Aalto Venture Garage is putting together a busy two week program they call Bootcamp. Bootcamp is to be held four times a year and it’s an intensive program aimed at speeding up already existing early stage ventures. The first Bootcamp is to be run between September 17th and 30th. They are now accepting applications, but be quick – the deadline is September 8th. A mentoring program wouldn’t be anything without high profile mentors and well enough, Aalto Venture Garage has managed to secure a good lineup of Finnish startup professionals. Mind you, the program isn’t only aimed at Finnish startups – it’s open for everyone around the Baltic rim.
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The Next 100 Million Euro Business Might Come From Bootcamp
d/s Is After A Multi-Billion Dollar Market
d/s or DesignStory pitches itself as an “online community for design loving people”. DesignStory is going after the huge private sales market that has emerged globally in the recent years. DesignStory is a US-Finland based company. The main company is in the US, while a sister company, has been established in Finland. Currently there are quite a few people working with the company, but the founders Mia Lewin and Inka Mero, are the driving forces behind the company.
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Reminder: ArcticEvening In Stockholm On September 7th!
ArcticEvening Stockholm is less than a week away, so it’s time to mark down the 7th of September from 6pm to 10pm for a relaxing evening with like-minded entrepreneurs, investors and others in Obaren, Stureplan 2, Stockholm. We have a very interesting panel discussion lined up for the evening – it’s a very high profile discussion on venture capital with professionals from Ambient Sound Investments (Estonia), Nexit Ventures (Finland) and Creandum (Sweden) on the spot to answer your questions.
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Deal Machine – Not Just Another CRM Tool
Deal Machine, which just recently launched, is a new Finnish startup shooting to take on the CRM giants. The origins of this web-based customer database management system date back to the beginning of this summer when a group of young entrepreneurs started brainstorming on the idea. The product has been developed throughout the summer months and now, at the ripe age of some 90 days, Dealmachine opened to the public.
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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).
Planeto Launches “Massively Multiplayer Online Quiz” Social Game In Open Beta
Swedish social game startup Planeto has released its new game Planeto Quiz into open beta available for all players late last week. Planeto calls the game “the world’s first massively multiplayer online quiz”, MMOQ. The idea of the game is to combine elements from quiz competitions and online multiplayer games, e.g. World of Warcraft, including role-playing elements like character building and player interaction – but all packaged for global mass-market audience.
Onnistuu.fi Brings Competition To Online Signature Business
Antti Larvala, the co-founder and current CEO of Finland’s Onlinesignature Ltd, is sure that signing contracts online will be a big business in the coming years. Larvala’s company is behind the service Onnistuu.fi, which is a service aimed at handling both consumers’ and businesses’ signature needs online. Onnistuu.fi is thus competing in the same space with Signom, a Finnish company aiming to digitize signatures (and for full disclosure; our sponsor for this autumn).
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Project Getaway: Adventurous Entrepreneurs Living A Life In Paradise
Soon the Nordic summer will be over, and then the ice cold winter only gets closer day by day. So what is an adventurous entrepreneur to do? Well, how about going to Bali, live in luxury villas, and join 15 young, successful, fun and adventurous entrepreneurs?
This is exactly what Project Getaway is all about, and during September and October this year, we have organized a trip, which is designed to be a “dream come true” for any entrepreneur.
Summer Of Startups Demo Day (Updated)
Summer of Startups in Aalto Venture Garage reached a climax today as the ten companies that have been founded over the summer went on stage and to pitch their products and services. The companies have gone through two months of development and today their progress was measured. A jury of 5 members judged the development and gave feedback to the companies. The jury was Sami Heikkiniemi from Tekes, Antti Aarnio from Aalto Center for Entrepreneurship, Juha Ruohonen from Aalto Venture Garage, Kristo Ovaska from Aalto Venture Garage and Ramine Darahiba theHead Coach for Summer of Startups.
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Mindtrek Offering 20k€ In Prize Money (Again)
Mindtrek, being one of the most interesting internet oriented conferences in Finland, is again this year offering a lot of prize money for the winner of the Launchpad competition as well as for the runners up. Mindtrek is organised in Tampere, Finland between the 6th and 8th of October. The event has attracted more and more startups each year as it has began to profile itself as a good doer with huge sums of prize money. Last year Multitouch, a maker of modular touch screens, took home the prize money.
Mindtrek’s Launchpad competition has attracted a lot of good talent this year as well. Furthermore, Mindtrek has extended the deadline for the applications until 3rd of September. According to Mindtrek’s website; The MindTrek LaunchPad competition awards innovative new Finnish digital media products or demos – and the people behind it, who have the urge to make it big. If you feel like applying, do so here before September 3rd.
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Fruugo Moves On – Merges With UK Based DTL
One of the most debated startups, and companies in Finland, Fruugo, has reached a significant milestone. It has purchased Directory Technologies Limited (DTL) with its own shares and will also issue longterm financing through a share issue to fuel further growth in its ambitious quest. The new company will continue to operate under the name Fruugo and will also be registered to Finland. I sat down with Juha Usva (Fruugo CEO), Risto Siilasmaa (largest shareholder in Fruugo) and Dominic Allonby (CEO of DTL) to talk about the deal.
Risto Siilasmaa gave me a brief mention of the developments in the recent months, leading up to the merger. He said that they did not agree on the deal over night as talks had been continuing on an on and off basis for a period of months with DTL about various issues, including the merger. In the recent weeks, mutual interests finally met over the issue and they decided to go ahead with the deal.
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ArcticEvening Stockholm – 7th of September
ArcticEvening Stockholm is just around the corner! We have a very good lineup for Stockholm in order and honestly speaking, I hope we could have this panel in Tallinn and Helsinki as well.
Our theme for Stockholm will be Venture Capital and its state in the Nordics and Baltics.
Part of the questions will be provided by the moderator, but this time we’ll try something new as well. Since we have the top venture capital companies of the region in our panel – we want to open up the possibility for the community to ask your questions as well. Therefore, do leave your questions in the comments of this post and we’ll pick the best and most suitable ones.
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Ethics And The Freemium Business Model – Case Social Games
Earlier this week we covered the Games Developer Conference Europe 2010 (GDCE) session on Monetizing Social Games. Continuing on the same topic from a different angle, in another GDCE session, Teut Weidemann, lead designer of Settlers Online at a Ubisoft studio, provided further guidance on how to actually maximize the games’ monetization by game design. He presented, as reported by Gamasutra, that in order to succeed with the freemium business model, one should “exploit human weaknesses”, i.e. design the game so that it psychologically resonates with the deepest human feelings – so look into the seven deadly sins… Continue reading »
ArcticStartup And AaltoVG Go Baltics!
This is an exciting week for the Nordic startup scene: each country has seen a boom in startup activity during the recent months, so we have decided to organize a road trip together with AaltoVG, in an effort to bring the community closer.
The idea is to meet with the actors of each country, find new and interesting startup stories, potential partners, and friends!
Microtask Closes A Super Seed Round From Sunstone Capital
Microtask, a Finnish startup, has just closed a round of seed financing lead by Danish Sunstone Capital followed by a group of Angel investors (see list below). The size of the round is undisclosed, but the company told us that they should be able to get to summer 2011 with it. The round is their second seed round and it’s structured as more and more financing rounds nowadays are: It’s a seed round that’s lead by a VC who has also committed to lead the A round next spring. Why do a VC come in so early in with a group of Angels? Because they want to make sure the Super Angels with minifunds are not eating their lunch, that’s why. Even though Microtask news is positive and there exists hardly any threatening Super Angels in the Nordics, there is a lot of debate and tension about the general phenomena elsewhere. These tensions seem to be especially true in the US, where there’s more investors battling for the best deals.
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