This week, tech platform Intuit announced they are acquiring marketing firm Mailchimp for $12bn. Altanta-based Mailchimp has grown to its 2.4 million monthly active users without raising a single dollar of external funding, making the exit a lucrative one for the owners. The owners of Mailchimp are its two founders. Also this week, Stockholm-based caller-identification service Truecaller confirmed its intention …
Read More »Elin Hammarberg
Nordic startups building radical transparency into tech
Getting through the Nordic winter is trying at the best of times. The previous months have provided few hours of sunshine but an infinite amount of “recommendations” (it is to date not legal for the Swedish government to e.g. enforce a lockdown) formulated in almost as many ways as there are media outlets. The Nordics are the societies in the …
Read More »“Unconventional Accelerator”: The first digital accelerator targeting underrepresented Nordic founders
Since launching its report on who funds whom in the Nordics, together with partners like Startup Sweden and NVCA, the team at Unconventional Ventures have been busy. They recently launched the UV Syndicate, giving everyone the opportunity to co-invest in, by UV vetted, startups at pre-seed and seed stages. Today they announce the first digital accelerator targeting underrepresented founders based …
Read More »Sweden’s Mbegu Solar: Innovation cannot be paused in wait for a more suitable year
Mbegu Solar AB was founded in 2020 and its team is based in Stockholm, Lund and Nairobi. They bring solar products in a completely new format to the East African market and target micro-entrepreneurs as opposed to the end consumer. Solar products are already widely available all over the world for off grid electricity, but Mbegu Solar states this is …
Read More »Audio first: Nordic social interactions in the year of the pandemic
Statistics show we have collectively stigmatized randomly phoning someone up and as a result, over the past decade, the number of texts sent monthly have increased with 7,700% and US smartphones users allegedly receive and respond to 5x more texts than phone calls. We have built handheld walls against direct interactions at the same time as social platforms have moved …
Read More »Nordic startup funding – a deep dive into who funds whom
All male founding teams still get 92.9% of external capital in the Nordics, to build and expand their startups. However, a new report from Unconventional Ventures shows us how a shift towards a more equal distribution of capital can be accelerated. Unconventional Ventures is a Nordic early-stage investment firm that invest in scaleable tech startups at the pre-seed and seed …
Read More »