Sofanatics Closes Seed Round From Top Tier Angels
The Helsinki, Finland based Sofanatics, has closed a seed round from high profile angels. Among the new investors is Jyri Engeström, former Jaiku Co-Founder as well as Aki Riihilahti, former Crystal Palace midfielder. There are more, but Sofanatics will not disclose their names nor the sum invested into the company at this stage. Sofanatics is a social TV service for sports fans.
Mikael Jungner Joins Sofanatics Board
The former Finnish Broadcasting Corporation (YLE) CEO Mikael Jungner has joined the social television startup, Sofanatics' board. Sofanatics is a social television startup where in the first versions users can watch television with others via a web service and share the passion. At the moment Sofanatics is focused around sports. Mikael Jungner, has left YLE as of this month and is now looking forwards to a political career along with some private sector agreements, such as the Sofanatics board seat.
Sofanatics Developing A Social Viewing Service
Yesterday we reported that a big name team has come out with a new startup called Sofanatics. The team consists of Toni Laturi, CEO (former Valve managing director), Asmo Halinen (Apaja co-founder) as well as Sami Kuusela and Peter Nyman, a familiar face in Finnish television as he hosts one of the most known Saturday night shows Uutisvuoto.
We have gathered some further information and believe Sofanatics is a service focusing on sociel viewing. Wikipedia describes a social viewing service as a practice revolving around the ability for multiple users to aggregate from multiple sources and view online videos together in a synchronized viewing experience. Typically the experience also involves some form of instant messaging or communication to facilitate discussion pertaining to the common viewing experience. This would fit our earlier prediction of 'something with video, football and doing all this is a social manner.'
Sofanatics - Sofa, Fanatics, So fanatic?
There's a new startup in town called Sofanatics. The company, based in Helsinki Finland, is in its early stages and has nothing but a simple splash screen on their website. Earlier today the team tweeted about this and thus broke the silence regarding the company - at least on the level that who's on board the startup. The team behind the startup is Toni Laturi, CEO (former Valve co-founder managing director), Asmo Halinen (Apaja co-founder) as well as Sami Kuusela and Peter Nyman. Nyman is a familiar face in Finnish television as he hosts one of the most known Saturday night shows Uutisvuoto.
Toni Laturi, Valve CEO leaves for his new startup [Briefly]
Toni Laturi, the CEO of Valve Internet Agency, will leave the company in June to start his own business. There are still no news on the startup, but we will keep a close eye on how things develop. Valve is also one of the co-founding companies in Tweehouse, the online virtual world.
More on this in Markkinointi&Mainonta (Finnish only, or use Google Translate).
Briefly is a new form of blog posts that will give a brief introduction to a topic written elsewhere. We want to provide our readers the best service and coverage of startup news from the Nordics and Baltics. This is one more step towards that direction.
