Nordic Startup News Early Stage Startup News From The Nordics

Business schools and MBA programs will help you calculate market size. This post will not. Instead it will do the opposite. It will deconstruct market size into what really matters. Knowledge is power. Use it. Many founders go after billion dollar markets. Or so they say. They think they must. Everyone knows that is what investors want. So founders adapt …

Balderton Capital, located in London, has just become an International Investor Member at Stockholm’s startup central, SUP46. Since 2000, Balderton has invested in over 100 companies, mostly located within Europe. Having already invested in 11 startups within the Nordic region, the partnership with SUP46 will bring greater access to the Nordic startup scene. Nordic countries offer an alternative working culture …

The annual South by Southwest festival (aka SXSW) kicked off on Friday, and for the 7th year in a row, Finns are going over to Austin, Texas to show what they’re made of. The rest of the Nordics will also be represented at the Nordic Lighthouse. SXSW veteran Peter Green together with Pekka Pärnänen and Team Finland’s Hartti Suomela are …

Yes, this title is intentionally a bit “provocative”—especially for my friends in Norway, Sweden and Denmark—as there have been a number of interesting edtech developments in each of these countries, especially in the last year or two. But at least based on my own experience, and what I know right now, I still think that Finland might rightfully claim to …

It has been calculated that, as a result of population growth, the Earth will require 50% more food, 45% more energy and 30% more water by the year 2030. The environment can no longer tolerate production processes that place a burden on it, which is why solutions to future challenges are being sought in the bioeconomy. Finland has turned towards …

Crowdsourcing isn’t a buzzword, neither is the sharing economy, crowdfunding, blockchain or collaborative economy—they’re already part of our lives. The cumulative disruption of these crowd-powered paradigms will have a significant influence on sectors worldwide. The question is: how will you position your company? We have heard these terms for the past couple of years, however, this year, you need to …

For many companies, managing investor relations means unilateral communications, which may turn into a strategic pitfall. On the other hand, small-scale investors often find it difficult to locate easily understandable investment information on companies. Investoreye offers a tool that solves both of these problems. Different-sized companies are faced with different challenges when it comes to investor communications. Not nearly all …

Singapore has unveiled a plan to become the world’s leading startup ecosystem within fintech, challenging similar initiatives in the Nordic countries. Singapore has developed a lot since becoming independent in 1965. Before, the country was a central post for major banks and finance houses, but as the country looks to the future, it has shifted it’s focus towards startups. In …

VR technology has reached unprecedented momentum.  According to CB insights, AR and VR startups raised $658 million in equity financing last year, and Florida based Magic Leap set a new bar for funding when it raised a $794 million round led by Alibaba in February 2016. The Nordics have a slew of startups in this niche including Breakroom, Moggles, and …

For many startups looking to raise venture capital, it looks like traditional equity is no longer enough.  More and more startups are looking at convertible notes or other debt alternatives. By Andrew Woodman Earlier this week, CB insights noted a 700% increase in the dollars raised through convertible notes – that’s basically loans that convert into equity at later rounds …

The Redefining School program, which covered the challenges of education, was featured at Slush 2015. Among the speakers was Saku Tuominen, CEO and Co-Founder of Scool. Scool aims to find the best practices in education and share all the insights and know-how with the world, for free. As Tuominen said in his speech at Slush, the challenges of future education …

Every year, over 100,000 children of jaundice, mainly because of lack of access to diagnostic equipment in the poorest parts of the world. A new Norwegian app aims to reverse this statistic. The treatment of jaundice is both simple and painless, but as many as 114,000 newborns annually die of the disease every year, mainly due to a lack of …

According to new figures from the Danish Business Authority, there has been a positive development in the actual number of female and male entrepreneurs from 2014 to 2015. But at the same time, the number of male entrepreneurs increased significantly more than the number of female entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship is growing in Denmark, and the number of entrepreneurs has been steadily …

You just saw a really cool TED talk on, say lab-grown organs, and want to learn more about it, but you don’t know anything about biotechnology.  Google scholar would be a good place to start – if you knew the right keywords to search for.  Enter Iris.AI. Iris.AI can use the TED talk as input and find exactly what you’re …

EduLAB is part of a rapidly expanding pre-incubator program at the Oulu University of Applied Sciences in Finland called Oamk LABs. EduLAB specifically targets the global education technology industry. By Blair Stevenson Like the other Oamk LABs, EduLAB is taught in English and is a full-time, 5 month educational program for university level students and professionals in re-training with backgrounds …

A new report by BDO and Danske Bank singles out Nordic fintech disrupters as medicine for “sick” banking industry, and emphasizes the need for both fintech startups and traditional banks to form symbiotic relationships if they want to create true positive disruption. “The Fintech Disruptors Report: Nordic Edition” analyzes current trends in the fintech industry across Europe and the Nordic …

After a test period in Scandinavia, Plane is ready to launch its icebreaker app globally. The launch will occur in connection with the LAUNCH Festival in San Francisco. The founders of plane are CEO and co-founder,Tim Allison , and co-founder, Thomas Baastrup Jacobsen. “We have spent the last few months testing our app in Scandinavia and building a community. It …

Last week, Danish news channel DR1 insinuated that Trustpilot was involved in the extortion of small shopkeepers and cheating in user reviews.   The Trustpilot team has now responded to the criticism. Trustpilot was put under the microscope last week in a news story about a beauty salon with poor user reviews.  The salon’s owner, Camilla Rude, who has a …

Many entrepreneurs believe that failure is the key to success.  Some Silicon Valley based investors will not even invest in startup founders who had not had a failed startup.  It is, indeed, an important skill to learn in the startup world to let go of something that is a dead end. However, as every founder knows, how far down the …

Mikael da Costa has tasked himself and his company Finternet Group with something that not a great deal of companies nowadays would even consider.  They are offering legacy media companies the chance to hop onboard the digital express out of Nowheresville before they are left in the dust and stood about wondering what the hell happened. “I often ask people, …