Funding

The real-time publishing platform Socius captures and curates content shared on the social web to create unique and engaging stories. Socius just closed their seed round after 2,5 years of development that includes an accelerated 3 months in Axel Springer’s accelerator in Berlin. There investors include 500 Startups and Raw Invest (Bergen based firm). Their final sum of 1.300.000 Nok …

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, …

Nordic Startup Gifts is a website that was founded by and for Nordic startups from Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland. Here is a look through some of what the Nordics have to offer this holiday season. The page is divided into four categories: technology, housing, fashion and lifestyle, so it’s definitely possible to find something for everyone. For the tech-freak …

The launch of Ebove B\01 bikes  at the startup hub MESH in Oslo was a one-of-a-kind event.  Take a peek behind the scenes at Activetainment‘s new smartbike, which goes way beyond spinning class. The Activetainment Ebove B\01 smart bike is an evolution of your basic indoor stationary bike.  Like many of these next-gen bikes, the smart bike has augmented biking …

SUP46,  the space that has become Sweden’s focal point for hot startups, presented some figures on the growth and funding of their members the past year. Check them out below:  

Someone.io, a Norway-based social task management app for businesses, recently ran a successful equity crowdfunding campaign, closing at 107% of their goal.  Dan Hesketh, a brand strategist for the company, writes about the experience from the companies HQ at Startup Lab. Read the original blog post here. Thanks to investors from around the world, we closed our funding drive successfully on …

Helsinki based Health Operator offers personalized diagnostics and monitoring services to the private health sectors as well as commercially to the public. They were one of the winners of this year’s Nokia Open Innovation Challenge, held at Slush 2015. Imagine going to the bathroom to go about your daily routines, while an array of non-invasive sensors monitors your blood pressure, …

Crowdsourcing Week (CSW), a platform for promoting the crowd economy, has launched their own equity crowd-funding campaign. The goal of the campaign is to increase their e-learning and consulting offerings, to spread crowd-sourcing how-to to a wider audience. This includes an online educational program to teach businesses about the crowd economy While the current CSW community is in over 50 …

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 …

Swedish co-working space Impact Hub Stockholm hosted an unusual pitching event last month as part of STHLM IoT Week – pitching to children! On October 14, 2015 Impact Hub Stockholm hosted an event entitled “NOT your usual pitching event”.   The participants were IoT startups pitching their businesses, investors…and children aged 5 years and older. At 5 pm, the Impact Hub …

The NYC based StartUp Health, a global digital health organization boasting the world’s largest portfolio of companies.  Yesterday, the Finnish Trade and Investment Promotion Agency, Finpro, and Team Finland announced the launch of StartUp Health Finland. StartUp Health Finland will be based at the Health Innovation Village in the Finnish Capital Helsinki, which houses a collection of Nordic health tech …

Today,global venture capital seed fund 500 Startups announced the launch of a $15 million fund to invest in early stage Nordic startups. In anticipation of the fund, the company has already invested in several Nordic companies across the region: Tagbeat, Filmgrail, and Socius in Norway, Pacemaker, Brisk.io, Proleads and Vint in Sweden, EasySize and Iconfinder in Denmark, and YouApp in …

As a  ski lover, I like traveling around, trying new ski resorts, visiting new slopes, and enjoying the winter sports community. But… as there is always a “but”… there is something I actually hate when I think about skiing: waiting in line at the cashier`s desk to get my lift pass, while I am dying to hit the slopes. Enter …

Marta Sjögren’s debut to the venture capital world resulted from a passion for innovation and a desire to make an impact in the world. Today, she is the Principal at Northzone,a Danish VC, nd focuses on companies in the early stage. Northzone, established in 1996, is a leading technology investor. Today Northzone has raised over $700 million and invested in …

I am a big believer that CEOs, and other relevant people in a company, should keep an open dialogue with potential investors — all part of investing in lines and not dots. Many of these informal conversations will be one-on-one. However, in a recent Board Meeting, we discussed a company’s plan to accelerate a funding round and go on a ‘roadshow’ in …

It’s not about eating. It’s not even about cooking. It’s about socializing. Students from University of Copenhagen and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts have created Cook With a Local to enable people all over the world to connect with each other by cooking and eating a meal together. It all started out in 2013, as a part of …

Business angel Thomas Berglund has set his eyes on a mission. As lead investor in the premier edition of Angel Challenge, an initiative hosted by Startup Norway, he hopes to unleash a new wave of capital to young Norwegian startups. Last year Norwegian tech startups only raised 3.2% of the total investments in the Nordic region, according to the Nordic …

Did someone just spam your Facebook or Instagram feed full with pictures and videos? With the amount of content shared in social media increasing constantly, Swedish startup MEMRY wants to help their community share bundles of videos and pictures in albums within their social network. The co-founders of MEMRY, Pelle Kjellqvist and Peter Jundin, first got the idea for their …

On October 13th Salesforce Ventures, the investment arm of the cloud service giant, announced that it has earmarked $100 million to invest specifically in European startups. Salesforce Ventures has pumped half a billion dollars into over 150 cloud and enterprise startups since 2009.  Though most of those investments focuse on the US, Salesforce Ventures is now getting more serious in …

It isn’t only entrepreneurs who sabotage great business ideas by making stupid mistakes. Investors are just as guilty. Last week at Oslo Innovation Week, we talked with Jeanne Sullivan of Starvest Partners, about the 5 stupid mistakes entrepreneurs make over and over again. Of course, as an entrepreneur, “You have to know what to do and how to do it, …