Yuri Milner Sells Almost $60 Million In Mail.Ru Stock
This news is already a bit outdated by internet standards, but important nevertheless. Yuri Milner, the billionaire chairman of Mail.Ru has sold $59.5 million worth of Mail.Ru stock through his DST Global company. The sale happened towards the end of September, Forbes reports.
The move is significant for a few reasons. Firstly, the company went public in November 2010 so selling so much of his personal stake in the company so soon isn't a very good signal to the market. Furthermore, the stock has been heading downhill more or less since the IPO and this sale further pushed the stock down that day.
Richard White, CEO & Co-Founder of Uservoice.com Coming To Arctic15
We're thrilled to announce that Richard White, the CEO and Co-Founder of Uservoice.com is coming to keynote at Arctic15. Richard has an extensive career as developer and a designer, but still very much from a business perspective. Uservoice.com has been able to disrupt the feedback market with their easy to use solutions. Uservoice also offers a helpdesk solution these days. Below is Richard's full bio and we're very excited to have him with us.
Ricky Yean On Product Market Fit
Timo Herttua of Dealmachine interviewed Ricky Yean in Silicon Valley earlier this year on finding product/market -fit. Ricky Yean is the CEO and Co-founder of Crowdbooster. Ricky Yean and his co-founder went through Y-Combinator to find the right approach for them to build their service on. He explains in detail how they persevered through many turn downs, but managed to find the right approach in the end. Videos like this are very useful, even though they aren't the length of an academic lecture. We'll try to do our best in the future as well to bring you valuable content on how to improve your chances of success in being an entrepreneur.
TechStars Outshines Y-Combinator As The Top Startup Accelerator Program In The US
When you mention startups, funding, mentoring and networking are the most essential ingredients needed by each aspiring founder. There are great ideas waiting to be put into practicality and the only thing that keeps them from shooting from their roots has been the absence of incubators and accelerator programs. Things have been changing and a number of startup accelerator programs and incubators have surfaced, this is where ideas are carved into reality, founders are provided guidance, the essential tips to direct them towards success and the ever needed funding.
Startup Sauna Participants Announced
The Helsinki based Aalto Venture Garage is putting together in international incubation/acceleration program for very early stage projects that should turn to startups later this summer. In total, 17 teams from the region were accepted into the program from around the Baltic Sea. 3 teams were from Russia, 2 from Latvia, 1 from Lithuania and Estonia as well as Sweden and the rest were from Finland (9).
GrabCAD Makes Techstars Boston (After Winning Seedcamp London)
GrabCAD, the Estonian company that has created a CAD drawing sharing service for engineers, has been accepted to participate in Techstars Boston program. What makes this all noteworthy is for the following two reasons. According to our knowledge, no Northern European company has been accepted to any US based Techstars program and secondly, especially not after winning Seedcamp London earlier this year.
Has The Next Bubble Arrived?
A month ago, a Finnish newspaper interviewed me and asked are we living a bubble due to the high valuations of startups. Back then, I said no. Today, I'm not so sure anymore. My statement in that interview still stands true though on one part - there's no bubble in Northern Europe for sure, but I can't fully agree with regards to the US anymore. First, let me define a bubble in this case by stating it's an economic cycle where companies' valuations are highly inflated compared to a situation when calculated by business potential and metrics at large.
SeriesSeed.fi Brings Standardized Legal Documents For Startups
SeriesSeed.fi is perhaps one of the greatest startup related initiatives Finland has seen in a while. The site, put together by passionate individuals, gives away free of charge basic, standardized legal documents for startups. The documents cover the share holders agreement, term sheet and an investment agreement. Finland is a pioneer on this front as similar documents have been made available for the public only in a few startup hubs, such as Y-Combinator and TechStars. One of the key influencers of the SeriesSeed.fi documents are the SeriesSeed.com documents from the US.
Dropbox's Y-Combinator Application - Read&Learn
I came across Drew Houston's Y-Combinator application from a tweet by Dave Winer. He linked to a document online, where Drew Houston's Y-Combinator application lie in all its glory for anyone to read. Drew Houston is the founder behind Dropbox, the file-sharing service used by millions of individuals and professionals. We use it ArcticStartup and find it extremely useful.
Aalto Bootcamp, Y Combinator-esque Program For Students And Researchers
There's much talk about the new Aalto University in Finland, which is what came out when Helsinki School of Economics, Helsinki University of Technology and Helsinki University of Art and Design were molded into one school to rule them all. A lot of potential I'm sure, but wait, there's more!
There's a new kid in town. Many of our readers felt the waves from Aalto Entrepreneur Society last year. The student group headed by Kristo Ovaska hasn't been resting on their laurels. Now they are coming with a new Y Combinator-esque university accelerator program, Aalto Bootcamp. It's a five week program for students and researchers to get a feel for the joys of entrepreneurship and build a company. And yes, become a bona fide entrepreneur.
Is The Venture Capital Market Changing?
Earlier this month we had an ArcticEvening about startup financing and investments. The event was a success and a lot of topics were covered in general, but one area that could have been discussed more is the venture capital market at large and how it is changing - or is it?
Many blogs and online media sources, especially, have mentioned that during times of economic hardship innovation tends to flourish as talented people are laid off, or otherwise take the bait for entrepreneurship. Furthermore, large corporations that usually dominate the markets cut down on investments in order to cut down on expenses to keep the companies solvent and this gives excellent possibilities for startups to take market share.
Scred's Seedcamp Interview Trip
Editorial note: We're publishing Kristoffer's report from Seedcamp as they made it to the semi-finals for screening. Depending on the feedback we'll see if we should make this a habit in the future as well. Please let us know in the comments. Thanks to Kristoffer for an excellent report!
On the left two founders from Uniki, Teemu and Tuomas from Scred and Adil and Anthony from Entrip.
Last week we got fantastic news. Scred had been shortlisted as one of only about 40 companies to be interviewed by Seedcamp's distinguished panel — a group of prestigious international VCs. Considering that several hundred companies, from all around Europe (and even some from outside) had applied, this was huge for us. In fact Scred is the first Finnish company to make it that far, and was one of only two Nordic companies present.
