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 …
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20 startups left in Slush 100 Pitch Competition
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 …
Read More »Slush sold out again this year 2023
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 …
Read More »NORDEEP: Nordic Deeptech will save the world
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 …
Read More »Nordic eWheels at Slush 2022.
There was a lot “e” in the air at Slush 2022, and not only in software, cryptos and such “normal” web3 things – but on wheels, too. Polestar was presenting their Precept car (originally made for the cancelled Geneva auto show 2020) finally touring around the world, paving the way to the next Polestar models to come. …
Read More »Greetings from Slush 2022 – Next the Nordics go to Singapore
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 …
Read More »Nordic Game 2022 – a great premiere
Nordic Game, the conference held annually in Malmö, Sweden, has become one of the leading events for the games industry, and each May it gathers thousands of developers, publishers and investors together. But this November, Nordic Game travelled to Helsinki, Finland, for the first time to do a special show as a partner side-event to Slush, enabling the vision of …
Read More »Slush pitching winner will not receive 1M€
The world’s leading startup conference Slush has decided to revoke the prize funding valued of 1M€ for Immigram, the Slush100 pitching competition winner after its alleged connections to Russia and Russian experts who want to exit their homeland. The company has also a presence in Russia. Immigram and its founders Anastasia Miroljubova and Mikhail Sharonov have created a platform, which …
Read More »Last minute Slush tips
The world’s largest start-up festival, Slush will take place in Helsinki on November 16-17, but Slush isn’t just the official single event. Slush Week, running from Nov 14-18, is loaded with a good variety of Side Events. Plus, and even no Slush Pass will be needed to access many of these events. Side Events are the perfect way to get …
Read More »GLOBHE unites the drones worldwide
The term “Crowddroning” means to unleash thousands of drones and their operators to provide ultra high resolution Earth observation data from every corner of the earth. This way, the collected data supplements the underused information the numerous satellites have to offer. The data itself is ready-to-analyze high-resolution data, straight to any server so the clients of GLOBHE can focus on …
Read More »Finnish start-ups present strong growth numbers
The revenue of the member companies of the Finnish Startup Community, founded a year ago, has grown by 62 per cent from last year. The combined revenue of the companies was EUR 3.5 billion in 2021. The growth is expected to remain strong in 2022. “The majority of the revenue of our member companies comes from exports, so the importance …
Read More »Live events are making their comeback: Arctic15 in Helsinki, Finland
The Arctic15 Helsinki takes place on June, 7-8, 2022. Before the unforeseen pandemic hiatus, the event attracted over 1500+ Startups, VCs, CVCs, Angels, and Investors to get together. For this year, the arranging committee has some realistic numbers drafted: “We aim for 300+ investors, 450+ startups, 150+ corporates, a maximum of 2000 attendees and again – the name of the …
Read More »HoloCare and Illumie Showcased at SXSW 2022
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 …
Read More »CTO Survey says that Finnish companies are at the forefront of digital and green transition
Although R&D investments in Finland will continue to grow, some brutal challenges are looming in the future. R&D investments in Finland will continue to grow, driven by public funding. Finnish companies will continue to increase their product development investments in Finland also in 2022. Growth will be accelerated by the green transition, the advancement of digitalisation and the growth of …
Read More »Finnish biotech startup Kääpä raises Series A to grow mushroom product line
The industry award winning Nordic Mushrooms product line by KÄÄPÄ Biotech, a Finnish biotechnology startup, has caught the attention of major global nutritional supplement manufacturers. The demand on the wholesale product line has increased rapidly and therefore KÄÄPÄ Biotech is now entering into the Series A investment stage to scale up the production capacity to match the high international demand …
Read More »Crowd For Impact disrupts the crowdfunding market through impact specific crowdfunding
A Helsinki based startup, Crowd For Impact, has launched a crowdfunding platform for impact startups solving global issues. It offers both individuals and companies a chance to support impact projects, and receive responsibly produced goods and services in return. Crowd For Impact is a reward based crowdfunding platform that combines crowdfunding, corporate sustainability and startup funding into a unique tool …
Read More »Finnish startup Pibox raises funding for remote collaboration solution for audio content
Pibox is a centralized/all-in-one remote collaboration solution developed for working with creative collaboration. It is used daily by the head of a production, music producers, managers and sound engineers. Now, Pibox has raised € 150,000 in funding from the Pitchdrive fund and several angel investors. Pibox was launched in 2018. The solution first raised interest among music producers, sound technicians …
Read More »SNÖ Ventures launch new $100m Nordic venture fund backed by Peter Thiel
Oslo-based SNÖ Ventures has launched its second fund to invest in visionary Nordic entrepreneurs and connect the Nordics with the US and broader Europe. The new fund targets $100M to invest in early stage, high-growth Nordic tech companies with the potential to disrupt, create or capture large markets through transformative technology or solutions. By Kremena Tosheva SNÖ Ventures is led …
Read More »Nordic and Baltic investments show progressive trend towards sustainability in 2021
According to reports from, European Capital, Danske Bank and i5invest, European VC and PE funds have been substantially gaining ground despite Covid-19, and a substantial margin in the Nordics are focusing on investments in energy and sustainability. Norway, Denmark, and Lithuania have a particularly strong focus on investments in these areas in 2021 compared to the rest of Europe, and …
Read More »Estonia’s UP Catalyst receives funding to produce oxygen on Mars
The technology startup UP Catalyst, founded in 2019, received €50 000 of seed money from the 2021 ESA BIC (Business Incubation Centre) programme for business and product development to boost their novel way of oxygen production on Mars. In addition to the funding UP Catalyst receives technical support from the European Space Agency and hands on mentoring from the field …
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