Grow VC Turns Free
Grow VC (or Grow Venture Community) is a community-based platform that helps start-ups acquire the initial funding either through crowd-sourcing or through direct investments from venture capitalists or business angels. As of today, Grow VC scrapped their membership fee and opened their network for free for anyone. Members of the community that would like to invest into listed start-ups can purchase a micro investment membership and invest all the credits they bought. The monthly plans are $20, $50 and $150. No commission is charged from direct investments by professional investors either. Grow VC also recently released an iPhone app to help their members keep updated on the go.
Vigo Accelerators To Start Building Funds
Vigo accelerators in Finland are planning to start building funds to further improve their possibilities in helping with startups. This has been approved by a Tekes news release (in Finnish) and in a panel discussion last week regarding Vigo accelerators. Vigo accelerators are a new form of government effort to enable growth and development of startups into the right direction with the help of serial entrepreneurs (running the accelerators).
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.
Planeto Launches "Massively Multiplayer Online Quiz" Social Game In Open Beta
Swedish social game startup Planeto has released its new game Planeto Quiz into open beta available for all players late last week. Planeto calls the game "the world's first massively multiplayer online quiz", MMOQ. The idea of the game is to combine elements from quiz competitions and online multiplayer games, e.g. World of Warcraft, including role-playing elements like character building and player interaction - but all packaged for global mass-market audience.
bluewalks Wins SeedRocket, Gets Seed Investment
bluewalks, a Stockholm based web startup, won the SeedRocket startup competition in July in Barcelona, earning them a seed investment of EUR 20,000 and a 6-month stay in Barcelona Activa Incubator with further mentoring. The service of bluewalks allows creating and sharing of walking tours.
SeedRocket is a Spanish startup event/competition, somewhat similar to more widely known Seedcamp. bluewalks was one of the 12 teams selected to the event from over 100 international applications. SeedRocket consists of training workshops and discussions lead by successful Spanish web entrepreneurs, and participants also get mentors' comments on their business plan. In the end, the teams deliver a pitch to mentors, investors, and the SeedRocket team.
bluewalk's CEO Cristobal Viedma commented the company currently has around 30% of their traffic coming from Asia, and over 700 walking tours created to date. bluewalks is currently working on an iPhone app, launching free beta at the end of the summer, and premium version planned to launch by December. The app should allow downloading maps and tours directly into the phone before the trip or for example at hotel using wifi prior to heading for a walking tour, but also providing online location-based information when wanted. bluewalks has also released an API that according to Cristobal 2 other startups are using already.
bluewalks plans to monetize their service by licensing their technology to local tourism boards, and others wanting to offer the service for free to all the travelers in the location. The company is also trying to create a brand among travelers by advertising and giving away merchandising in different hostels and events, while also having an online store for purchases.
Venture Capital 2.0: Grow VC Launches Private Beta (We Have Invites)
Grow VC launches today an invitiation-only private beta of their "Venture Capital 2.0" service. Grow VC aims to better enable early stage funding for mobile and web 2.0 startup companies by using a community-based approach. The size of investments Grow VC is looking to facilitate ranges from USD $10,000 to $1M. Grow VC has been founded by Finnish serial entrepreneurs Jouko Ahvenainen and Valto Loikkanen.
New Seed Incubator In Estonia
Estonian Development Fund has launched new seed business incubator, SeedBooster. The purpose of the incubator is to help develop early-stage businesses to get them mature enough for venture capital financing.
However, the leader of the SeedBooster project, Andrus Oks, comments that the new incubator is actually nothing that much new - it is in fact part of activities Estonian Development Fund has performed already for some time, now just productized and branded. Targeted firms are ones operating in Estonia with a strong desire and possibilities for fast international growth.
So far SeedBooster has taken in for example programming analysis firm Programeter (which just won the runner-up prize in the elevator pitch contest) and website platform developer Edicy (our previous coverage) under its wings. The incubator is looking to include further 5-6 new projects within the next month.
Magnifier Introduces A New Startup Pre-Seed Fund
Magnifier is a new Finnish startup accelerator fund investing money and effort at a pre-seed phase into new promising startups with world-class opportunity. The purpose of Magnifier is to prepare and scale the firms for the next stage where angels and early VCs can and want to invest into them.
The fund was founded by a group of ten young but experienced entrepreneurs. The founders are driven by the urge to share their experiences and learnings to other Finnish startups. Also foreign entrepreneurs are welcomed, though, as long as the firm is located in Finland. The leading idea is to help accelerate their growth and avoid the pitfalls the founders may have experienced in the past, and thus cultivate the Finnish startup culture.
The track record of the founders is quite impressive. They state having founded over 30 firms, raised over 35 million euros of venture capital, and been involved in over 25 mergers and acquisitions altogether.
Web2People - the Russian YCombinator
I talked a while back to Gleb Kaplun, a Russian investor from St. Petersburg, about their company Web2People. We followed up on that and I got really excited with the possibilities it creates. Web2People is a venture company established to help young innovators start their business with the very basic resources and fundamentals. The focus on the innovation is on Internet services and web applications.
Web2People offers companies the physical office space and resources to get the idea of the ground. Once somewhat in the air, Web2People has mentors and professionals to help the entrepreneurs to make the idea fly. Web2People can help the companies with anywhere from paperwork to contacting investors from Europe to get further financing.
Although, Web2People does not give any funding for these companies, they consider themselves seed stage investors as they provide the basic facilities needed to get the idea off the ground. Thus, they don't see themselves as another incubator without ambitious goals. The first startup centre is located just north of St. Petersburg.
Web2People runs projects divided into 2 sessions and 4 seasons. Each season lasts 3 months and is very specifically documented to create achievable goals and targets. Therefore the co-operation period with Web2People is usually 6 months - the first 3 months being put into growing the product into a prototype and the last 3 months allocated for fund gathering.
All in all, a very interesting concept and a very welcome I suppose with regards to the Russian market where there isn't that much help from the government as we are used to here in the Nordic countries. I'm guessing Gleb will see himself a good pool of interesting ideas to take to the next level.
