Posts tagged:

seppo sairanen

NewsToScreen Files For Bankruptcy

by Antti Vilpponen, July 2, 2009 — 3 Comments

NewsToScreen, the service by Finnish marketing men that aimed to charge consumers for watching ads, has filed for bankruptcy according to Kauppalehti. We covered the company just little over a year ago in March. Later last year I talked to the CEO Marko Parkkinen back then and he quoted them having 80 000 users. Apparently not everyone was paying the 29€ annual fee as it would have brought in revenue of over 2 million euros.

The company had a very respectable board including Marko Parkkinen a reknown marketing man in Finland, Seppo Sairanen known for making his wealth from the private banking corporation FIM (and having invested into Fruugo). Other members of the board include Lauri Hulkko and Ilkka Seppälä. One thing that does surprise me is the resignation of Parkkinen as the CEO just 15 days before filing for bankruptcy. He had resigned the position on the 15th of June 2009 and the company had filed for bankruptcy on the 30th of June, 2009.

While it is never good to see startups going belly up, you have to admit and give it to people for trying. However, despite encouraging entrepreneurs – this is one idea that I never saw taking off, even in my wildest dreams. I remember talking to Parkkinen about the future of NewsToScreen and he was optimistic about the new course they had been taking with licensing the service to large corporations as a tool for communication. Needless to say, marketing without understanding the fundamentals of business does not work very well.

Fruugo’s Ownership Structure Revealed

by Miikka Kukkosuo, January 16, 2009 — 7 Comments

Fruugo logo

Adding to the yesterday’s news on Fruugo’s service launch plans, just this morning the Finnish business media Talouselämä has published the ownership structure of Fruugo.

Risto Siilasmaa, founder and chairman F-Secure, is the biggest owner with 30,9 % share. Fruugo’s founder and Evangelist, Nils ”Nippe” Forsblom is the second biggest owner with almost 30 %. Risto Siilasmaa came aboard in the very beginning and brougth in Nokia chairman Jorma Ollila and the ex-CEO Reijo Syrjäläinen. Jorma Ollila owns 9,4 % of the company. A year ago, Seppo Sairanen (the previous main owner of FIM financial group) invested in the company, and last summer the Finnish media group Sanoma, who’s Kim Ignatius recently entered the board. Sixth biggest owner is Kalle Vuoristo, the CTO of Fruugo.

The full ownership structure of Fruugo, as published by Talouselämä:

Ownership %
First Fellow (Risto Siilasmaa) 30,9
Queensway Dev. (Nils Forsblom) 29,2
Kestrel (Jorma Ollila) 9,4
Optiopaja (Seppo Sairanen) 6,8
Sanoma 5,9
Kalle Vuoristo 5,0

According to the article, Fruugo has burned around 10-15M  euros so far, maybe even more. They have slightly above 60 own employees at the moment, plus tens of consults.

Fruugo is an aggregator bringing the online web stores under one service. Pan-European web commerce is still difficult, but through Fruugo the European web stores can sell their products to the whole Europe, and all consumers can buy the products of all merchant integrated with the service, using their native language and local payment methods. The business model, as we reported yesterday, is based on transaction commissions. The cut Fruugo takes is around 10 percent, more or less depending on the product category. The company believes the rate is justifiable to merchants, as using the service Fruugo will take care of payment systems, fraud management, customer service, and currency exchange.

Fruugo’s public launch is coming up in Q2, but the exact countries are not disclosed. Next Fruugo faces the challenge to make itself known to the millions of European online shoppers.

(See our previous coverage on Fruugo.)