Funding

bSaka founders Matilda Waldner, Kicki Hallberg, and Sandra  Ny met while work as sheep-shearers in Stavanger, Norway.  They found they shared an entrepreneurial mindset, and 6 years later had founded their first company, along with their friend Henrik Moricz, a lifestyle brand and clothing line designed to offer environmentally friendly and timeless clothing. In their personal lives, the founders are …

Rising North is a fund that aims to help Nordic startups become global leaders. The fund was launched in October 2016 with a NASDAQ bell ringing as part of the #nordicmade trip to New York. In her keynote speech at the fund’s launch, Helga Valfells, CEO of NSA Ventures, Iceland, and Steering Board Member at Rising North, said: “In the Nordics …

On CanopyLAB’s ed-tech platform, companies, NGOs and institutions offer online courses focusing on learning through interaction to support the next generation of e-learning. The vision now has a large investment from a number of business angels. During a research visit to Australia, PhD scholar, Sahra-Josephine Hjorth of Aalborg University became interested in how social media can be used to create …

Last week, Helga Valfells, CEO of NSA Ventures in Iceland, along with two of the funds’ investment managers, Jenny Ruth Hrafnsdottir and Hekla Arnadottir, announced that they have left NSA Ventures to start their own VC fund, Crowberry Capital. According to the team at Crowberry Capital, NSA has been reviewing its’ investment strategy since 2012 and will now become a …

This weekend, the Danish entrepreneur prize “Den Gyldne Fugl”, or the Golden Bird, was  awarded at Aarhus University. The winner was RaskRask, a platform for on-demand health-oriented massage, who previously offered on-demand physiotherapy.  The market is always right. That was the reason for the shift in focus that Raskrask.dk performed this year. They pivoted from an on-demand physiotherapy platform to …

It can be hard to keep fresh content in front of your audience – especially in the fast-paced world of social media.  skilled.co has put together a massive treasure trove full of social media statistics, tips and tricks – 115 of them. So, read along and take a look at the social media statistics infographic to learn a thing or …

Medihub, an Estonian startup founded in spring 2015 aim at building up a kind of database in which patients can search for affordable and creditable clinics, the services of which suit their needs best. CEO Helary Lainjärv gives us some insight into the company’s past, present and future. You’ve been working as a physician for over 8 years now, so …

Tinnitracks is a digital health startup that treats tinnitus through an inventive audio therapy app which works by manipulating the frequencies in music. After capturing the top prize at the Reeperbahn Startup Pitch in 2013 and becoming available on German insurance, they have tackled global market entry at a faster pace than many of their peers. In 2015, they captured …

It was perhaps significant that the recent Oslo Innovation Week (OIW) five-day series of events was preceded by a forty-eight hour Techfugees hackathon where more than one hundred data scientists, engineers, user experience designers and entrepreneurs united in teams to build prototypes alongside refugees, to find solutions to enable better integration into Norwegian society. the Techfugees Hackathon Techfugees is a …

A delegation of Nordic startups rang the bell at the Nasdaq in New York on October 11th, as part of the #NordicMade showcase. #NordicMade is a community initiative that aims to build bridges between global tech regions and strengthen Nordic cooperation.  The bell-ringing also signaled the launch of a new €1.5 million Nordic fund. Helga Valfells, CEO of NSA Ventures, …

Health apps, which can log and monitor everything from moles to menstrual cycles, are asking for an increasing level of detail from their users, and the information may end up in the wrong hands. Apps that keep an eye on your health or cycle, have become popular in the Nordics. They are often free and can help users to keep …

Paralenz, a new project by Danish design agency Moef, has broken a Kickstarter record, by obtaining a third of their funding in just the first 8 minutes of their crowdfunding campaign.  Paralenz is a high-performing underwater camera especially designed for divers. To be deep under the sea is like stepping into another mysterious, fantastical world.  But human ingenuity has made …

“Fundraising isn’t hard. At least not hard like impossible,” says Shipitwise.  Sander Gansen tells the story of how Shipitwise succeeded on the crowdfunding platform Funderbeam  to raise €176,000 below. As we were going through Startup Wise Guys accelerator, we met a variety of mentors and investors. But there was one we particularly liked. It was Kaidi Ruusalepp! She showed us …

New York: In a few minutes, Danish BookBuses founder Oscar Aabech Jung will be entering the stage in front of 700 American investors. This is the day Oscar Aabech Jung and the rest of the Danish IT company Book Buses have been working towards the last months. “Demo Day” is for startup businesses looking to raise capital.  Though similar events …

Impact Iceland 2016 is crowdfunding Iceland’s first conference on social entrepreneurship on Karolina Fund.  It will be the first in a series of conferences in Iceland focusing on social innovation as a profitable, sustainable, and impactful response to today’s challenges. Tanja Wohlrab-Ryan writes at Startup Iceland about making Iceland not only a vibrant startup community, but a hub of social …

The Stockholm-based healthy food startup Naturalbox explains their successful crowdsourcing campaign on Prowly. Results: coverage in key media channels, nearly 100 investors, 212% campaign overfunding. In order to raise capital for its operations, Naturalbox chose crowdsourcing over a traditional VC, engaging its customers, friends and fans. To make that happen, the startup decided to leverage all the advantages of social …

We spend more time messaging on our phones than ever before.  What would the most amazing visual messaging service look like?  That was the question Norwegian company DeeMe, founded in 2014, started from. “This question became the DeeMe project, and today our vision is still the same.  The world of social media is in constant change, and we keep on …

TactoTek, a leading manufacturer of 3D injection molded structural electronics (IMSE) solutions based in Oulu, Finland, announced today that it has been named a recipient of a €2.5 million EU Horizon 2020 award to mass produce injection molded electronics (IME) solutions. Horizon 2020 is the financial instrument of Innovation Union, a Europe 2020 flagship initiative aimed at securing Europe’s global …

Swedish Innovation Compass is the app helping entrepreneurs, researchers, and innovators to navigate the innovation support system in Sweden. The user is guided to everything relevant from venture capital, business incubators, government grants and more. After going through Lund University’s accelerator program, the app is sitting at over 5 000 downloads and now has a web version too. Recently, they …

“There are 2 main views, both well qualified.  One is the venture capital situation in the US, which says that VCs do much more than provide capital – they help companies grow.  Another view is that more than 95% of VCs add 0 value to companies, and perhaps 70 or 80% add negative value.” This is how Bakhrom Ibragimov of …