ArcticStartup

Estonia's Plumbr Gets Serious as a SaaS Memory Leak Solution

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 13:45:38 GMT

Estonia's Plumbr is transforming into a full featured SaaS product by adding more centralized features and a wider scope to their code performance detection service. Since launching about a year ago, the company has gained about 100 paying customers, including names like Ericsson, TeliaSonera, NATO. Since launching, the main benefit Plumbr provides is memory leak detection for Java, memory leak detection for Java, which can save your application from crashing and your development team many stressful days of work. For the average company, tracking down a memory leak could take a few weeks of pouring through code, but Plumbr's Java agent can track it down in about 30 minutes.

Before this SaaS update, clients had to install Plumbr on each workstation individually, and the alerts and results would only be visible to that workstation. With the new Plumbr 3.0 update, users can attach Plumbr to as many applications as they wish, with alerts now being created on the server side.

In the next month, the company will be adding solution guidelines to their product, allowing their clients to not only find the leak, but also have instructions how to properly patch it. A screenshot of this upcoming feature is attached at the bottom.

Also, the company is also moving away from just Java memory leaks. In Q3 they plan to offer solutions for other performance problems as well, such as optimizing cache usage, data structures, and a number of other tweaks.

There's a lot of research behind their new products. Plumbr has been gathering statistical data from the free Plumbr installations and applying data mining and machine learning patterns to detect problems. The company's vision is something closer to "attach Plumbr to your server and be insured against performance threats", so they'll soon be expanding themselves into a full performance SLA warranty solution.

Example result:

Swestartups Maps The Swedish Startup Scene

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 10:56:01 GMT

Everyone loves a good map, and one crowdsourced initiative is Swestartups, a startup map attempting to cover the whole of Sweden. We've seen other startup maps pop up, like StartupLocation covering Stockholm and Helsinki, as well as CPH startups covering the Copenhagen region and StartupNorway's coverage of Norway.

We're a fan of these initiatives because it's good to know your neighbors, and it's useful for showing outside investors and entrepreneurs where the clusters are. We're currently revamping the "Startups" tab of our site to build a much more useful product, so someday soon we'll collect and present the whole region better in ways like this.

Currently there's only around 60 startups listed on Swestartups, but it's still useful for getting an impression of cities like Malmö where we haven't visited yet.

The map can be found here.

iZettle Begins Global Expansion With Mexico

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 18:29:08 GMT

When we wrote about iZettle's partnership with Banco Santander, we mentioned that this is a big step for the company that will open doors to growth and expansion. Today, this is becoming a reality as iZettle announced its launch in Mexico today. Not a big deal, right? Wrong.

First of all, this is their first expansion outside of Europe, meaning that the company is on a path of growth in global markets. Strong presence in Mexico, the worlds 13th biggest economy, gives them the footing that the company needs to quickly spread across the Americas.

Then you need to consider the fact that this was done in a tight partnership with Banco Santander, the largest financial group in Spain and Latin America with a very strong presence in the US. Considering that Banco Santander is also a strategic investor in iZettle, it can be expected that they are going to help iZettle enter their strongest markets worldwide.

As Jacob de Geer, the co-founder and CEO of iZettle commented, “This is a very important day for us. Shifting from local to global operations in financial services in less than three years of operation is a major accomplishment from our perspective.”

The company also carefully considered the specifics of the market, as Chip & Pin is not common and magnetic stripe cards are still the norm.

To tackle the issue, iZettle teamed up with Thomas Sandell and his agency Sandell Sandberg to create a Chip & Magstripe card reader that will be sold at $499 (MXN) / EUR 29 in Mexico.

As de Geer told ArcticStartup, "iZettle's Chip and PIN device is enabled by bluetooth technology. Chip and PIN is mandated by certain schemes in Europe. This is not the case in Mexico, where the majority of EMV cards issued are verified by signature only. This is the start of big change for Mexico, where accepting card payments has never before been an affordable option for new or small businesses."

Senior Vice President at MasterCard Worldwide, Ricardo Ibarria also commented on the news: "Mexico has a great potential for growth in terms of card acceptance and the increasing use of smartphones is a great opportunity to expand the number of businesses that accept card payments."

Mexico also has a very large street economy with a lot of individual vendors, shops and pop-up stores, who all want to allow more payment options. Combine that with the growth of card acceptance and you will realize that iZettle is entering the right market at just at the right moment.

This news also demonstrates that iZettle is getting ready to face their US based competitor Square, who have so far only launched in United States, Canada, and Japan. Considering that iZettle is already in eight countries with more to follow, it would not be too far fetched to expect them to enter Squares home turf, especially if iZettle is to continue partnering up with multinational corporations such as MasterCard and Banco Santander. At that point the real battle of mobile payments will commence. Too bad if credit cards will become obsolete in 5 to 10 years with advances in NFC and other creative payment solutions.

Top Image Courtesy Of Shutterstock // ChameleonsEye / Shutterstock.com

Stockholm's Reupp Crowdfunds Good TV Back On The Air

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:40:28 GMT

There's some sort of cruel inefficiency in the world when good TV shows get canceled only to be replaced by some mindless nonsense. Instead of just signing another internet petition the next time a show got canceled, Stockholm-based Reupp is organizing fans as a lobbying group to come together and support their show creators.

With this mission in mind, they've put together a crowdfunding mechanism to allow fans to pool together their money to donate to the producers or creators of the show. Founder and CEO John Noren explains that the point of it is to send money where it makes the most sense. He says in their research they've come across too much bureaucracy from Hollywood's side, and rather than negotiating with network executives themselves it makes sense to become a lobbying power under a creator or producer that can point to the Reupp campaign and lobby on its behalf.

"The idea is, what is the easy, direct, transparent way of supporting a show for a consumer? If it were a band, you can go to the show and buy a t-shirt. With a show you cant do that," explains Noren.

A notable angle of Reupp is that it leaves it up to fans which shows they want to support through this sort of crowdfunding. What's interesing is that it's not just inactive shows, like Firefly, that are raising funds, but also shows like Game of Thrones, which seems to be nowhere near dire straights.

The platform launched only two months ago, so it's still small money behind shows like Chuck and Twin Peaks at the moment, but it might be fun to see where this takes them.

Nielsen started tracking Netflix views this past February, showing that they're getting with the times, but good shows can still be canceled. Something should change because it's unlikely that people will stop illegally downloading their shows, or that the families with Nielsen boxes will get a better taste in TV. Reupp still needs to prove it has real-world impact, but at least it's proactive, which has potential.

Do Discussion Boards Need An Update? Helsinki's Iroquote Thinks So

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:44:12 GMT

A new discussion board concept beta launched in Helsinki last week, called Iroquote. It's designed to bring an update to community groups, and innovates on the discussion board concept to be easier to browse on mobile while fighting information overload. Google Groups, Facebook groups, or Reddit were designed for the desktop age, and browsing Iroquote you realize maybe things could be better.

Everyone seems to have strong preferences for forums and commenting, and Iroquote is different enough for me to take some getting used to. For example, Iroquote doesn't do threaded comments, which has become the main discussion board concept I'm used to from sites like Reddit and Hacker News. Their argument is that when browsing on mobile, threaded comments waste precious screen real estate, and they think they can present the conversation better by showing only the most relevant content while still allowing you to dig into the discussion.

In order to give you a summarized conversation, Iroquote selects the most valuable replies, based on likes, replies, and some randomness, and then puts all of them together. This puts the "read more" buttons in between posts, rather than a "next page" at the end, which is pretty convenient.

And for replying and keeping track of conversations, instead they see their strength in how they link responses to the original text. For example, if you wanted to reply to someone's comment, you just hover over that paragraph and click the reply message box.

The other interesting factor with Iroquote is who gets the moderation powers. Rather than giving them to the people that start the topic, Iroquote gives it to the people who consistently receive the most praise from the community.

"The main solutions that exist, like Facbook groups or Google Groups, are admin based. That concept we are going against, so we are building platform where people can gain leadership by how many likes they get," says Andre Medeiros, cofounder of Iroquote.

They've been in Alpha for about 8 months, so there are a few forums like Entrepreneurship and Technology that have a decent amount of content and discussion. Additionally, anyone can start their own forum topic, so if you've got a topic you like talking about, it's worth checking out.

They have a ways to go before they hit the critical mass that is monetizable, but it's the kind of concept I can get behind. Seeing Iroquote at this stage reminds me of 2011's Arctic15, where we had Steve Huffman, the founder of Reddit, talk about his experiences starting up, which we have a video of here.

Swedish STD Triage App Launches On Android

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 11:29:41 GMT

Got a skin problem? iDoc24 is a teledermatology startup from Sweden with a few apps that allow users to send anonymously pictures of worrying skin conditions to a team of licensed dermatologists and get a response within a day. After several years of being available on the web and the App store, today iDoc24 launched their latest app STD Triage on Android. The name of the app speaks for itself - it helps anxious users get the dermatologist's advice on their possible STD symptoms by sending completely anonymous pictures of their private parts.

Since 2008, the startup has grown from the Sweden-based service into a global healthcare platform available in five languages. After STD Triage US launch on iOS in March 2013 the company now offers three different services and thus approaches global healthcare market on multiple fronts.Their first service iDoc24 allows anyone to consult dermatologists about various skin problems like rash or moles.

Releasing the STD Triage app was a natural step for the startup given that 30% of all cases sent by users to their platform concern problems below the belt. To break into the market, iDoc24 partners up with STD sites and clinics.

“We offer a service that stands in between Google search and a visit to a dermatologist”. To be on a safe side in the risky game called healthcare, iDoc24 CEO Alexander Börve emphasizes that the service is not intended as a substitute for a doctor’s visit. Neither do they position themselves as a diagnostic service. They consider themselves a screening tool which gives better key words to search than Google and in fact connects users with real experts in dermatology who are qualified to provide first advice on the next steps to deal with a skin problem.

The iDoc24 app is free to download, but consultation with a dermatologist will cost you $40. The company currently receives 100 cases per week from those who think that a quick answer to quell their anxiety is worth this fee.

To disrupt a B2B sector of the digital healthcare market, they offer iDoc24 PRO app, a solution that enables family doctors, clinics and pharmacies to communicate remotely with the global network of dermatologists. Börve adds that iDoc24 PRO is a great complement for a family doctor who needs a fast and effective tool to communicate with a dermatologist about difficult cases.

Digital health care space has recently generated many startups like Medicinera.se, NurseBuddy, HealthPuzzle as this road may lead to healthcare institutions’ finances and wallets of smartphone users who seem to be willing to pay when it comes to health concerns especially such a sensitive topic as STD.

Penetrating the US market with STD app is indeed a bold step, however the startup has no illusions that the path will be easy. They are equally aware of the fact that they will have to push hard to become reliable in the eyes of the American smartphone users. On the other hand, they know their assets compared to their US competitors like Direct Dermatology: iDoc24 offers anonymity to users and simple working business model for investors. It is interesting to see what change Android launch will bring to their metrics.

Is this FundedByMe’s Zach Braff?

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 15:02:39 GMT

When Zach Braff chose to raise money for his latest film, Wish I was here, he chose Kickstarter – and crowdfunding. Although the ethics of letting such a big name onto Kickstarter were questioned, the platform is adamant that his presence drew others to the platform – and improved others’ chances of getting funding.

According to Kickstarter, Braff’s film (along with a Veronica Mars one around the same time) “brought tens of thousands of new people to Kickstarter. Sixty-three percent of those people had never backed a project before. Thousands of them have since gone on to back other projects, with more than 400 000 USD (300 000 EUR) pledged to 2 200 projects so far. Nearly 40% of that has gone to other film projects.”

One would be hard pressed to compare Kickstarter and FundedByMe’s “classic crowdfunding”. Before Martin Borgs joined the crowdfunding scene, the largest amount raised for a Swedish film was 393 646 SEK (45 000 EUR) and FundedByMe hadn’t seen a project raise more than 260 000 SEK (30 000 EUR).

Borgs made more in the first 2 weeks his latest film project was on FundedByMe, raising 550 000 SEK (65 000 EUR) in total.

Though substantial by Nordic crowdfunding standards, this amount still isn’t enough to cover the film’s entire production cost. Unlike Zach Braff in the US, Borgs is looking for supplementary funding from media houses and TV stations for the film, which he anticipates starting filming in earnest in the Fall this year.

Known for his internationally acclaimed film “Overdose”, about the financial crisis, Borgs’ latest film will be an examination of the waste of tax money in Sweden. He plans to release the film in 2014, a big election year in Sweden.

There is no question that Borgs put in a lot of hard work to get the funding and coverage that he has – and that entrepreneurs choosing to crowdfund in future will look at his success as the benchmark for Nordic reward-based crowdfunding. But FundedByMe’s funders haven’t shown the deep pockets that Kickstarter’s have – something that needs to happen for entrepreneurs and less well-known filmmakers to embrace crowdfunding here.

Will Borgs’ crowdfunding experience change the crowdfunding game in the Nordics? It is entirely likely that Borg’s name alone attracted new people to FundedByMe – one can only hope that some of these people will go on to support other projects too.

LeadDesk Hires New CEO, Continues to Grow on Revenues

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 14:41:47 GMT

You may not consider call center technology all that sexy of a product, but consider that Helsinki-based LeadDesk's revenue grew by more than 70%, hitting €1.2 million in 2012. The company has grown off of cash flow, making them a nice ICT success story in the Nordics.

LeadDesk was founded in 2010 by Lauri Pukkinen and Olli Sirkiä, who noticed the call center vertical had been slow in adopting cloud technologies, with some legacy systems dated back to the 80's.

They then built their own cloud call center software, choosing to focus on outbound-intensive calling, From 2010 to 2012 the company saw more than 1,000% growth, putting the company in third place in Deloite's Rising Star category.

LeadDesk’s customers include media companies Otavamedia, Fonecta, and Talentum and software company Visma. More than 100 call centers and product owners in the Nordic countries rely on the LeadDesk platform, which handles more than 1 million calls per week.

The company announces they've recently they've picked up the three-man IT department behind the TeleForce group, which once built its own in-house software for telemarketing. Going forward, LeadDesk will take responsibility of the business critical telecom and campaign management systems used by TeleForce’s 600+ call center employees. TeleForce supposedly runs the largest outbound-focused call center in the nordic region, and was recently acquired by Private Equity firm Senica Partners.

Now they have also hired Olli Nokso-Koivisto from Siili Solutions as their new CEO. With him onboard, their goal is more substantial growth and footprint across the Nordic countries, hoping to hit three million in revenues by the end of the year.

"It's fine-tuning the current sales process and really getting the product tuned. As it is, it scales to market quite well. But we need an even better understanding of the target markets, and go there with more strength locally," says Nokso-Koivisto.

"We have a very strong product, we have a very strong sales team, and we have a very good strategy. So there are the three points on which we are founded."

Twheel Launches on iOS and Android to Drive Deeper Twitter Analytics

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 11:30:00 GMT

Today online publishers have to earn their audience through catchy headlines in social media, but it's rough to gauge your Twitter engagement, aside from retweets and favorites. Twitter's new analytics page gives you some idea of the metrics you can easily derive, but twheel, a Finnish mobile Twitter client, can provide more information to publishers and brands about the actual attention each one of their tweets receives.

"Media doesn't own the reader anymore," says CEO Kalle Määttä, referring to how back in the day media consumers were locked into a newspaper subscription or three TV channels, but today online media consumers pick and choose the headlines that are interesting.

For users, the twheel interface is intuitive, but does have a little learning curve. The app's main interface looks like a daisy with about 30 petals, which also has the logos of the twitter accounts in your feed.

The petals already give you some information, like a bar graph they provide information on how many retweets a post has received, letting you know if something is potentially more interesting than others.

But Tweel isn't just a research tool for brands and publishers - it's worth the download just to try out the user interface, which I find refreshing. By scrolling with your thumb, you can keep you eyes in the same place, letting you crunch through the uninteresting tweets quickly, but easy to stop on ones where you might find better.

This functionality is the main way twheel can provide deeper analytics, by allowing you to see how much brand value and interest you provide followers with. Social media has become more and more of a science, but retweets and favorites have gotten polluted, thanks to the number of bots and auto tweets.

”Measuring attention gives us the superpower of defining whose tweets people enjoy the most, and who pollutes our timelines with low quality waste”

twheel can be found in the App Store and Google Play.

If You Bike, You Probably Need This 'Smart' Brakelight

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 16:11:35 GMT

We like to keep our eyes on crowdfunding projects from the region, so this time around we bring to you Velodroom, a startup from Estonia that just launched a campaign on Kickstarter.

The big idea? Smart bicycle brake light. How can a light be smart? For one it knows when to shut itself off (Hint: when the bike is stationary) and when to start blinking again. It also detects deceleration, allowing it to act as a brake light.

This might not sound like a big deal, but when you bike everyday, this will make your drive safer and more convenient. There is no need to turn the light on or off and you can easily charge it using a USB cord. It looks great as well.

It even detects the current level of ambient light and adjusts the intensity of your light accordingly. The only downside to the project is that perhaps the team should have taken it one step further. Would be great to have a built-in GPS to detect and log your speed, geo-location, and other interesting and unexplored statistics of your daily commute.

The team does promise that this will not be a one-off project and hopes to provide a range of hassle-free biking accessories for both road and extreme bikes.

Velodroom’s goal is to raise at least £34,600 and at the time of writing, they have already raised £3,058. This is quite good, considering they only launched yesterday. You can track their progress here.

Wish There Was A 99designs For Tattoos? Check out Tattoodo

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 14:52:40 GMT

The internet has done an awesome job of allowing us to share pictures of bad tattoos, but it hasn't necessarily helped people get better tattoos. At least these days it's easier to shop around online to find what style and quality local artists have, but it's still tough to ensure you get the exact design you have in mind before you go to a tattoo shop. That's all changing with the launch of a new Copenhagen-based startup, called Tattoodo, that is doing for the tattoo industry what 99designs did for graphic design.

That's actually the way the concept started. Co-founder Mik Thobo-Carlsen was working with Johan Plenge, the CEO of Tattoodo on another project, when one day Plenge said he wanted to get a tattoo, and mentioned that he wished there was something like 99designs for tattoo designs. Thobo-Carlsen brushed it off in passing, but Plenge came back later saying he wanted to start something where you could pool tattoo artists for design sketches, and then pay for the best one.

Getting more serious about the concept they got another friend of theirs, Henrik Albertsen, to be their chairman, and put together a short presentation. They knew that they needed someone deep in the tattoo industry to help make connections and be sure they were tailoring their product correctly, so they reached out to Ami James, one of the top guys in today's scene, who agreed to a call.

They found out later James gets a ton of proposals, but luckily the night after the pitch James mentioned it to one of his friends, who ran the numbers, and said he had to get in on this.

"Ami [James] called back the next day and said we should meet," says Thobo-Carlsen. He suggested Wednesday, so the team offered to fly to Miami from Copenhagen to meet. James said it would much easier for everyone if he just came to Copenhagen, so he flew over and ended up staying about five days. They all agreed on the concept and started the company.

The way the custom made concept on Tattoodo works is that you can pay $100-300 to describe what you have in mind. The tattoo artists on Tattoodo start sketching up stuff, and you can comment and rate sketches to drive the focus. By the end of the week, hopefully you have the exact design you want.

Once you have the design, you can take it to your local shop. Of course it won't be a 100% replica, but the idea is to nail down the concept you're looking for, or to source part of the tattoo concept you didn't even know you were looking for. Additionally, they're building up a network of local tattoo shops that are trusted, so they can send you to the right place once you order a design online.

Their custom-made contests are going really well, but at the moment they're reluctant to have too many contests open in the beginning, as they are still getting designers onboard.

"In their free time, all of these [tattoo artists] are sitting around drawing anyway, so they don't mind if they don't win, because they can still put them up on their portfolio. But on 99designs I'm guessing a lot of these designers aren't participating as a hobby," says Thobo-Carlsen.

Launching next week is another section of the site, focusing on ready-made tattoos designs that you can purchase to use. Having Ami James on board gives them a great connection to talent, meaning other top artists, like Henning Jorgensen are selling their pre-made designs.

Design risk is a big factor in deciding to get a tattoo, so I predict there's a huge market for Tattoodo, especially in the un-inked portion of society like myself that might buy a concept just to have something more concrete to think about. Yeah, I should get a tattoo.

Bootstrapping A Startup: The Mentimeter Way

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 11:08:07 GMT

If you were to google “bootstrap”, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a statistical technique. Similarly, if you read the biggest magazines you’d be forgiven for thinking that most successful startups take in outside funding. On the contrary: many bootstrap.

Bootstrapping a business is a less-talked about – and thus less glamorous – way to start a business. It’s nevertheless not just a potential way to get a business going, it can also be a very nimble and responsive way to run a start-up, one that entrepreneurs choose for the independence it gives them.

One Nordic start-up that made this choice is Mentimeter, which has been discussed on ArcticStartup before. ArcticStartup spoke to Johnny Warström, one of the company’s founders, about why their company chose to bootstrap – and how they got to the point of hiring an outside CEO. Indeed, deciding not to take outside funding was a deliberate decision to prioritise the founders’ independence:

”Not taking in outside capital via VCs is about the people engaged in the company owning the future of the company. We are very interested in the start-up environment and we’ve seen many ways to build a company; when we had the chance to choose ourselves it was clear that only letting people close to the vision of Mentimeter should influence the company, not outside cash.”

Nimble, customer-centric approach

When the company’s founders started Mentimeter, they decided to run a very customer-centric development approach. In November 2011 they released the first version of Mentimeter, then a free audience response system, to the public. Warström describes their first release: “Mentimeter has always been an iterative, minimal viable product, so we did the first skeleton of the product because we realised that there wasn’t a product like it on the market and we wanted to know if there was a customer need for it”.

On release, they got feedback from their first customers and decided to develop a premium version of the product for companies and organisations.

One of these customers was a large corporate, who started using their basic service and later asked them to expand Mentimeter to incorporate some tools that they needed. The corporation, says Warström, “were not really interested in developing an interaction tool themselves – that wasn’t their core – but they wanted that functionality from someone, and they couldn’t find it on the market”.

“The evaluation we did was if this functionality can be used in our base service, then we’ll do it. If we see that other companies that use Mentimeter basic will pay for the service developed after a single customer’s request, then we will do it. We don’t want to make the base service very spread out – or make special features just for one customer. We still want a very clear roadmap, with features that all customers can use. And the things that they requested, we’re converting users on today.”

This expansion included a 100-point prioritisation tool and a 2-dimension rating tool.

And the Mentimeter team are talking expansion again: “We’re talking to 2 large universities in Sweden, who want to work on the same model – where we can distribute the service to the rest of our community, as long as they get the services that they need, at the right cost.”

Today, the company has hired an outside CEO – the founding members of the company make up the board and are still as engaged with the company as before, and have kept up their day jobs.

Openness to new ideas

Despite opting not to bring on outside investment, the founders nevertheless decided to pass the reigns to an outside CEO; seemingly in contradiction to their emphasis on independence, because they saw three benefits.

Firstly, says Warström, “By including an external CEO, without the connection of being one of the founders, we could more clearly define the rules … So you can put on the hat of a board member, but when it comes to daily operations you are under the CEO and the CEO is now our operational boss.”

Secondly, the strengths of the actual CEO, Oscar Mo: “We are much in need of people who just want to be engaged in Mentimeter and the CEO is really good, as a person, to engage these people.”

Finally, the founders saw the value of a fresh pair of eyes: “We would much rather employ someone who can challenge our review of how to manage the company, the actual features of the company and the roadmap. Getting someone in who believe in our vision but has an external view is very valuable. That second opinion is what will take us to the next step.”

What can we take away from this?

This early stage product release allowed Mentimeter to guage the market for their service – and the lean and iterative development model they adapted meant that they could respond quickly and directly to customer suggestions.

Many still consider the attentions of Venture Capitalists (VCs) and Angel investors validation of their business ideas. This is despite a 2012 report in the US (http://www.kauffman.org/uploadedFiles/vc-enemy-is-us-report.pdf) which suggested that VCs in the US are “failing” to identify quality start-ups.

However, by starting out with a “lean startup”, releasing it to the public and acting on their feedback, Mentimeter could take their time and build a relationship with their consumers and tailor their solutions according. Moreover, in doing this, they discovered that among their consumers was a large corporate with whom they could build a mutually beneficial relationship. This is a far clearer way of identifying who values a company, and why.

Despite having clear ideas about the direction the company could take, the Mentimeter founders nevertheless saw the value in bringing in fresh ideas and fresh talent into their company as they grow. Although the company is still small, with only the CEO a full-time employee and the rest hired on a short-term consultancy basis, the company has remained true to the ideas that the founders set out with:

“We never wanted to just buy people out, but instead engage people who believe in what we believe in and build a company with a lot of ‘why’. Mentimeter’s ‘why’ being that we want meetings between people to be fair, interactive, innovative and fun, as well as contribute to a more democratic world. It’s easy to see how this vision would have been compromised if we brought in external investment early on.”

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A PhD student and voracious reader based in Stockholm, Claire Ingram is interested in open innovation, co-creation, start-up funding, public policy and pictures of puppies on Reddit. You can contact her on Twitter @Claire_EBI.

Norwegian Fund Bets Big On Encap Mobile-ID

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 09:42:00 GMT

Oslo's mobile authentication firm Encap has announced a major new investment from the ProVenture seed fund. The exact amount hasn't been disclosed, but rumours circling the web put the figure around the $2 million mark.

It's the second major investment in Encap from a Norwegian backer, adding to earlier money from Alliance Ventures. Norwegian startups tend to look abroad for funding rather than rely on the small domestic VC scene, so today's news is a welcome change.

Encap provides simple software-based, two-factor authentication and digital signing for the enterprise and banking sectors. The mobile technology is well-established in Norway, approved by the Norwegian Banks’ Standardisation Office, and used by banking clients including Santander Consumer Bank.

"Awareness of multi-factor authentication is increasing as a result of high profile security breaches and moves by industry giants to invest in new ways to defend their users and themselves," says Thomas Bostrøm Jørgensen, CEO, Encap. "There is enormous demand for alternative technology that takes advantage of mobility and the cloud to offer a solution that’s simply better and more transparent to the user. ProVenture Seed has a track record of helping technology companies succeed in a global market."

“Our dream is to deliver uncompromising speed, security and simplicity to users and businesses around the world. ProVenture Seed will help us to realise this dream,” concludes Jørgensen.

Following their success in the Nordic Startup Awards, Encap opened a Palo Alto office in February. With Twitter, Google, and LinkedIn all experimenting with two-factor authentication, it's clear why ProVenture is betting big:

“Encap is a company with the potential to disrupt a market that will be worth more than $5bn by 2017," says Herbjørn Skjervold, Managing Partner, ProVenture Seed.

“Multi-factor authentication combined with risk profiling is now seen as the replacement for passwords, but the exact mechanism to deliver this level of security is still in flux. This presents an enormous opportunity. Encap has all of the advantages of the systems currently being adopted by the big players, but none of the downsides – it is well positioned to take advantage of dissatisfaction from both users and service providers.”

A former IT Project Manager, David Nikel now works as a technology writer in Norway. He helps Norwegian companies communicate in English and reports on the entrepreneurial scene for ArcticStartup.

Top Image Courtesy of Shutterstock // Digital Security

Playmysong Updates Android App, Talks Growth

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 10:20:13 GMT

Playmysong has been on a roll. Since July of last year, the web and mobile based jukeboxes have opened up in 32,000 location, and currently around 50 businesses in Helsinki are using Playmysong, including restaurants, cafes, and even a gym. On the business side Playmysong has a partnership with Mood Media, the largest distributor of music for small businesses in Europe. This means it's super simple for Mood Media customers to add Playmysong to their locations, and it helps Playmysong scale up sales.

One big change that's come out with today's Android release is the ability for party hosts to un-restrict the playlists the jukeboxes are attached to. So instead of letting party guests just choose songs from your playlist, you can open up your guests to the whole Spotify library. It sounds like a risky proposition (depending on the crowd you're with) but is a fun feature.

An additional feature is that you can see Playmysong jukeboxes on a map, allowing you to find the nearest party and explore music in your city.

Today they've launched their updated Android app, which brings the look and feel into line with their recently updated iPhone app. Here it's easier to find nearby venues using Playmysong, and finding and adding tracks is a smoother process. In the future they're going to move more social by placing a greater emphasis on the people that chose the music, and also make it easier for bars and venues to visualize upcoming requests on a screen.

It's becoming more and more of a mature product, so check out Playmysong the next time you're at a bar with a Playmysong sticker. Better yet, let's throw a party at your house tonight.

The Playmysong Spotify app can be found here. Links to all their platforms can be found on the Playmysong website.

Truecaller Hits 20 Million Users, Shares Their Marketing Tips

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 16:26:37 GMT

In February we wrote how Stockholm-based Truecaller has hit 11 million users as they released name search to their crowdsourced reverse phone number lookup. It seems they've picked up the pace, as today they've hit another milestone of 20 million users. You've got to be doing something right if you're hitting numbers like that, and luckily they've shared how they've built their app to correctly target social sharing. It's an interesting read, so I encourage you to check it out.

The post can be found attached below:

Engineering the Word of Mouth by Truecaller

Startup Sauna Graduates 15 Companies, Ylimutka Passes Baton To Next Generation

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 15:12:36 GMT

Startup Sauna presented their Spring '13 batch last night, graduating all 15 of the companies that participated. Typically the accelerator will leave a couple out of the final cut, but it comes as good news that they felt all participating startups met their standards. As always, Startup Sauna's demo day drew a good crowd, the startup pitches were very well practiced, and the beer showed no signs of running out.

Startup Sauna captain Antti Ylimutka had a few minutes on stage to say farewell to the program, as this was his last batch he'll be leading since the founding of Startup Sauna seven batches ago. The program has high turnover by design - they feel its important to rotate new people into leadership positions so they can keep the accelerator fresh by "burning it down and building it back up" every six months. Ylimutka's special brand of energy will be missed from the program, and will be interesting to see how the new blood puts their own personality on Sauna. Ylimutka's farewell can also be found on the Startup Sauna blog.

Taking over the program will be Juuso Koskinen, the current "Wingman", and Juho Kokkola, who organized Summer of Startups 2012. For the first time Startup Sauna has been ruled by two engineering students from Aalto's school of Science and Technology, so we'll see how that impacts things.

Koskinen tells us they're excited to be taking over the program, and will continue in Ylimutka's footsteps "bigger and better."

The participating companies included:

More information about the companies can be found on the Startup Sauna website, and with more coverage in the future.

Crowdfunded Film On Swedish Tax Waste Allows Filmmaker To Stay Independent

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 15:41:22 GMT

Before Martin Borgs joined the crowdfunding scene, the largest amount raised for a Swedish film was 393,646 SEK (€45,000) in a month. On FundedByMe, the largest amount raised for any project on the “classic crowfunding” site was 257,914 SEK. Borgs made more than that in the first 2 weeks that his latest film project was on FundedByMe. He raised 550,000 (€63,000) SEK in total to “granska slöseri med skattepengar” or examine the waste of tax money in Sweden.

Best known for his internationally acclaimed film “Overdose”, about the financial crisis, his latest film takes a look at Sweden. Planned for release in 2014, a big election year for Sweden, he plans to use humour to document the waste of tax money in Sweden.

Borgs emphasises marketing as key to raising funds. Before he even began crowdfunding, he did some analysis: “I wanted to target my audience and find out who was willing to donate money, what would motivate those people, through what channels could I reach them, and what activities would that take.”

In his case, the people likely to support his film were those who had a vested interest in seeing it produced – Swedish taxpayers. Setting up networks and rallying support became a key part of the fundraising process; so much so that by the time his campaign was over, not only had Borgs amassed 550 000 SEK, he also had 25 000 people following his work on Facebook, he’d been in contact with traditional media and he’d sent mass mails targeting individuals across the country. This, coupled with talking to as many people as possible and giving the odd speech generated buzz, he says.

He says he was hesitant at first, believing that that crowdfunding was not really a fully established form of funding in Sweden. Indeed, the low amounts raised on FundedByMe’s donation- and reward-based site would not suggest that crowdfunding is terribly lucrative. But Borgs took a chance – and says that crowdfunding in the face of his hesitancy meant “meeting the challenge”.

“I tried to make my offer as simple as possible. In my words: ‘I will monitor the waste of your tax money, and if you’re willing to support that, here are some attractive awards’… It’s great, with movies, you can offer people a role in the film or their name in the credits. And it was great for me to have those rewards to offer.” He joked that perhaps he’d take on Brussels next – and then wouldn’t even need to give out rewards.

Borgs gave four reasons for why crowdfunding was his best bet:

Firstly, he wanted to retain his directorial independence: “I really wanted to rely on voluntary financing instead of turning to the government, since I want to monitor the government.”

He also hoped that by engaging the network he had built up, some of the funders would turn into ambassadors for his work: “It turned out that 775 individuals wanted to contribute and, of course, I hope that they will turn out to be ambassadors for the movie as well.”

Thirdly, he hoped that raising a significant amount of money and attracting lots of backers would be evidence of support for his project. Using this market validation, he could convince other sources of funding for their support

Last, but not least Borgs says that having crowdfunded some of the money for the film gives him “some kind of moral fuel for the project, the sense that a lot of individuals have given up a lot of money for me to do this, so whenever I need some extra energy I think about them.”

Borgs plans to start filming this Fall – and hopes to have the Gala opening, for which he’s already given away tickets as part of his crowdfunding campaign, in 2014.

Gajatri Studios Releases "Yoga Retreat" On iPad

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 12:53:54 GMT

Gajatri Studios released their new Yoga Retreat iPad app in the Finnish and Canadian markets, their first new platform since launching on Facebook's gaming center. Yoga Retreat on iOS brings in many of the same elements as their Facebook game, but it's not a direct port. Users still run their yoga retreat, training customers and growing the real-estate of the game, but by looking the behavior of the Facebook game users they discovered that people enjoyed taking care of the customers, so the new release focuses more on the juice bar, meditation room, and steam garden, rather than just the yoga floor.

Yoga Retreat isn't an "educational" game by far - you're still hooked into the standard casual game dynamics - but the game does offer instructional animations for you to learn from, and send to your friends.

"We hope that while you're playing it some people will raise up from the sofa and try out the positions with their friends. It's not meant to be an educational game, but fun but also some use to you," says Tiina Zilliacus, CEO of Gajatri Studios.

Their Facebook game is still alive and kicking with 50,000 monthly users, and it seems Gajatri is hitting the casual women gamer demographic well. On Facebook about 70% of their players are women, and they expect about the same ratio on iOS.

They did release their first-day stats, but well, they're just the first day. But to compare it to your baseline, in Canada they saw 36% first-day retention, and in Finland they're hit the top of the Sports category in the App Store.

We've been working with iOS version from early January, and our players have actually been asking for it as gaming becomes more and more mobile.

The app is currently available as an iPad app in Finland and Canada, but they will be releasing their iPhone version in a couple weeks, with a global (and localized) launch sometime this summer.

iZettle Receives €5 Million From EU's Largest Bank - Banco Santander

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 09:59:26 GMT

Today, iZettle announced a strategic investment of €5 Million from Banco Santander, the EU's largest bank by market cap and one of the largest banks in the world. How big is that? EUR 1.388 Trillion with a "T". iZettle started working with the banking group already a few months ago, when they announced a partnership which made iZettle available to Santander banking customers in Spain, their home market.

When we compare the investment size to iZettle's overall funding of over €35 million, then it is clear that this is indeed a strategic investment and the money is perhaps secondary. After all, when it comes to mobile point of sale solutions, the name of the game is partnerships. How many different parties and entities can you partner up that can help you grow in different markets? iZettle's US rival Square, for example, was backed by VISA when it clearly did not need the money.

Similarly, this investment round is probably more important to iZettle in terms of the end users that it can reach thanks to Banco Santander. Especially because the banking group has over 102 million customers worldwide and is the largest financial group in Spain and Latin America with a strong presence in United Kingdom, Portugal, Germany, Poland and the U.S.

Ramón Tellaeche, the head of Santander Cards at Banco Santander commented that “Millions of small business owners and professionals in the markets where we operate need an alternative to conventional credit card terminals, and simple software to manage and analyze their transactions. We believe iZettle’s innovative mobile technologies will be crucial to those merchants’ near and long term success.”

Let us once again compare this to Square, who in addition to Visa received funding from Starbucks. In this investment round, Starbucks also promised to eventually use Square to process all credit/debit card transactions in its 7,000 locations. That seems like a lot, but it is still only about 0.006% of Santander's customer base.

This whole thing might seem like a minor news, but if you think about it, it might be the biggest thing to happen to iZettle since launch. This shows their general strategy and if they continue making partnerships with banks, it will enable iZettle to get new customers much easier. This is not the first time that the company partnered up with a bank, they have a partnership with DZ Bank in Germany as well.

Basically once you set-up a company, you must go to a bank, where you will normally be offered a credit card terminal for your POS. With partnerships like this, you will also be offered a cheaper, easier and simpler mPOS solution and if this is always iZettle, growth is virtually guaranteed and can help them catch up to Square.

Of course it is also important to partner up with other large players in the market and iZettle seems to be getting this portion of the business right by cooperating with Deutsche Telekom in Germany, Everything Everywhere in the UK and Telia in Sweden. They also have other strategic investors such as MasterCard and American Express.

Energy Micro Acquired By Silicon Labs

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 09:17:39 GMT

US-based Silicon Labs splash out over $115m to acquire Oslo's electronics success story Energy Micro.

Energy Micro products are found in many of the internet-enabled devices we use on a daily basis. Their energy-friendly MCU and radio solutions are designed to enable a broad range of power-sensitive applications for the Internet of Things (IoT), smart energy, home automation, security and portable electronics markets.

The internet of things is thriving: industry experts predict that the number of connected devices for the IoT will top 15 billion nodes by 2015 and reach 50 billion nodes by 2020.

It's a strategic acquisition for Silicon Labs. The Energy Micro portfolio complements their existing strengths in energy-efficient processing and wireless connectivity technology, targeting the growing embedded market.

"This acquisition combines two proven leaders in nano-power MCU and wireless SoC design into a formidable force that will accelerate the deployment of energy-friendly solutions across the Internet of Things and smart energy industries", says Silicon Labs CEO Tyson Tuttle.

In the deal expected to close next month, the shareholders of Energy Micro will receive an up-front payment of $115 million in cash, plus approximately $55 million in deferred and earn-out consideration. It's quite a premium for Silicon Labs to pay, with Energy Micro expected to contribute $7 million in revenue in the second half of 2013. According to the press release, "anticipated growth is expected to allow the transaction to be accretive on a non-GAAP basis by the end of 2014."

It's great news for Nordic VCs Northzone Ventures and Investinor, long-time backers of Energy Micro, but also for the staff based in Oslo. Silicon Labs seem likely to retain Energy Micro's presence in the Norwegian capital, under the stewardship of current CEO Geir Førre.

In a letter to existing customers, Førre says, "For us at Energy Micro this is a great opportunity to accelerate our roadmap and business. We can execute much faster on new and existing products with access to more R&D, supply chain and sales resources. We can also develop more system solutions and development tools that you as a user can take advantage of. All Energy Micro EFM32 series will be continued."