Listhings.com is a new Estonian “eco-friendly” online web tool for storing sticky notes about anything from To-Do lists to grocery lists and phone numbers.
The man behind the project is Martin Tajur, also Creative Director and co-founder of United Dogs and Cats (see our previous coverage). Martin has also worked as a graphical and user experience designer at Skype.
We all love Spotify here at ArcticStartup and use it everyday to listen our favorite tracks. We also know that it was not cheap to begin with for the VCs to invest in Spotify even though it was (and still is) the early days, since the founders Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon had plenty of experience, capital of their own and know what they were doing. But if you thought it was expensive before, the Times Online reports that “Spotify is trying to drum up a valuation of close to £200m (roughly €230m) as it seeks new investment of between £20m (€23m) and £30m (€35m).”
Times Online further reports that If it Spotify achieves the valuation it aims for, the company will have almost trebled in value since it sold a £13m stake last autumn to Nordic investors Northzone Ventures and Creandum.
We are excited and for once, think the high valuation is for a very good reason. Just recently in an investor forum I heard a VC who had invested in Spotify proudly stating that Spotify is the next Skype, meaning that it will be the next big Internet service success story coming from the region. They certainly have the right direction and I don’t think I have seen any company have the same potential since. Regardless of whether Spotify ever reaches a $2.6 billion exit (with current exchange rate some €1.87 billion), or exit at all for that matter, I, for one, would invest in a heart beat.
Ebay just announced a plan for 2010 IPO of Skype. A lot can be said about the journey of the two companies so far, but we think it’s hight time for the relationship to end – For Skype’s and and for Ebay’s benefit. By not letting the Skype founders buy back the company, Ebay is sending a message of it’s own, but an Initial Public Offering pushed all the way to 2010 means practically nothing but that Ebay is not happy with Skype’s performance so far and that they are taking bids.
By pushing the date that far into the future and annoucing that “specific timing of the IPO will be based on market conditions” the company is effectively saying that anything can happen between now and then. They might not even let Skype go if it starts to perform or if it becomes a real strategic asset, which it hardly will.
The message to take away from this is that now even Ebay has confessed that there are no synergies between the two companies and that they made a bad investment -Ebay thought it would be an ideal way for buyers and sellers to talk to each other before the seller makes the purchase decision. All well, except that naturally the sellers don’t want to talk to all the buyers and answer all questions about the product. Skype is not a bad investment per se, but a bad investment for Ebay. I believe Skype will have a bright future ahead with eight percent of all international calls and $551 million in revenue, but I would not hold my breath to see an IPO even in 2010. Much can happen before that.
You can read more about the announcement from the press release.
Even though Skype is not a startup anymore, I believe there is a great story behind this news item. Wall Street Journal has written about Skype, how they are under pressure from eBay stockholders to create more revenue or be sold off. Reports show that Skype has hit 400 million users and has created some $145 million in revenues during the first quarter of 2009.
Sten Tamkivi told us in Tallinn this January that they have seen a rise in Skype usage as the recession hit the finance markets. Seems the figures support this strongly. Even though Skype has been built as a consumer product they are under pressure to create more revenue for their owners. One of the new areas they are targeting is the business communication industry as well as moving into the territory of other Nordic VoIP companies such as Rebtel.
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Whatever you say about the materialized synergies of Ebay and Skype after Ebay paid $2.6 billion in up-front cash and eBay stock in 2005 to acquire the IP telephony trail blazer, Skype is currently really making me smile by changing the landscape.
Despite, or perhaps because of, the spiraling global economics outlook, Skype last year earned US$550 million in revenue, a 44 per cent rise, year on year. During the last ArcticEvening that we held in Tallinn, Stem Tamkivi, Skype’s Chief Evangelist, told me during the panel that interestingly Skype actually saw the economic downturn coming quite early as their usage started to rise like it has not risen in years.
Not only that, according to PCWorld, Skype maintains that separate research points to 95 per cent of business users saving money using it, with about a third cutting their phone bills by half. Almost 80 per cent of the survey of ‘Skype for Business‘ users, showed that nearly 80 per cent had seen an increase in productivity and were working closer with their co-workers because of using Skype … [And] the research shows that some 62 per cent of business subscribers were using Skype to better communicate with their customers. Some impressive figures. For us, here at ArcticStartup, this is clear sign of the times.
Mark my words. If it wasn’t clear to you before that IP Telephony was taking its next significant step speeded up by the economic belt tightening in the firms, now it should be crystal clear and I believe we see sigficant even if gradual changes very soon in the way small businesses and individual employees start to exploit this opportunity in cross border communication.
I already personally make 100% of my business calls to Tallinn via Skype. Many firms in Estonia have even a separate Skype button on their website to contact them via Skype. This is surely something we could take upon and start running our business more wisely, not only across the Scandinavia and Baltics, but globally.
Yes, some still claim it does not cut it when it comes to the quality of the sound, and you just can’t afford to have a bad connection when you’re talking to customers. A fair point. But Skype 4.0, should now offer higher quality audio, through ’super wideband audio’ and a new bandwidth manager for video calling.
And we’re not alone in our praise. The Finish giant, Nokia, has also made a big move. On Tuesday Nokia announced that they are planning to fully integrate Skype into their devices:
The first Skype-enabled Nokia N97 devices will be rolling out from the third quarter. Using Skype on your S60 device isn’t new, but the level of integration with the service and the device is. Skype won’t be running as a separate application, but actually plugged directly into your contacts…
Congratulations for both companies and especially to the users. I have high expectations and it makes me hopeful seeing Nokia having the balls to stand up to the operators. The same enabler that works for small businesses can do much more for the developing countries, which are exactly the markets where Nokia is strong. This announcement alone could mean a bigger chance towards a higher quality of life over time to many people in developing countries than a whole lot of World Bank projects together. Yes, there’s a long way to go and now for example the WiFi hotspots are few and far in between in the least developed countries, but there’s still a lot of people who can benefit from this from South America to Africa.
Here’s an interview with Sten Tamkivi who’s the Chief Evangelist at Skype. We did the interview in co-operation with Toivo Tänavsuu from Tigerprises. Tamkivi will reveal for example what Skype is looking to do next, thing or two about alternative revenue streams for Skype and much more. See for yourself. Tamkivi will also be our panelist this week at the ArcticEvening.
Interview with Sten Tamkivi from Skype from Toivo Tänavsuu on Vimeo.
We are happy to announce our 4th ArcticEvening in partnership with Connect Estonia which takes place in Tallinn, Estonia on the 28th January from 6pm to 9pm at Von Krahl Bar (Rataskaevu 10/12). To see more on what type of an event ArcticEvening is go here.
The evening goes as follows: We kick off the evening with a very brief introduction off the Estonian and Finnish startups scenes. After that we will have 4 hot new startups pitching their products each having 3 minutes for their pitch. After each pitch we take a short Q&A. If you’re a startup see intructions below to apply.
After the startups are done presenting we will continue with a Panel of prominent figures from the Finnish and Estonian startup scenes discussing the respective startup ecosystems, startups, entrepreneurship, investing and everything that comes with it. To give you a taste, the high level panel include for example Sten Tamkivi of Skype.
We will end the evening with a lively networking where people from different scenes meet each other, find partners and make valuable connections that can lead to concrete business deals.
We will cap the participation to first 100 participants that sign-up. The participation is free, but once you sign-up you should show up or you’ll end up on our black list. We recommend to sign-up fast since all the previous ArcticEvenings have been sold out. You can sign-up below:
What: ArcticEvening in partnership with Connect Estonia
Where: Tallinn, Estonia at Von Krahl Bar (Rataskaevu 10/12, map here)
When: 28.1.2009 at 6pm to 9pm (the bar is open until wee hours for networking after the event)
View event on Amiando. The official Twitter/Flickr tag for the night is #arcticevening
Are you a startup? Pitch on stage!
If you would like to pitch at the Tallinn ArcticEvening on the 28th, do send us a short pitch (max 1 x A4) to events-at-arcticstartup-dot-com, where you outline:
1) The name of your team or company
2) Your contact information
3) The product/service idea and business model
4) Market size for your product or service
6) Why should you be picked to pitch
We will choose the four best startups. The deadline to apply is 21st January 2009! Possible travel costs will be paid by the startups.
If you would like to know about sponsoring opportunities for ArcticEvening drop us an email at ville-at-arcticstartup-dot-com
Sten Tamkivi is Skype’s Chief Evangelist, building relationships with engineering communities, media, governments and academia around the world. Based in Tallinn, he also looks after Skype Estonia, the company’s largest office globally as local General Manager.
Allan Martenson is currently the Managing Partner at MTVP. During his career as an entrepreneur, Martinson has been launching, managing and exiting several companies in the Baltic TMT sector, all of which became leaders in their respective industries.
Taneli, a serial entrepreneur and dealmaker, has an active history of startup life. Taneli has been an entrepreneur since 1999 and has headed multiple companies including; IRC-Galleria.net (Sulake Dynamoid), RunToShop, Magenta, MobileCRM, and Taika Technologies.
CONNECT Estonia is an entrepreneurial membership-based business network with the aim of stimulating the development of growth companies by linking entrepreneurs with know-how, venture capital and other business resources. Connect Estonia is the leading network for supporting start-up’s and technology growth companies in Estonia.
Connect Estonia has operated over 5 years across different sectors as an independent non-profit organisation bringing currently together some 70 member businesses.
Jüri Kaljundi is also bringing the OpenCoffee Tallinn to the ArcticEvening.
We have only 100 seats available. Remember that signing-up is binding even though it’s free!
A new Estonian startup, Daily Perfect, founded by Skype co-founder Ahti Heinla hopes to filter the noise from the web with their new innovation. They call it “predictive content personalization technology”, which should solve one of the most pressing issues for the Internet users that’s threatening to explode in the near future, namely finding relevant content in the web and filter out garbage and content that is not relevant to the user. DailyPerfect is currently in closed-beta.
The founders tell us that the company will debut this technology on a news site that “predicts users’ interests through an automated semantic analysis of information publicly available on the web.”
ArcticStartup Contributor Toivo Tänavsuu of Tigerprises, An Estonian blog, reports that Asko Seeba ,DailyPerfect CEO, explains that “the technology will create telepathic effect, because having done an analysis on you, it knows what you want to read without you having to define it. Well, of course, if you want, you can define your topics of interest, like people do in Google Reader, for example. But it’s not a must, and that’s the uniqueness of DailyPerfect.”
DailyPerfect is trying to do what for example Twitter, FriendFeed, Twine and RSS Readers have increasingly tried to do, which is to filter out only what is relevant content to the user from the wast amount of information that is daily created in the web. Where FriendFeed and Twitter, among others, are trying to do this by aggregating content from the people close to you or pulling interesting feeds from the people or sites that you’re interested in, DailyPerfect functions based on semantic analysis and is likely to use advanced microformats-like method to filter the data.
The DailyPerfect project has its roots at Ambient Sound Investments (ASI) and at Curonia Research. ASI is naturally also an investor and the service is currently being developed at the ASI Incubator in Tallinn.
The team is led by Co-Founder and CEO Asko Seeba, the former Engineering Manager at Skype; and Co-Founder and CTO Ahti Heinla — a partner at Ambient Sound Investments, and the former Lead Architect at Skype.
The witty guys at DailyPerfect have also figured out rather innovative way to filter out those who don’t quite have what it takes to work at the company by using ROT 13 substitution cipher. The chars (ascii codes of them) are increased by the hitchhiker’s number 42, which let’s you to encrypt their jobs section and be able to make sense of it (here).
Toivo Tänavsuu has posted a blog post at The NextWeb site about a video telephoning solution being backed by Skype founders. The project is being run under the name of Inkspin1. The service itself is trying to bring free online telephony to the everyday life of people through television. Inkspin1 is currently being hatched in the Ambient Sound Investments incubator.
The goal of the project is to make the service as simple to use as possible. “Today, we have a solution for computer users. Yet, for an average home user, video calling is too difficult and thus they are not taking advantage of the opportunity. Our goal here is to make such calls equally easy for kids as well as parents. So that if people know how to turn on the TV and change channels, they would know how to make video calls,” Martin Villig, the leader of the project explains.
The product development is carried out in Estonia, but the software development is being worked on in Beijing, China.Villig says that the amount of coders needed for a job this wide are more plentiful in China than in Estonia. Also in China they are closer to the vendor manufacturers that are expected to partner with Inkspin1 to integrate the necessary devices to their televisions to enable Television Video Telephony. The unit in China is being run by a Finn, Jussi Nyfelt, who has been working for Nokia in China.
Inkspin1 is still very much at a design stage as Villig states that the service is expected to be up and running in one to two years. Inkspin1 is currently recruiting lots of different talents.
It’s interesting to see ASI working hard on bringing a consumer service to the masses through better usability. The idea itself is nothing new, but then again it’s all in the execution. I’m guessing there are tons of ideas like this waiting to be improved. Yet further proof that you don’t always have to come up with a new idea to become an entrepreneur.
Seedcamp, an intensive week long event held in September in London targeted at young entrepreneurs from across EMEA, is one of the biggest opportunities to entrepreneurs on this side of Atlantic and it’s open for applications (here). Seedcamp’s whole raison d’etre is to provide seed funding and world-class connections for startups in exchange of a relatively small equity stake.
I recommend applying well before the August 10th deadline, as this might be one of the best decision you do as a entrepreneur that can set the pace for the years to come. To make a great opportunity absolutely unbeatable, we at ArcticStartup want to sweeten the deal for all the Nordic & Baltic startups: This is a huge break for any start-up, and thus I will single handedly interview your start-up, any Nordic or Baltic start-up really, that applies to Seedcamp. In fact you have two options. Here goes.
When you apply to Seedcamp before the August 10th deadline you will get a guaranteed 2 minute video interview by me or optionally you can submit a 60 second video pitch of your start-up/product/service, which ever you prefer. Naturally these will be posted on ArcticStartup. In addition, when you apply to Seedcamp you will automatically enter a draw in which we at ArcticStartup will randomly choose two start-ups that can have their logo (125×125px) on ArcticStartup front page for the whole month of September October. Additionally any start-up that will be chosen to take part in the actual Seedcamp week gets also their logo (125×125px) on the front page for the whole month of September October.
So regardless of whether you get to go to London, you’ll have a guaranteed way of getting a lot of visibility for your start-up just by applying (We are very flexible on what can be considered a start-up, but will use common sense to cut out any funny business and bad jokes if you try to intentionally game our generous offer). So, now only thing you need to do is apply(!) and write the following to the comments section after this blog post: ‘[your start-up's name here] has applied to Seedcamp and thus rocks!’ or if you prefer you can email me at ville [at] arcticstartup [dot] com. Start applying and I will contact you after I get the confirmation that your application has reached the organizers.
Seedcamp Week 2007 from Seedcamp on Vimeo.
To recap, the Seedcamp format in brief is this: You apply to be able to enter a Seedcamp week, where you learn the ropes and get to know all the people that matter in the European entrepreneur scene. The week will take place in September 15-18 2008 in Central London at UCL. Seedcamp will be holding an open application available online. Based on this, up to 20 companies will be selected to participate in the event. Seecamp can provide you with seed capital and a world class network of mentors that among others include Jyri Engeström (Jaiku / Google), Niklas Zennström (Skype / Joost) and Brent Hoberman (Lastminute.com) to only name a few. Read all about the format here.
The investment groups Ambient Sound Investments or ASI for short (from Skype fame) and Seed Fund Vera make an equity investment in Senseg, a Finnish company developing a breakthrough touch interface technology. The sum of the investment remains undisclosed.
Senseg is one of the startups whose journey to Israel to meet Israeli investors we have been following. It only makes sense that Senseg comes out with the announcement right before they pitch to the local VCs on Wednesday, May the 21th to capture the full benefit of the announcement.
Senseg has developed a new technology to produce touch-like sensations. The technology has a wide range of applications, for example generating the feeling of virtual buttons on smooth surfaces such as mobile phones and other touch screens. Iphone with a keyboard you can actually feel, anyone?
Dr. Ville Mäkinen, Senseg’s CEO, described the technology nothing short of revolutionary:
Senseg’s technology is something completely different. It is a novel communications technology based on human sensation. [...] The technology has unrepresented potential. I can be licenced easily and used in hundreds of different ways and applications. Senseg’s technology can therefore initiate a significant and fundamental change in how consumer gadgets are designed and used.
According to Moaffak Ahmed, Chairman of Senseg, the technology will be available for a select group of equipment manufacturers in the second half of 2008 and be officially launched when the first products are introduced to the market, which he expects to be in 2009.
Arctic Startup will follow Sensig and other Finnish startups throughout the week and report on how they manage to attract attension from the VC scene in Israel.
Biovakka Suomi Oy 
BitbarHelsinki, Wroclaw, Oulu, Cambridge
