Mobile Backstage Hits 100K Users Interacting With Artists
We've covered the rise of Helsinki-based Mobile Backstage, a service that creates and maintains smartphone apps for bands. They've seen success creating an interactive fan club service that helps develop and maintain relationships between artists and fans, where now their platform has expanded to many Finnish and UK based bands. Today Mobile Backstage tells us the service has reached 100 thousand registered users on mobile devices alone. These users have also logged 4 million interactions in 2011.
Tinkercad Releases Major Update To Get Users Designing, Printing 3D Objects
Tinkercad has released a major update to get users designing and printing their 3D objects right away. The new release makes it painless to get to the CAD design tools, and leads users right into the design "quests" that teach the basics of creating objects in Tinkercad. For those without a consumer 3D printer at home, the release includes an integration with the 3D printing service offered by Ponoko, joining the the previously integrated services from Shapeways and i.Materialise. Tinkercad also supports leading consumer 3D printers like the MakerBot.
Risto Siilasmaa Set To Become Chairman Of Nokia
According to Helsingin Sanomat (in Finnish), and two of their independent sources, Risto Siilasmaa will be proposed to become the next chairman of Nokia. Currently, the Chairman of the board is Jorma Ollila. Siilasmaa is the largest shareholder and also the founder of F-Secure, a computer security company.
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).
Blaast Raises Funding, On Track For A Blowout Year
According to a blog post by GigaOM, Blaast has raised financing from some top tier investors. Blaast is a Finland based startup creating a cloud based mobile platform to change the way we think of user experience on mobile devices, says Joonas Hjelt the CEO of the company. We reached out to him to learn more about the situation as there is no official press release or announcement itself. According to the GigaOM article, investors include Ambient Sound Investments among others.
The Ineffective Finnish Innovation System Needs Redesign
While Finland has been one of the countries publicly to be noted for its gracious innovation support systems, many have wondered how all these investments and expenditures can be afforded. The simple truth is - we can't. The private Research Institute Of The Finnish Economy, Etla, has published a set of essays from the sharpest economists Finland has, that demand drastic changes to the way innovation is currently financed. While it is the lifeline of startups and growth companies, I'd argue many if not almost all would agree.
Siilasmaa: Direct Finnish Gov't Investments To Startups Should Be Stopped
Risto Siilasmaa, the F-Secure Chairman and Founder, one of the most well known private investors in Finland, has stated in a recent event that direct Finnish government investments to startups should be stopped. By this he means that the way they are currently done, should be stopped and we should leverage the wisdom in the market to make smarter investment decisions. His basic statement was that Finland has created the Vigo accelerator program which is full of serial entrepreneurs and the government investment funds should beinvested through these entities. He states that Finland should look towards Singapore and Israel, where the government leverages all private investments with certain restrictions.
CRF Health's Three Founders Are Buying Back Big Part Of Their Company
After a competitive bidding process Timo Ahopelto, Jarkko Joki-Tokola and Jaakko Ollila, the original CRF Health founding trio, have acquired all of 3i shares in the company for € 6 million. After the acquisition together they constitute the single largest equity holder of the Company. Other owners includes Nordic Venture Partners and SMAC Partners. CRF Health is the maker of electronic Patient Reported Outcomes (ePRO) solutions for the global clinical trials industry
In 2009 3i informed its portfolio companies that it wants to sell all of its venture assets from its portfolio as part of moving away from venture capital where it stumbled as many VCs have with the technology market crash. Clearly, this means that the three founders got to buy the company back with an attractive valuation as 3i categorically wanted to get rid of their venture investments regardless of whether they were successful of not. CRF Health was in the former group - It's globally number one in its industry regardless of whether you measure it by revenue (Expected close to € 25 million IN 2010) or by net profit (10-15% of revenue).
Oncos Therapeutics Raises € 4M From HealthCap To Develop Cancer Treatments
Oncos Therapeutics, a biotech company developing new cancer therapeutics based on its next generation oncolytic viruses, completed a € 4 million ($ 5.5 million) investment from HealthCap.
“This is the first step to turn our Advanced Therapy Access Program results into cancer therapeutics”, comments Pekka Simula, CEO and co-founder.
Oncolytic viruses enter into cancer cells where they aggressively replicate. The replication kills cancer cells while leaving healthy cells unharmed.
The next generation oncolytic viruses address the key challenges of cancer therapy: They mediate sustained anti-tumor immune response, are tumor selective, provide systemic response and have mild to moderate side effects compared to routine therapies.
The Verdict On The Vigo Survey – Part 2
Last week we reported about the first set of results from the Vigo survey. Today it is time to dive into the second set of results and see how the survey looks as a whole. In the first batch we learned that transparency was one of the key issues with Vigo that needed improvement. The second set of results will continue from question 7. Vigo system is exactly what we need in the Finnish startup ecosystem to create more high growth startups.
The Verdict On The Vigo Survey - Part 1
A few weeks back we asked the Finnish startup ecosystem to answer a simple survey on how the government backed Vigo accelerator program has worked in favor of the startups and the ecosystem as a whole. The time to answer that survey ended last Friday and we've now had a few days time to figure out what the data actually mean and how it could be used to make the program better. Needless to say, there are a lot of areas that need improvement. We'll go through the results below.
ArcticStartup's Vigo Questionnaire
Disclaimer: This article is targeted mainly for our Finnish readers. We're working to survey the effects of the Vigo accelerator program on the Finnish startup ecosystem. Other nationalities will surely find it useful once we release the results.
Vigo accelerator program has been a much debated issue here in Finland. Rightly so. It has been promoted with a lot of noise and much to its cause, it is the biggest change in the startup ecosystem for years. Now that it has been up and running for a while, we'd like to know every Finnish reader's opinion on the program and what you think and know of it.
Cleantech Invest VIGO: A New Venture Accelerator In Finland!
Vigo, the start-up venture accelerator programme, is continuing with its fourth venture accelerator.
The Ministry of Employment and the Economy in Finland accepted Cleantech Invest into its Vigo accelerator program. The new cleantech start-up accelerator will provide funding for early-stage ventures and create growth stories by combining cleantech expertise, industrial know-how and capital. Cleantech Invest Vigo is lead by managing partner Ismo Rautiainen, accompanied by Cleantech Invest founders Tarja Teppo (in picture) and Timo Linnainmaa. The team estimates that most of the Finnish deal flow will come from the clean energy area. The other promising sectors in Finland in terms of deal flow include energy efficiency, new materials related to energy technologies, recycling and waste management solutions.
Two Years Is Up, Jaiku Founders Leave Google
We just heard yesterday that Jyri Engeström, Jaiku co-founder, is leaving his Product Manager job at Google after his two year earn out is up. Today Petteri Koponen, the other Jaiku co-founder announced that he is leaving Google and joining Lifeline Ventures, a Finnish startup accelerator that's part of the Vigo program (See our previous stories on Lifeline Venture here and here).
This not such a big jump as Petteri worked at Google in a wide variety of roles that gave him an ideal view into what was happening in the market. First Petteri worked at the Android product team and subsequently on Google's New Business team, which continuously searches for and works with startups that partner with Google. It's exciting to follow how the Vigo program evolves. At least Lifeline Ventures seem to be already hard at work. Petteri told me that they have already done some investments even though the whole program is just coming together.
Blyk's Head Of Strategy And Business Dev Becomes A Co-Founder Of A Startup Accelerator
Timo Ahopelto, Blyk's Head of Strategy and Business Development and a co-founder and the founding CEO at CRF Health is leaving Blyk to join co-founders of a new Finnish startup accelerator, Lifeline Ventures. Lifeline Ventures is also part of the Vigo initiative (see our previous story on Lifeline Ventures here).
Ahopelto said that he has enjoyed his time at Blyk, being part of the very first team, but that he had been thinking about setting up a startup accelerator already for a while, and when the team heard about Vigo they didn't wait. Blyk moving to its mobile operator partnering model, Ahopelto assures that Blyk is growing fast and the future for the company as youth media looks promising, even though some have their doubts. As an example of the new evolved strategy is Blyk's first deal with Vodafone in the Netherlands, where Vodafone will provide Blyk-branded consumer services to young people under Blyk user experience and ad formats.
Government Backed Accelerators Chosen - March On Finland!
Vigo, a Finnish government run program to strengthen the currently rather dismal foundation of Finnish risk capital ecosystem and to create international venture accelerators and investors in Finland (see our previous story here), has come to an end and now it's time to see what we got. And it does not look that bad at all.
In total, three venture accelerators where chosen by the steering board, which was lead by Mr. Risto Siilasmaa, Chairman, founder and former Chief Executive Officer of F-Secure Corporation, Member of the Board at Nokia and a prominent business angel among other things. It seems that the Vigo steering board was looking into finding teams to cover various different industries and compliment each other instead of creating competition into the Finnish venture capital scene. They seems to have found three such 'mutually exclusive' teams to fit the bill, namely Lifeline Ventures, Lots and Veturi Venture Accelerator. Here's a short description of each in turn.
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.
Vigo Accelerator Only The First Part In Finnish Growth Ecosystem
I had the pleasure of meeting with Janne Känkänen from the Finnish Ministry of Employment and Economy, the operational primus motor behind the Vigo startup accelerator programme that the Finnish government has been putting together in the recent months. I for one am very suspicious of where the government wants to take the growth entrepreneurship as an ecosystem, but was very glad to find out that there has been plenty of productive progress happening behind the scenes.
The Vigo, startup accelerator, that we wrote about earlier (but did not know the name back then) is only one concrete realisation of this new programme and its results. Mr Känkänen also told us that growth entrepreneurship ecosystem has been understood to require special methods of assistance and the current economic climate has further sped up those requirements.
Finland Puts €45 Million Into High Growth Incubation Fund
Finland's Minister of employment and the economy, Mauri Pekkarinen, has announced last week that Finland will be adding more capability to commercialise innovations with a €45 million fund. The fund is put together from governmental organisations such as Tekes and Finnvera's seed financier Vera.
The aim of the new fund is to attract more international talent from overseas to help the companies grow and also enable more targeted investments. One of the ways international talent is attracted is the financial upside. The goverment is willing to invest into these companies, if a private sector individual (person or organisation) invests. Thus the financial upside is the invested amount in the company.
