While South Korea Named As Top Tech Market, Nordics Remain The Land Of Promise For Startups
While none of the Nordic or Baltic countries have made it to the very top, despite our wishes, we are proud to see Sweden, Iceland, Denmark and Finland in the top 10 of the latest ICT Development Index (IDI). These global rankings come from the Measuring the Information Society 2011 report, published by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). ITU is the UN agency for information and telecommunications technologies.
The top spot belongs to South Korea. The country has been termed as the most advanced Internet economy in the world and this is the second consecutive year that it has been ranked number one. This is by no means surprising given the fact that South Korea has:
Golden Rules Of PR By Christina Forsgård
Tech start-ups come up with great ideas and build brilliant products but often lag behind marketing them. Main reason for that is usually lack of resources: entrepreneurs would rather spend their limited funds on developing a product than on marketing it. However, most agree that it’s important for your product to be known and talked about. We talked with one the main PR gurus in Finland Christina Forgård (founder and Chairman of the Board of Netprofile) who shed light on the world of PR and shattered some common myths and misconceptions.
Where Are All The Girls?
Editorial note: This is a guest post by Natalie Gaudet, who is one of the key people behind Aalto Venture Garage and Startup Sauna.
You are sitting in an entrepreneurial event, in a room full of people. You look around and suddenly realize that the room is filled with men, boys and guys. Where all the girls you ask yourself?
Its a question asked more often than not. Aren't there women entrepreneurs? As one of the the lone girls in this field, I have decided to deeply look into the reasons why there are so few female entrepreneurs.
Greylock Partners Starts Tech Fund Worth $160 Million For Europe And Israel
Looks like the technology scene in Europe is getting another backer as the prominent US VC, Greylock Partners announced a $160 Million technology fund. The funds are poised to be used for Internet technology companies in the European region as well as in Israel. The firm has been pretty a notable mention with stakes in leading internet brands like Facebook, LinkedIn and Groupon.
Nokia Rebrands Ovi To Nokia Services
I am not sure how exactly to put this, but Nokia in my opinion is finally burning all boats to head forward in the right direction. Be it partnering with Microsoft to bring Windows Phone 7 powered devices or the much hyped riddance of Nokia from its legacy of the Symbian operating system. The company yesterday announced it is going to rebrand its Ovi Store to Nokia services. The transition is expected to initiate mid July this year and will continue to early 2012.
Swedish NetClean Helps Fight Child Pornography
NetClean, a Sweden based company uses image recognition in a new manner to tackle a difficult problem - child pornography. The company has a new approach to the problem and instead of using traditional image recognition, which has its problems, it has partnered with local law enforcing agencies and organisations to fight the problem.
Interview With Mikko Välimäki of Tuxera
We've talked about Tuxera quite a long time back at Arctic Startup. The Finnish based company is the industry leader when it comes to providing NTFS, exFAT, HFS+ and other file system solutions that guarantee Windows, Mac and any electronic device interoperability. It had been quite a long time since we last talked about, hence we thought it would be good to follow up on the current situation with a brief interview. And it's good that we did - Mikko Välimäki, CEO, revealed that they multiplied their revenue 7 fold last year (which would mean it's closer to half a million euros based on the public records)*.
VC Investment Criteria
In this series, supported by Nexit Ventures, we today take a look at investment criteria that venture capitalists use to grade startups. While these are sure to slightly differ from company to company, you'll be very well off understanding the implications and criteria Nexit Ventures uses to grade their potential investments. There are six points that investors usually look at and we'll take a look at each of these in detail. The criteria are management, market potential, exit potential, business model, technology and finance.
Reminder: Elevator Pitch Competition - Apply Now
This is a reminder that the applications for the Elevator Pitch Competition on June 1st need to be sent in at the latest by May 6th 8:00 PM EET to events (at) arcticstartup.com.
All Baltic and Nordic startups and growth companies are welcome to apply. The applications to the Pitch Competition must be made using this form.
The Elevator Pitch Competition is organized as part of the Third Annual Tallinn Conference by The International Technology Law Association and Enterprise Estonia. The conference will be held at the Swissotel Tallinn during May 31-June 1, and the Elevator Pitch Competition will take place in the afternoon of June 1, 2010.
See the details on the competition. You can now also register to the conference.
The conference theme this year is Preparing The Technology Company For Breakout: Challenges and Tools for the Nordic Region. Last year the conference drew in VCs, entrepreneurs and business owners, and naturally business lawyers (of the good type...) from all over the Nordic and Baltic countries, and also many guests from the USA.
To top it off, ArcticStartup will also organize ArcticEvening Tallinn in the evening of June 1st, to wrap up the conference and the pitch competition, and to create a networking forum for the international bunch in the city. Mark it in your calendar and stay tuned for more info!
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Photo by cpalmieri (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).
A New Writer Joins ArcticStartup
I am happy to announce that Karri Saarinen, an entrepreneur, web developer and an economics graduate student joins our ranks at ArcticStartup.
Karri will bring his strong technological understanding to our editorial team. This will enable us to dive even deeper into the technological innovations that the startups we follow bring into the market.
I believe that despite the hardship that the economy's downturn brings with it, it is also a healthy correction for the web 2.0 startup industry, even though this time our industry was not responsible for it like in the 2000s. Thus, I am sure that we will see healthier and more focused startups in the future and that is why we want to make sure ArcticStartup is better equipped than ever to write about the new startups. For this reason, Karri will be a a perfect addition to ArcticStartup team and give us the needed resources to bring you the news on the latest new startups across the Nordic and Baltic countries.
Welcome Karri!
