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.
Get Compensated For Not Selecting Your Wallpaper - Mozoomi Replaces It With Ads
Mozoomi is a Swedish mobile advertising startup, aiming to enable advertising on the wallpapers of mobile phones. The background wallpaper image is one of the most seen images to mobile phone users. Mozoomi believes that the image has limited value to many users, but it can mean a great deal to advertisers. The company has been developing technology platform for making it possible to serve targeted, interactive ads to replace the wallpaper images. Mozoomi aims for the Asias and South American markets, and plans to pilot the service by the end of the year, as mentioned in an interview by Swedish site E24.
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.
Petteri Koponen Of Lifeline Ventures Talks About Emotions. Yeah, You Heard Right...
I'm happy to see another acquisition coming from Sweden. So happy I was about to write how PlusFourSix is strengthening its offering within digital entertainment through the acquisition of Global Media Bank. Then decided not to. There's something more interesting that I wanted to share.
Petteri Koponen, Jaiku co-founder and now partner at Lifeline Ventures, shared many interesting tidbits about his career as an entrepreneur at Aalto Entrepreneur Society Bootcamp event, but the best part was him telling about the emotional roller coaster that an entrepreneur is bound to go through (jump into 23.02 on the video, if you want to go straight to the 'emotional part'). Just as Koponen says, it's exhausting and the lows are really low and highs are really high, but once you get the taste, it's very hard or even impossible to go back to working for the man.
Via Venture Partners To Invest € 2.65 Million In PlusFourSix
Via Venture Partners, a Nordic venture fund, is to invest € 2.65 million in
Swedish mobile marketing company PlusFourSix. PlusFourSix offers the mobile telephone as a marketing tool, making it possible for clients to create a mobile initiative for their marketing, without having to invest in expensive infrastructure.
According to Niklas Stålberg, the new PlusFourSix CEO as of 1 August, the money is raised to speed the company's expansion in Sweden and across the Nordics.
Anders Lindqvist, Partner in Via Venture, has been appointed as Chairman of the Board and Mattias Danielsson has joined the Board of Directors. Mr. Lindqvist says that mobile marketing is one of the fastest growing media channels with an estimated annual global growth rate of over 40 percent. We agree with cautiously, as its much easier to loose brand equity with badly designed marketing than gain paying customers. Regardless, PlusFourSix is the leading supplier of mobile marketing technology and solutions in the Nordic region.
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.
