International

In May this year, Nordic Startup Bits writer, Thorunn Jonsdottir, was at infoShare in Gdansk listening to Kaspar Korjus, who’s leading the e-residency project on behalf of the Estonian government. She was intrigued and decided to apply. Three months later, after applying online and appearing at the embassy of Estonia in Berlin, she had her e-residency card. But what exactly …

ll the regional winners competed Friday in Kuala Lumpur in Global Startup Awards finale. The winner of this year’s co-working space went to Denmark’s Rainmaking Loft, while the host country took the prize as Startup of the Year. Global Startup Awards started in 2012 in Scandinavia as the Nordic Startup Awards – since at that time, they only covered the …

Blockchain technology is becoming more and more demanded worldwide, and today we all have a unique opportunity to witness “the biggest innovation after the Internet itself” gaining a growing number of implementations – both within and outside the financial sector. This significant process inevitably goes hand in hand with massive informational support – and, consequently, cross-industry popularization of Blockchain. And …

The World Bank has just released it’s annual report, “Doing Business in 2017“. Last year we reported on Nordic countries coming in at the top of the best places in the world to do business.  How do this year’s findings compare? These 15 countries in the below infographic, compiled by Market Inspector, rank the highest in their ease of doing …

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 …

From Spar Nord announcing a new fintech collaboration with Rocket Labs in Aalborg to the central bank in Norway considering blockchain for real time clearing and settlement for domestic payments among other things, it is clear that fintech is making solid progress in the Nordic banking industry. These developments are in lockstep with the rest of the financial world, as …

Startup Everywhere, a Danish creative content and self-publishing startup, has just launched an app which helps entrepreneurs to navigate cities around the globe. It features co-working spaces, incubators, accelerators, and public working spaces such as cafes with good wifi.  It is currently available in six cities including Copenhagen, Berlin, Lisbon, and Stockholm. Over the last year, founder Sissel Hansen and …

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, …

A new wellspring of employee organization is emerging in the so-called ‘sharing economy’, but the CEO of Daimler-backed ridesharing business MyTaxi, Uber’s main competitor in Europe, has dismissed the trend. By Tamlin Magee As Uber drivers in London and New York organise for the right to collective bargaining, the boss of Europe’s top ride-sharing competitor – MyTaxi, set to merge …

Last week, the second ever #Nordicmade tour touched down in NYC to meet the local startup ecosystem, including Lemonsqueeze.  #Nordicmade is collaborative initiative between the five Nordic countries founded in Copenhagen in 2014, to increase cross-border collaboration and promote Nordic startups internationally. #Nordicmade’s NYC tour was whirlwind trip that took the 12 Nordic founders on a whirlwind tour of the …

“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 …

Creamfinance, a smart data powered lender has recently expanded its operations to Denmark, their sixth market entry in a span of 4 years since inception. The company headquartered in Poland has also seen steady healthy spikes in their ‘Principle Lent’ over these years. In 2015, this metric was Euro 60 millions with a CAGR of over 90% and this is …

Tallinn-based scientific collaboration platform Guaana is giving out 10 percent of the company to users for free, hoping to involve them more tightly in its quest to define a new, universal format for scientific projects. The effort has a similar to target to many equity crowdfunding campaigns on platforms like FundedByMe or Invesdor where startups sell equity not just to …

Virtual reality (VR) might be booming around the world, but as the market begins to mature and competing companies gain some attention from the masses, certain countries are starting to move ahead. By Daniel Smyth As ever, Europe and North America find themselves locked in a battle for supremacy and in the last few months it seems as though the …

Music, tech, politicians, finance – they all want the same thing:  the hearts and minds of millennials.  In the rapidly developing fintech world, millennials are often a driving force working behind the scenes and pushing traditional financial institutions to veer away from the cumbersome, expensive, in-person interactions of old. By Morgan M. Davis The app economy especially is “largely driven …

A common thought, though perhaps a naive one, is that the online fashion retail market is saturated and there’s no room for newcomers to have any mainstream success. While it’s true that technology pretty much allows anyone to knock up a web-store, source cheap products or sell on behalf of a larger company, it doesn’t mean there isn’t room for …

At Infoshare 2016, Rachel Milgram  of InnovIL shared an investor’s perspective on startup funding.  Rachel’s expertise comes from years of working closely with VC’s and business angels to evaluate companies seeking investment and help match them with the right opportunities. “The fundamentals are never going to change”, says Rachel.  “When an investor looks at an idea, they will always look …

At Infoshare 2016, Richard Kastelein, of Blockchain News  shared a beginners guide to blockchain, and why this technology will change the way we do business – and how the principles of blockchain are actually older than you think. Over the next 10 years, blockchain technology will change the way we do business.  Although it is not a magic bullet, it …

Start-up founders who focus on issues of resource preservation, resource recovery and recycling, often lack access to funding opportunities, as they have difficulty competing the b2b scale-ups that investors see as big money. That is why in 2014 Green Alley, a strategic circular economy investor based in Berlin, initiated the annual Green Alley Award, Europe’s first start-up competition for entrepreneurs wanting …