Burt expands to Norway, Focuses Development on Rich
Following the company's €2.2 million investment from Industrifonden and angel-investors last year, Sweden-based Burt is expanding to Norway, as part of their expansion program. The company produces tools to help advertisers and agencies improve the efficiency and effect of their online campaigns, which we covered last June. Their main product, Rich, distinguishes itself by focusing on the media industry and offering analytics that form a more complete overview of the environment in which their ads are being displayed. As a result ad-buyers can compare online performance of their ads with broadcast and print advertising and media agencies get a greater control over ads, their vital revenue source.
Statistics On Scandinavian Music Streamers
A market survey conducted by Norstat for the WiMP music streaming service shows that roughly 3 out of 10 Norwegians and Swedes have listened to music by streaming in the week before the questioning took place. The survey was collected in January of 2012. In Norway, this proportion increased 20 to 29 percent from June of the past year, while Sweden saw a jump of 27 to 29 percent, showing the early saturation of the market. Danish users are behind the times, with a jump from 14 to a current 20%. This low penetration can likely be explained by Spotify only launching in Denmark in October.
News Publisher Schibsted Set To Buy Aspiro
The Scandinavian news publisher Schibsted is set to buy a Norwegian company, Aspiro, for 340 million Swedish krona (€38m). Aspiro provides whitelabel TV and music streaming services, and also provides the music streaming service WiMP, which competes with Spotify. Aspiro is traded on the Nasdaq OMX Nordic Exchange in Stockholm, and Schibsted Media Group offers to the shareholders in Aspiro AB to acquire all the shares in Aspiro for SEK 1.65 in cash per share.
Zero Emission, Fjord-cooled Data Centre Under Construction in Norway
Perhaps inspired by the emerging data centres in Finland, Sweden and Iceland, Norwegian shipping and investment company Smedvig has teamed up with ErgoGroup, Norway’s largest provider of ICT services, to develop Green Mountain, a fjord-cooled data centre that is housed in a completely refurbished ammunition depot on Rennesøy, an island in southern Norway.
Taking advantage of the cold fjord running through the area, the data centre will be cooled by a continuous flow of 8-degree water all year round. Power will come from a low-cost renewable energy source, which means that the data centre will have a practically non-existent carbon footprint. In fact, Green Mountain claims to be greenest data centre in the world.
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).
Why Use A NFC Enabled Device When mCASH Lets Your Mobile Accept Payments?
We have witnessed the evolution of how we purchase items around us. From the days of cash as coins, then paper and plastic money to the latest NFC enabled payment methods, all seem to have eased things out one or the other. The evolution has come about as per the needs of the time, and lately the need for change has increased dramatically. One startup from Norway, mCASH, plans to bundle all payments into your mobile device.
NFC, non-NFC, credit or debit, why carry extra luggage or purchase a dedicated devices when it's dubious whether the point of sale would even accept it or not? While NFC might become a common method of mobile payments, I am not buying the idea, primarily for the fact not every region worldwide can implement the system. What mCASH does is liberate you of the task of getting yourself a new hardware or implement a new technology. Keeping it simple is what mCASH focuses on, why burden merchants and clients with excessive burden?
WeVideo Video Editor Gets Integrated With YouTube
WeVideo, a startup founded by two Norwegians, has announced that its cloud-based video-editing platform is now available for free on YouTube. The platform allows YouTube users to create and edit their videos on the fly with no additional software needed. All you need is a YouTube account.
Nordic iPhone App Store Statistics
Lacking a better metrics from official sources, the data analysts at Xyologic have put together statistics on the top paid and free apps in the Android, iPhone, iPad, and WP7 marketplace. These numbers can't be relied upon completely, but should prove themselves to be fairly sound when discussing what's happening at the top of the marketplaces.
Our first coverage of these data-sets will look at what's happening in the paid and free iPhone marketplaces in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, using data from the month of August. Games accounted for about 59% of paid app downloads in the region, with anywhere from 57.1% in Finland to 61.3% in Sweden. This is quite apparent when looking at the top paid app lists, with the following four games consistently in the top 5:
Symptoms Of The Norwegian Startup Ecosystem
This guest post is by Tor R. Grønsund. He is the founder of Lingo Social, a lecturer of Entrepreneurship at the University of Oslo, and the writer of the blog Methodologist. Follow him on Twitter at @tor.
As inventors of the object-oriented programming language and the modern GSM technology, you would expect Norway to have the perfect ingredients for a vibrant startup scene. If you, however, search this or any other notable tech blog for news on early-stage Norwegian startups, you would find next to nothing. While Nordic and Baltic startups seems to thrive, why don’t we see any ventures emerging out of Norway, several Nordic and European professionals questioned me. After talking to a handful of entrepreneurs, investors, and scholars about why this is the case, I discovered seven symptoms of the Norwegian start-up ecosystem that might explain why Norway’s tech innovation is lagging behind that of its neighbors.
Norway's QuestBack Acquires Globalpark
QuestBack AS, the leading European provider of Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM) services has announced the acquisition and merger of a German originated company Globalpark. Globalpark was founded in 1999 and has grown quite rapidly. At the moment of the acquisition, the company has also high profile clients such as Continental, Daimler, Nintendo, Sony Music and Bosch to name a few. Questback has been acquiring companies in Europe at an increasing pace in the last few years.
Light Painting WiFi Networks
This isn't your traditional post about a startup per se, but a post about a cool experiment some Norwegians came up with. They wanted to uncover the numerous WiFi networks in the city and make them visible. Cities are continuously experienced in different ways as the amount of devices relying on WiFi networks increases. This experiment is part of YOUrban, a broader research project from the Oslo School of Architecture and Design.
BrightArch Closes Seed Financing
BrightArch is a Norwegian based software company that developed a service called OrganizationWeaver. The service is used in large corporations during restructures/staffing changes and an aide to change management. Basically what that means is that large corporations can use the software to help them guide through large mergers or downsizings of companies where you can't simply continue working as previously when the staff is cut in half or doubled. Until now, the company has been financed by the founders. Kima Ventures led the round and was completed by BrightArch's new board of directors. They consist of Scandinavian and UK business executives.
Via Venture Partners Raises A New Fund Of EUR 134 Million Targeting Nordic ICT
Via Venture Partners has announced (PDF) raising of a new fund. The fund is its second, amounting to 134 million euros. In addition to the VC's original fund founded in 2006, this makes Via Venture Partners one of the largest VCs in the Nordic region with a total of EUR 268 million of committed capital. The fund targets Nordic high growth potential ICT firms that have a global market opportunity.
Norwegians Are On A Shopping Spree - QuestBack Acquires Digium
Norwegian enterprise feedback management company QuestBack has just announced that they have acquired the Finnish SaaS company Digium Oy. Digium is perhaps the most well known company in this sector in Finland has proven that in their financials as well. In the financial year ending 2009, they turned over about 4 million euros while making over 650k€ in profit. In 2005 they made just about a million in revenue. The new company expects to tally a combined turnover of more than 22 MEUR for 2010. This makes it the largest player in the EFM industry in Europe.
QuestBack has been on a shopping spree lately. They have acquired Easyresearch AB from Sweden and Refleks AS from Norway. Both companies have been integrated fully to QuestBack's operations and thus adding to their turnover in a successful manner.
Nordic Tech Tour Kicked Off Presenting The Top Firms In The Region
The Nordic Tech Tour, organized by the independent not-for-profit organization The European Tech Tour has kicked off today. During two and a half days, the selected 30 promising early and later stage growth companies based in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Iceland, and the Baltic countries will gather together with the leading cross-border venture capital and global corporate firms.
During the event, the companies have twenty minutes to present their business plans to 70 international delegates, consisting of senior partners, VPs, and CEOs from the global venture capital and technology industry, as well as advisors and academics. The investment capital present at the Tour is said to be worth over €10 billion.
Latvian MoVoLo Wins The Tallinn Elevator Pitch Competition
Last week Tallinn was hot with startup and entrepreneur activity. Latvian travel search engine startup MoVoLo won the Elevator Pitch Competition organized by ArcticStartup and Tehnopol Estonia as part of the Third Annual Tallinn Conference by The International Technology Law Association and Enterprise Estonia. Also ArcticEvening Tallinn, among other startup events the same week, gathered a great crowd of entrepreneurs and likeminded people together.
BrightArch Launches Toolkit For Optimizing Mergers and Corporate Restructuring
A new Norwegian startup BrightArch has officially launched a software product named OrganizationWeaver. Intriguingly, BrightArch is focused on a very specific niche, yet a tangible and a big problem: staffing problems in companies going through transformational reorganizations or post-merger integrations.
Typically, when big companies restructure, thousands of people are affected. If not properly handled, the positions in the new organization often get filled suboptimally, and many of the employees are unhappy with the selection process, triggering many resignations over time, resulting in lost talent. (More on the specifics of the problem in BrightArch's blog.)
BrightArch aims to considerably ease and speed up the process, also resulting in much greater employee post-reorganization satisfaction. Nick Peters, CMO, and Tor Kielland, Founder and CEO, provided ArcticStartup with some extra details regarding the fresh company.
Sweden Tops The Global Information Technology Report
World Economic Forum announced the results of its annual study on how countries are able to leverage ICT as a sustainable, long-term source of economic development. The results show success in general for the Nordic countries, Sweden is ranked first, Denmark third, Finland sixth and Norway tenth.
The Nordic Paradox: Entrepreneurship As A Career Choice
Are Nordic countries particularly entrepreneurial? How do our societies perceive entrepreneurship as a career choice?
The perception already exists that the Nordic countries are among the most innovative in the world. The two most recent and comprehensive rankings supporting this belief came from the Economist Intelligence Unit and the Boston Consulting Group, both published in April 2009. The first of these studies ranked Japan as the most innovative country in the world, while in the second Singapore was at the top of the list. Nevertheless, Finland and Sweden ranked in the top ten for both reports, while Denmark and Norway also ranked impressively.
Is There An Online Future For Old Media?
The two big Finnish “old media” companies, Sanoma and Alma Media, published their 2009 results yesterday and today, respectively. However, as seems to be the common policy, neither of them was too open about the state of their online business. But luckily Alma still offered some nuggets of information for constructing a picture of what’s going on.
The two online legs of an old media company are typically classifieds and editorially driven news sites. Alma’s classifieds segment, which includes such assets as the housing site Etuovi.com and jobs site Monster.fi, posted a loss of €0.7m with an €27m revenue. Sanoma doesn’t give out any information on its online classifieds.
On the online news side, Alma publishes Iltalehti.fi, the biggest website in Finland by unique visitors. Although the full year figures for the asset were not disclosed today, the Q1/09 report from April states a revenue of €1.2m, so the annual income is likely to be around the €5m mark. Given that Iltalehti.fi relies mainly on journalistic content, the site is – after full allocation of editorial costs – most likely loss-making or, if they’re lucky, posting a very small profit.
Schibsted Set to Give Finnish Media Companies Run for Their Money
Already last year there was a lot of talk in Finnish media circles about how Schibsted, who own, for example, Aftonbladet and Svenska Dagbladet, is coming and taking a big share of Finnish media's most profitable products: classifieds and market places. Now the land grab has started and its called Tori.
Tori has set up the shop quickly and started strong. It's modeled on the Swedish service Blocket. Monthly uniques for the month of January broke 300,000. That is an impressive number given the service had zero publicity and was only gearing up for the launch. The team, headed by the CEO Jussi Lystimäki, drove traffic to the site using Adwords and smart guerilla advertising tactics.
THINK Has Your EV Car Ready. Now.
THINK is not a start-up anymore, though it was one in the beginning of the 1990s when the world experienced a similar recession. Their history is fascinating, with USD 150m invested by US car giant Ford during the companies ownership of the Norwegians, struggling after Ford sold them out in 2003, until in 2006 Norwegian Investinor and other investors bought the company. Under new management and with new strategic goals the company is ready to become a major player in the growing electric vehicle market.
Their vision is to provide a better way of moving, which is carbon and carefree. The result of their vision is an electric city car with a Scandinavian design and modern technology under the hood. The THINK City is manufactured in Finland by Valmet Automotive, who is also a shareholder and strategic partner. It seems the Finns are establishing themselves slowly but surely as a major player in the EV manufacturing segment, a very smart decision. But back to THINK.
A Couple Of Big Norwegians Close 2009 In Nordic Cleantech
Norwegian Investinor is already into the cleantech industry through investments in electric car-maker Think and Metallkraft (which is another cleantech fast-grower doing recycling in the solar industry). They opened their bank account before the holidays, investing 6.3 million euro in Innotech Solar, making it one of the bigger cleantech investments during the year. Innotech Solar was founded by people from within the solar industry, who saw a market opportunity in the solar cells that where not used due to low efficiency. Innotech Solar buys these cells and has the technology and production capacity to upgrade them, making them profitable. It is recycling and reuse in an industry where access to raw material has been crucial. The company was established in spring 2008, has grown to 42 employees, and already has sales offices in Germany and China. The company has previously managed to attract VC money from two of the most active cleantech investors in the Nordics - Northzone Ventures and Sustainable Technologies Fund.
Mobile Nordic Is Now Numo Solutions, Accelerates Internationalization
Norwegian mobile caller ID search startup Mobile Nordic has changed its name to Numo Solutions. Accordingly, the firm's mobile phone number and SMS search products, previously with country-specific localized names, will be branded as Numo Finder and Numo SMS Preview, respectively. The changes preempt new operator deals and handset manufacturer deals in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, said to be announced within a few months. The firm will also open new offices and affiliates in Beijing, Frankfurt, London, Madrid, and Taipei.
Tesla Having 10 Percent Of Danish and Norwegian Sports Car Market. Oh, And They Are Profitable (Video)
Electric cars are all the rage currently and in many ways its also the holy grail of Detroit and thus plays a disproportionately large role in the US politics. To get an idea of how big a role cars alone play, the federal program paid individual car owners up to $4,500 to replace their current vehicles with new ones that get higher-mileage. Whether this was just an indirect subsidy to Detroit or a real environmentally responsible policy is another discussion.
If the electric car is a hot topic in US, it could be even bigger globally if someone gets the economics right and makes a pure electric vehicle a real alternative to the combustion engine.
During our trip we visited the most talked about contender that has been claimed to be the future of car industry, Tesla Motors. I talked to Rachel Konrad, Senior Communications Manager at Tesla, in length about the car itself, the future of the industry and most interestingly is Tesla’s business model really working and making real profits for its visionary founders and investors.
BioWaz - Energy From Waste
We told you already about wind, solar and tidal-energy technologies, so now its time to go down and get dirty. Biowaz from Norway offers a biogas plant, and their target customers are farms and agricultural businesses. That might seem awfully far away from being Cleantech, though if you know that over 49% of European Union subsidies go into the agricultural sector - that were close to EUR 50 billion in 2006 - you might realize that there is a huge market.
The concept is as easy as it is beautiful: Farms, especially livestock farms, produce huge amounts of organic waste and manure. The manure and organic waste are usually collected in storage tanks, and might be used as class B fertilizers on fields. However, this "garbage" has more potential. It can, through the process of anaerobic digestion, be transformed into biogas, which consists of approximately 60% methane gas. The methane gas can be used to produce heat and electricity, or as fuel in cars.
Expono Improves On Flickr
Expono is a Norwegian company, working in the field of photo sharing. This is an industry that hasn't had too many newcomers since Flickr has gained ground among the early adopters. Expono, however, has some very neat features compared to Flickr as well as some short comings too. Nevertheless, it is a service worth giving a try. The service is being built by a small five team combo in Oslo, Norway. The company was founded already back in 2007.
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.
mobileAxept Enabling Mobile Payments
mobileAxept is a Norwegian startup providing a mobile phone payment system, which directly charges an existing credit card or a bank account.
mobileAxept's solution is based on a patented gateway for securing transactions between the customer, merchant, and credit card companies or banks. The merchants can offer customers a way to pay with their mobile phone, either by calling or sending a SMS to specified numer. However, the payment will be processed on the customer's credit or debit card rather than added to phone bill. This way the phone can be used for quick impulse purchases or micropayments without big overhead costs typically associated with mobile payments.
Red Herring 100 Europe Finalists
This year's Red Herring 100 finalists from Europe were announced last week. The competition is held annually to find Europe's most promising tech companies. This year the list is nicely populated by companies from the Arctic area. More than 40 of the finalists this year come from the geographic area we cover - nicely done! Sweden, Norway and Finland are most represented and after that come Denmark and Estonia. Latvia and Lithuania still shine with their absence.
