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Creathor Venture announced this week that it is leading a financing round of up to €14 million for Helsinki-based Blueprint Genetics, an AI-enabled clinical genetic testing company.   Blueprint Genetics is among a wave of Nordic companies using AI within med-tech, including Lytics, Medeye, and Nox Medical. Blueprint Genetics, which launched in 2012, provides clinical genetic testing for the diagnosis of …

In 2016, Finnish startup and early stage growth companies raised the second highest amount of venture capital funding in Europe when looking at investments as percentage of GDP. The investment amount was almost twice as large as the European average.  Sweden and Denmark are also among the top countries attracting venture capital. Finns can be proud of their rank in …

Nordic design is indeed trending worldwide. In less than three hours the new Danish watch brand IVER Denmark reached their funding goal on Kickstarter with backers from four continents, going well beyond the expectations of the team. Founder Kristian Asbjørn Iversen, shares his insights as to how they prepared for the launch. By Kristian Asbjørn Iversen Launch social media profiles …

In March 2017, #nordicmade companies took over SXSW at the #nordicmade booth.  With a helpful boost from the Rising North fund, the #nordicmade program included a pitch night, an investor dinner, a partnership with the John Lennon Educational Tourbus and a SaunaBus from Finland. However, it was a challenge for the Nordics to stand out in a sea of thousands …

Last weeks Arctic 15 three day event succeeded in offering a glimpse into the bright future of the Nordics as hundreds of investors, startups and corporates converged once again in the familiar old industrial complex of Kaapelitehdas the ‘Cable Factory’ in western Helsinki. Arctic 15 has grown steadily since its first event in 2011 and has a strong impact on …

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 …

Slush, the largest startup event in the Nordics, took place in the “death month” of November in Helsinki. With over 15,000 attendees comprising 1,700 startups, the array of new companies and technologies can be dizzying.  From the SLUSH 100  pitching competition to the 240 demo booths, here are 5 startups that caught our eye.   FairStart FairStart is a startup …

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, …

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 …

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 …

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 …