Posts tagged:

norway

The Nordic Paradox: Entrepreneurship As A Career Choice

by Guest Blogger, February 19, 2010 — 3 Comments

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.
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Is There An Online Future For Old Media?

by Guest Blogger, February 12, 2010 — 12 Comments

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.

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Schibsted Set to Give Finnish Media Companies Run for Their Money

by Ville Vesterinen, February 4, 2010 — 6 Comments

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.

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THINK Has Your EV Car Ready. Now.

by Hendrik Morkel, January 22, 2010 — 5 Comments

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.

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A Couple Of Big Norwegians Close 2009 In Nordic Cleantech

by Alexander Lidgren, January 7, 2010 — Leave a Comment

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.

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Mobile Nordic Is Now Numo Solutions, Accelerates Internationalization

by Miikka Kukkosuo, November 25, 2009 — 1 Comment

Numo Solutions logoNorwegian 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.

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Tesla Having 10 Percent Of Danish and Norwegian Sports Car Market. Oh, And They Are Profitable (Video)

by Ville Vesterinen, November 9, 2009 — 5 Comments

tesla-motors-logoElectric 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.
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BioWaz – Energy From Waste

by Hendrik Morkel, October 23, 2009 — 2 Comments

300_Biowaz_RGB_R1We 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. Continue reading »

Expono Improves On Flickr

by Antti Vilpponen, September 22, 2009 — Leave a Comment

ExponoExpono 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.
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Calibre One Reports Dip In Northern European Investments in Q2

by Antti Vilpponen, August 13, 2009 — Leave a Comment

Calibre OneCalibre 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

by Miikka Kukkosuo, May 5, 2009 — Leave a Comment

mobileaxept logomobileAxept 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. Continue reading »

Red Herring 100 Europe Finalists

by Antti Vilpponen, March 30, 2009 — Leave a Comment

Red Herring 100 FinalistsThis 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.
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Social Music Marketplace gogoyoko Raises ISK 100 Million

by Miikka Kukkosuo, February 12, 2009 — Leave a Comment

gogoyoko logoDespite of the downturn and bad overall economical situation in Iceland, the new social music service gogoyoko (see our previous intro)  has secured 100 million Iceland Kronur (slightly more modest in euros: EUR 0,69M; USD 0,89M) in funding from Icelandic The New Venture Business Fund (90 %) and private investor Vilhjalmur Thorsteinsson (10 %).

The purpose of the funding was not disclosed, but in the company’s newsletter it is stated that the firm has been growing steadily and just moved to a bigger office. gogoyoko is still looking for more people and prepares for increasing international marketing activities this year. gogoyoko has gotten advice and steering for the fundraising and  product development process from Norwegian  “New Media Innovation House” Ignitas that also has taken an equity stake in gogoyoko. Ignitas has been previously involved in selling Norway’s #2 social network Biip.no to media enterprise Egmont/Nettavisen.

gogoyoko provides artists and other music right holders a social marketplace allowing them to sell music directly to consumers worldwide without middlemen. The service is currently running in closed beta, planned to be publicly opened in April. gogoyoko’s service is promised to include interesting features like a custom music player embedable to any site through which the users can stream (ad-funded) tracks and albums for free. The player is also supposed to include a music store interface. On gogoyoko’s portal, artists can create their personal sites, write news, blog entries, upload discography, pictures, videos, and enter gig information to gogoyoko’s global map.

The firm’s updated intro video:

Gogoyoko from Gogoyoko on Vimeo.

FairChance Lottery Encourages Charity

by Miikka Kukkosuo, January 13, 2009 — Leave a Comment

Fair Chance logoFairChance is a Norwegian startup introducing a micro-lottery system to be used at online point-of-sales. FairChance’s idea is that a consumer in the checkout process of webshops could add a FairChance lottery ticket into the purchase, and get a chance of winning e.g. their shopping basket for free.

This would offer new income to retailers, and, offer new type of fund raising and promotion to charity and humanitarian organizations. That is, FairChance states charity is their leading idea, and the company promises to direct half of the net revenues directly to the different charities they support, currently Red Cross, Right To Play, Diambars, and Save the Children. According to FairChance’s web pages they have also signed a few known ambassardors: for example biker Lance Armstrong and football (soccer) player Zinedine Zidane.

Fair Chance conceptFairChance aims to integrate into different webshops and stores, so that when you shop at a supporting store, you will see the FairChance lottery logo next to the checkout. Buying a ticket (or more; each maybe 50 cents or so) gives you a chance to win a top prize (like one year’s groceries for the whole family), all the groceries in your shopping cart at the time of purchase, or a smaller prize. The lottery results are shown immediately after the purchase. If you bought a ticket and didn’t win, you still know you’ve supported a number of charity organizations.

For retailers, the value proposition of FairChance is adding high volume items with substantial profit margins into the product catalogue with limited or no cost. The service also allows the brand owners and retail and web shops to participate in charity fund raising. With the system it’s also possible to target quickly some specific humanitarian projects, such as a major earthquake disaster.

The concept of FairChance is patented and it has been approved by the Norwegian Gaming and Foundation Authority. According to FairChance their service is not gambling, as has been stated by “international leading experts in this field” (PDF report), based on the relative low prizes and discontinuous nature. It is possible to integrate the company’s fund raising service with almost any electronic payment location with a very low cost. FairChance will use the scalability of the concept to address the global market, starting with a roll-out in major European markets this year.

TravellersPoint – Norway’s Pride In Travel

by Antti Vilpponen, December 8, 2008 — 1 Comment

TravellerspointTravellerspoint is a Norwegian community based travel website that both combines wiki-style guides and a personal plaform for content sharing. Travellerspoint offers a relatively good source of information on numerous cities as well as a place to host your travel photos as well as blog about your travels. The site is by all means popular – their tour states they have over 178 000 travellers registered as members.

Despite the success with the site (it gathers about 50-60k uniques a month), they have not managed to integrate the different parts of the site very well. I guess this is something that still lacks in many ways across the industry. I have to say that TripSay is perhaps a step closer to this (then again – they do lack the large community TravellersPoint has). By integrating the services I mean the issue of combining them closer instead of having each service in its own “silo” and not cross-linking for example. I’m sure there is a ton of interesting data to be found from the travel stories of people in the blogs – but the link between these and the wiki-style guides is still missing.

TravellersPoint’s business model at the moment is advertising and commissions from hotel and hostel bookings, as one might guess. The interesting question to ask is will these sites gain more traffic as people search deeper online for that best deal on hotels in a certain city or will they suffer from the downturn in the same way as the travel industry in general?