announcement of them charging 30% of new subscribers that will come through their iPhone apps, a move which has been widely criticized for "killing the online music business". Margins are very low and online streaming services such as Rdio (and Spotify for that matter) are scrambling to find new ways to keep the business model afloat.
Rovio Raises $42 Million Round
TechCrunch just released the story that creators of Angry Birds, Rovio, has raised an astonishing $42 million round in funding. The funding has been raised from Accel Partners, Atomico Ventures as well as Felicis Ventures. The round was co-led by Accel Partners as well as Atomico Ventures. Niklas Zennström, the co-founder of Skype will be joining Rovio's board.
Niklas Zennström Invests In Fashiolista, He Is No Alien To Fashion
Too much of call or video oriented ventures associated to Niklas Zennström. You can watch our recent video interviews with him here and here. The Skype co-founder recently revealed his passion for fashion as his investment firm, Atomico Ventures made a $500,000 seed investment in Fashiolista.
Rdio: Music Start-Up From Skype Founders
Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström recently created Rdio (pronounced ar-dee-oh) - an unlimited, on-demand social music service in US and Canada. The service is very similar to Spotify, though there is no way to use it for free (apart from a short trial period). Rdio offers a vast music library (> 7 million songs) from all major labels (EMI Music, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group) as well as top indie labels and distributors. It's got social features akin to Twitter: users can see what is currently popular among other users and create and listen to collaborative playlists. The company promises to 'take the work out of deciding what to play next'. All that for $9.99 a month for unlimited web and mobile access (including the offline mode) and $4.99 a month for Web-only access. Rings a bell?
Summary Of 2010 On ArcticStartup
Despite creating more clutter with yet another trend post for this year, I think it's worth looking back at some of the most read stories and biggest trends we've covered this year on ArcticStartup. Some of the most read stories are around Rovio, Nokia and Valkee. The most read stories this year were 7 Ways Nokia Can Win Again as well as Oh, Noes! Not Another Ex-Insiders Thoughts On Nokia! (Part I). Both of the stories received a lot of traffic from Finnish national press and thus were clearly the most visited stories in terms of page view.
Video Interview Of Niklas Zennström - Part 2
This is the second part of the video interview with Niklas Zennström of Atomico. In this part we continue discussion on how Atomico sees certain industries regarding their investments as well as at what stage startups should contact Atomico and how. Zennström also goes on to tell that entrepreneurs in the Nordics and Baltics should be braver - we are by nature perhaps a little too timid.
Video Interview Of Niklas Zennström - Part 1
Last week Niklas Zennström, together with Atomico visited Helsinki to talk to startups and promote their early stage investment company. I had the chance to sit down with Zennström and talk about the Nordic and Baltic investment environment, Atomico as well as some of their investments. Below is the first part of the video interview in a little over 7 minute clip.
Apply to Seedcamp and get a guaranteed interview
Seedcamp, an intensive week long event held in September in London targeted at young entrepreneurs from across EMEA, is one of the biggest opportunities to entrepreneurs on this side of Atlantic and it's open for applications (here). Seedcamp's whole raison d'etre is to provide seed funding and world-class connections for startups in exchange of a relatively small equity stake.
I recommend applying well before the August 10th deadline, as this might be one of the best decision you do as a entrepreneur that can set the pace for the years to come. To make a great opportunity absolutely unbeatable, we at ArcticStartup want to sweeten the deal for all the Nordic & Baltic startups: This is a huge break for any start-up, and thus I will single handedly interview your start-up, any Nordic or Baltic start-up really, that applies to Seedcamp. In fact you have two options. Here goes.
When you apply to Seedcamp before the August 10th deadline you will get a guaranteed 2 minute video interview by me or optionally you can submit a 60 second video pitch of your start-up/product/service, which ever you prefer. Naturally these will be posted on ArcticStartup. In addition, when you apply to Seedcamp you will automatically enter a draw in which we at ArcticStartup will randomly choose two start-ups that can have their logo (125x125px) on ArcticStartup front page for the whole month of September October. Additionally any start-up that will be chosen to take part in the actual Seedcamp week gets also their logo (125x125px) on the front page for the whole month of September October.
So regardless of whether you get to go to London, you'll have a guaranteed way of getting a lot of visibility for your start-up just by applying (We are very flexible on what can be considered a start-up, but will use common sense to cut out any funny business and bad jokes if you try to intentionally game our generous offer). So, now only thing you need to do is apply(!) and write the following to the comments section after this blog post: '[your start-up's name here] has applied to Seedcamp and thus rocks!' or if you prefer you can email me at ville [at] arcticstartup [dot] com. Start applying and I will contact you after I get the confirmation that your application has reached the organizers.
Seedcamp Week 2007 from Seedcamp on Vimeo.
To recap, the Seedcamp format in brief is this: You apply to be able to enter a Seedcamp week, where you learn the ropes and get to know all the people that matter in the European entrepreneur scene. The week will take place in September 15-18 2008 in Central London at UCL. Seedcamp will be holding an open application available online. Based on this, up to 20 companies will be selected to participate in the event. Seecamp can provide you with seed capital and a world class network of mentors that among others include Jyri Engeström (Jaiku / Google), Niklas Zennström (Skype / Joost) and Brent Hoberman (Lastminute.com) to only name a few. Read all about the format here.
