Is Northern Europe The Startup Design Capital?
We were sitting in the ArcticStartup office yesterday afternoon and Antti showed me the video to the unreleased to-do list app, Clear, by UK based Realmac Software. The app is beautiful and colorful way to do the same to-do list function that has been iterated a thousand times since the invention of the keyboard.
Whoever created Clear didn't come up with a brand new way to solve an unsolved problem -- they thought, hey I've got the UI skills to build a better mousetrap. And with posters everywhere on the way to the office proclaiming Helsinki as the World Design Capital of 2012, that got me thinking about where the "Arctic Valley" is in terms of elegant design.
Saying Something Over And Over Again Doesn't Make It So
Om Malik, the founder of GigaOm was speaking in Helsinki to a room of media representatives yesterday morning at the Aalto Venture Garage. His visit to Finland is part of a tour to come understand the companies and environment the local startups work in. Before Helsinki, he had visited Berlin and the LeWeb conference in Paris. I managed to talk to Malik about the way he sees these entrepreneurial hubs.
The big part of our discussion circled around the fact that people in Europe always look up to Silicon Valley and how they succeed in everything they do, while failing to see all the potential in front of their eyes. I have to say, while I knowledge the value Silicon Valley has on companies - I wonder how much possibility is wasted when following a given path without truly thinking of the possibilities closer to you. After all, Rovio didn't go to Silicon Valley to succeed - it all started with an innocent tweet by a Swedish athlete in the Nordics (going international I mean).
Calibre One Reports Dip In Northern European Investments in Q2
Calibre One, an American corporation focusing on executive search has released an investments summary from the second quarter of 2009. In this summary, they outline the investment market to gradually bounce back in Northern America, while it slightly dips in Europe and cuts to about a quarter in Northern Europe. Their data is based on early level Tech investments and thus does not fully shed light into the whole market.
In Northern Europe, $56 million were invested in 9 deals in the second quarter according to Calibre One while the respective figures for Q1 were $219 million in 14 deals. The nine investments for Q2 in Northern Europe were Teklatech ($6,9M), Imbera ($15,7M), Aava Mobile ($4,1M), eZ Systems (undisclosed), Hexaformer ($4,5M), Tobii Technology ($22,2M), Swebo Bioenergy ($1,9M), Alternativ Media (undisclosed) and Accumulate (undisclosed). The country breakdown lists 5 investments to Sweden, 2 to Finland and one investment to both Denmark and Norway. While this is no way is the complete list of course, it might give sense as where we are with regards to the trend.
