Events

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 …

Oulu, Finland — The Arctic startup event, Polar Bear Pitching, marked its live return after a hiatus of four years. A sizable crowd gathered at Oulu Market Square, while online viewers from around the globe tuned in to witness ten selected startups take the plunge into the Avanto (Finnish for ice hole), each aiming to impress the panel of judges …

At a sizable booth, Samar Malik was promoting SAP for startups, emphasizing the company’s wealth of knowledge and expertise. It marked her inaugural attendance at Slush, where she commended the event and its arrangements. However, the genuine slush and sleet outdoors left the London resident a bit hesitant. Sami Vuorenmaa recently established his consultancy, Clarinum Insights, which focuses on helping …

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, …

  At the Slush startup event in Helsinki, Nico Rosberg, the 2016 Formula 1 World Champion, revealed what led him to pass by a lucrative contract extension in the pinnacle of motorsport and transition into an investor. – Nice to be back to my roots, said the 38-year-old to the extensive audience. By a fireside chat with Robert Lacher, the …

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 …

Failup Ventures, a new globally operating early-stage venture capital fund, has announced the first closing of €30 million of its new early-stage fund of €50 million. Founded by three previous Finnish entrepreneurs – Jesse Heikkilä, Topias Soininen, and Oscar Andersin – Failup Ventures backs early-stage startups with strong, mission-driven teams. Failup’s typical initial investments range from €200k to €1 million …

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 …

The most coveted pitching competition is the iconic Slush 100. The winner will get an equity investment from the leading early-stage funds in Europe: Accel, General Catalyst, Lightspeed Venture Partners, NEA, and Northzone. These iconic funds have backed historic companies like Meta, Stripe, Airbnb, Snap, Uber, Spotify, Salesforce, Instacart, and Klarna. The race is on and the original amount of …

The eternal flame was ignited in 2008 in Helsinki with a one-day affair made up of around 250 people. Since that the event has grown by leaps and bounds, our goal has stayed the same: the focus is on how best to serve startup ecosystems across the world. As the founders and present employees of Slush organization want to inspire …

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 …

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 …

As an event, Slush succeeds to impress all the attendees, even those Teflon-surfaced veterans, who have many previous Slushes on their belt. So it is no wonder, that the first-timers are generally astonished what comes to the atmosphere, solid arrangements, and the solid flux of meeting interesting people, especially  new ones. Deirdre Mc Gettrick from U.K. was attending Slush to …

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 …

The Norwegian medical startup projects HoloCare and Illumie were present at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. Robert Stigliano After a cancellation in 2020, and an online-only version in 2021, South by Southwest was back this year to it’s full, pre-pandemic glory, showcasing the trends and technologies influencing our collective future. One of this year’s themes was imagining society in …

The Nordic countries have adopted a vision to become the most sustainable and integrated region in the world by 2030.   Bolstered by the ambitious climate goals set by the region’s governments,  startups have been tackling all manner of the green transition from smart farming to recycling, and are now leaders in sustainable technologies. At Oslo Innovation Week’s Climate Demo Day at …

It is often argued that the Nordic Model offers an environment where value-driven innovation can flourish, meaning innovation that improves society by creating value for all stakeholders in an ethical and responsible way.  Anchored in a liberal market and a strong societal structure,  the Nordic Model is reputed for creating more ethical companies that seek to improve society for the …

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 …