Entrepreneurs

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 …

Juwan Lee has spent over 30 years working around the world in financial services, before leaving money management to create NexChange, a global social network for the financial services industry. Armed with in-depth experience from the worlds major financial capitals, he shares his insights for the Nordic countries. Fintech, such as electronic finance, digital wallets, and cryptocurrencies, are changing the …

We caught up with  Juha Huttunen, co-founder of Vibecatch, and asked him a few questions about how to improve company culture – and profitability – with 15 questions. How did you come up with the idea for Vibecatch? We originally worked for a software company and wanted to measure, internally, how satisfied the employees were with the company and their …

This week, Forbes released their annual “30 under 30” list of young talent, and 5 Swedes made the cut. The list, which totals 600 people in 20 different categories, is an annual compilation of young global talent.  The categories listed include e-commerce, enterprise tech, gaming, and finance. Although the Nordics (and Europe as a whole) were far outnumbered by the …

Serial entrepreneur Paavo Beckman started his first company at 23, and has since come a long way.  15 years and 6 entertainment and tech companies later, Paavo has evolved into something of a specialist in his field. In mid December,Paavo gave advice for boostrapped marketing and other marketing and business hacks at an event held by Business Angels Copenhagen  and …

BreedReply is an accelerator focused solely on IoT (Internet of Things) early stage startups in Europe and the US started byReply, a consulting, systems integration and digital services company. Similar accelerators  such as Startupbootcamp IoT & Data and HAXLR8R are organized around varied sponsors in the public and private sector. Breed’s offer is a 12 month “bespoke” incubation period, where …

Aalborg is a lot of things:  it is a student city, a trade city, and the fourth largest city in Denmark- but the most interesting thing about Aalborg is that there are approximately 1,000 new businesses every year, many of which are tech startups. BusinessAalborg, Aalborg Kommune’s business department, offers free, one-on-one advice and the possibility of financial assistance for …

Icelandic startup KeyWe is creating an app that ties together an emotional, visual, and logical approach to learning. Olafur Stefansson and Halldor Thorsteinsson are brothers in law and co-founders of the ed-tech startup KeyWe. I’m meeting with them at  the Innovation House in Seltjarnarnes, Iceland for a chat about their startup. They arrive on time. Composed and confident, with a spark …

Finnish ed-tech startup Funzi starts with a premise you may be familiar with – learning on a mobile phone. But their unique focus on emerging markets has people around the world sitting up and taking notice. Funzi is reinventing how learning is delivered – not in terms of content, but in terms of the delivery of learning to the individual. …

Imagine using your phone to discover new sustainable businesses and services. But wait – anyone can do that, if they have internet connection.  But what about just by texting?  SURE. Sure is a startup that allows you to be more sustainable by using Artificial Intelligence (AI). It is not an app – it’s a local number. You simply text Sure, …

Thousands of ambitious and inventive students gathered in Fredericia, Denmark last Thursday to celebrate innovation and entrepreneurship, where they competed to have the best ideas, creative solutions, and designs at the Danish Entrepreneurship Awards 2015. As a part of Global Entrepreneurship Week Denmark, The Danish Foundation for Entrepreneurship, in collaboration with neighboring community Trekantsområdet, gathered over 6300 students in Fredericia …

The pitching competition at the massive startup conference Slush is high stakes and high pressure.  After some stressful preparations, I was called onto stage to pitch my start, EdTech Foundry, in front of an audience in hopes of winning an investment. Last night ended on a high note, and I felt ready to pitch. But in the morning, will all …

The Slush pitching competition: one of the highest stakes startup competitions in the world. Three minutes to explain who you are, what you do, how you will make money and how you will grow your business. In addition you must stick out from the crowd and seduce a panel of spoiled venture capitalists.  No matter how experienced you are, the …

They have a mission to strengthen and equip the city of Aarhus’ music industry for the great challenges the music scene faces. As a meeting point for skills, networking and production, Promus is the first of its kind in Denmark. Since 2010, Promus has functioned as a community and networking center for both the music industry and musicians in Denmark. …

Icelandic startup Breakroom provides its users with a private virtual reality workspace for wherever and whenever they may need it. A simple request: Imagine your current work surroundings. Next, imagine yourself working in a café tucked away on a peaceful and quaint street somewhere in beautiful Vienna, Austria or perhaps imagine yourself reading through work documents somewhere on a beach …

Ultrahack took place from 6- 8th November in Helsinki in anticipation of the massive startup conference Slush, and is one of the biggest hackathons in Europe. Hackers from around Europe (and even some from the US) developed their ideas over one long weekend, before presenting them to investors in hopes of getting them off the ground, or in some cases, …

The Norwegian startup Routes uses user-generated routes to solve the problem of complex travel planning. We met Routes at Oslo Innovation Week, where the founders pitched to investors and tried to grow their audience at the Afterwork Startup event at the newly relaunched co-working space MESH. “We started out with testing the concept on an event in Oslo, a popular …

Take your event to the next level. That is what EventEye offers their customers. Working as a freelance app developer Fredrik Hoel, CEO and co-founder of EventEye discovered that he kept doing the same thing over and over again. He started to question why he had to ‘reinvent the wheel’ every time he made an app for an event. He came up with …

Located in Amman, Jordan and Copenhagen, Denmark, NA3M Games develops entertaining games, animated series and webcomics that are inspired by Arab culture. NA3M was founded in 2013 and has already released 7 games, and to top it off, it was featured on the front page of The Wall Street Journal, interviewed by Becky Anderson on CNN, and featured in large …

Nest is a curated community of entrepreneurs, living together in a shared apartment in the center of Copenhagen.  In fact, it is the world’s largest non-profit co-living space for entrepreneurs. The 21 residents are involved in all sorts of entrepreneurial ventures, some of the most well-known being Drivr, Airtame, Startupbootcamp, and Coderstrust. The community was founded to hack the challenges …