Another warm beginning of the warm Finnish summer – and another warm welcome to the old Cable Factory for the annual Arctic15 startup-investor conference. This story is the annual “vibes collection” from the Arctic15 floor, backstage, DealRoom meetings, official afterparties, unofficial gatherings and most importantly about HI, maybe with some added AI. (Got carried away with the HI, so wrote …

In the era of AI, Hunome talks mostly about HI   So, at Arctic15 we met many AI companies, and then we met Hunome, more into Human Intelligence, HI, and especially for Collective Sensemaking.  With that, and a bit wider purpose statement of “helping humanity make sense of itself”, I had a pleasure to talk to Dominique  & Mika  from …

Slush mainstage acted as a platform for company launches and product announcements, and the Media Area right behind the stage had instant Q&A session with the launchers and announcers. What a great concept, hoping this would cover even more of the speakers. One of the launches was Starstuff, that came out of the stealth mode with bells, whistles, Hanna and …

Silo.ai, the Finnish AI Lab, which is Europe’s largest private AI Lab, made some remarkable launches today at Slush 2023 In short, this is concerning a new platform training LLM’s, PORO1 and 2, with deployment for European languages, with keeping the data also in Europe. But NSN had a chance to sit down with Founder & CEO Peter Sarlin quickly, …

For the second year the Slush gaming angle was mostly covered by Nordic Game We had a chance to reconnect with Jacob Riis from NordicGame on his returnal to Helsinki and Slush for 2023, as the Nordic Game Helsinki event took place on Slush day -1 and day 0 at Epicenter. In 2022 the Nordic Game Helsinki event premiered during …

Participated into Slush Media Day 2023, and Tech Trend Predictions 2024 panel to kick off the Slush 2023 official program, and one of the speakers Heikki Aura said something we like: “Hype is good, it’s like a great party” Blockchain Web3 Crypto were Heikki’s pick for the 2024 trend, with a lot of exciting things being built around. Games and …

Slush is on the ground (even if it’s still snow, and frozen right now). Remembering back to the Slush earlydays, there was this saying: “It’s cold and dark outside, and the coolest developers are inside”. Back then the inside meant Kaapelitehdas aka Cable Factory, and a selected venue for after party. These days Slush is on for a week, and …

Last week I had a pleasure to join the 2nd ever NORDEEP 2023 Summit, to see and hear what’s happening in Deep Tech scene within the Nordics. The opening keynote insights were given by Risto Siilasmaa, and that paved the way for this 2 days conference for a good crowd of attendees mainly from Finalnd and other Nordic countries. Risto …

Arctic15 Health Track: Insights from Arctic15’s Health Track: Exploring Digital Health Arctic15’s Health Track, curated by Aki Koivistoinen, delved into the state of digital health. This article provides an overview of the track, including key insights from an interview with Aki, the Startup Health ambassador, and highlights from the panels and keynote presentation. Key Points: Digital health presents unique challenges …

Arctic15 2023 was again a great showcase of innovations.  Panu Kuosmanen, Aalto University’s Innovation Advisor, highlights the University’s Commitment to Entrepreneurship. Aalto University has been a regular participant at the Arctic15 event since its inception in 2007. and we met with Panu to discuss the innovations at the University, emphasizing the university’s deep involvement in fostering entrepreneurship and its contribution …

There was a lot “e” in the air at Slush 2022, and not only in software, cryptos and such “normal” web3 things – but on wheels, too. Polestar was presenting their Precept car (originally made for the cancelled Geneva auto show 2020) finally touring around the world, paving the way to the next Polestar models to come.       …

One of the many awesome meetings and encounters at Slush this year was with the Singapore delegation, and especially Rafael and Amelia from Singapore Management University, talking about their Global Business Plan Competition (link to the LKYGBPC website) We at Nordic Startup News agreed to help sourcing information of at least one Nordic company per country – so let us know …

Nordic Game, the conference held annually in Malmö, Sweden, has become one of the leading events for the games industry, and each May it gathers thousands of developers, publishers and investors together. But this November, Nordic Game travelled to Helsinki, Finland, for the first time to do a special show as a partner side-event to Slush, enabling the vision of …

Few years ago the tagline (and the hashtag) for #Arctic15 was #FindTheOne. Nowadays it has evolved to #ActionMatters, and at this years LIVE comeback, it was really in the center of the activities. Arctic15 happened in the beginning of June in Helsinki, Finland, where the sun was shining, and a decent groups of over 1000 likeminded souls gathered again at …

There are 100s of accelerators, incubators and co-working spaces in Austin. Austin is also the growth capital of USA, with approximately 150 people moving to Austin every day, of which approximately 100 are moving from the California’s Bay Area. But is it a viable landing pad for Nordic startups? At SXSW 2019, Nordic Startup Bits talked to Capital Factory ‘s …

The Media Honeypot series of events started in Helsinki in 2016. Now, three years, and several events later, it the go-to event for media startups.  Heikki Rotko, the founder of Media Honeypot, says that Media Honeypot was born out of a desire to connect startups with their business partners to create the media we as customers deserve. The aim of …

The founders behind Sweden’s Included.Works, the platform that helps companies with recruiting through crowdsourcing, have developed a new service: ProgressData.io. The service makes it possible for companies to keep track of diversity within their company and give insight into how they can develop it. “We started addressing the problem with homogenous companies with our recruiting service Included.Works, which gives a …

XXL protects their products throughout Finland with Noccela’s indoor positioning-based antitheft tags.  The sports retailer, who is the largest in the Nordics, now plans to expand their use of the tags.  The new generation of anti-theft tags was initially tested in one store, and the results were tangible. “The Noccela-protected products have been left alone,” says Iiro Oravisjärvi, Operations Manager …

Media Honeypot, a “reverse pitching” event for startups and the traditional media industry, was held in Helsinki on April 6, 2016. I sat down with organizers Heikki “Hegu” Rotko, a long time media executive professional and Dmitri Sarle & Jan Ameri from Arctic Startup. Heikki  was recently at SXSW with me as part of the Team Finland Nordic Lighthouse program, …

All in all there are about 1000 #NordicMade people in Austin for SXSW, representing over 100 tech/startup companies and tens of bands and films and filmmakers.  Mobile sensai Peter Gréen blogs from the #NordicLightHouse at SXSW. Day 1 of #NordicLightHouse The Nordics are here for two main activities; the Nordic Light House program running from Saturday to Tuesday, and the …