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Iceland’s Frumbjörg, started by Brandur Karlsson in cooperation with Sjálfsbjörg, the Icelandic national federation of the disabled, is an Innovation Center for Mobility. The initiative’s goal is to provide the disabled with the opportunities for employment and develop innovations within the healthcare and social sectors. The social entrepreneurship venture is meant to provide individuals with disabilities office space and guidance …

In May 2015, Adrien Vetterli came up with an idea sparked by a recently viral story from the Netherlands where a man decided to clean trash along a polluted waterway bit by bit, every day on his way to work. Collecting garbage from natural areas wasn’t anything new to him as he had participated in environmental reporting efforts in his …

Nicolaj Højer Nielsen has an impressive track record as both a serial entrepreneur and an investor in Denmark.  He has co-founded, among other businesses, CodeSealer and Sepior, and invested in many Danish startups, such as Penneo.  Read his crash course on how to get financing for your business in Denmark. I am often asked by both the Danish entrepreneurs and …

With the holiday season in full swing, crowdfunding campaigns can be great sources of gifts for the technology fanatics in our lives.  Here are 5 ongoing campaigns that make great holiday gifts. 1.Tiny Arcade Tiny Arcade makes the perfect gift for both the fan of vintage video game or the person with an interest in computer engineering. The arcade will come …

Atomico and Slush released a study,“The State of European Tech”, at Slush 2015. The study is the most comprehensive review to date carried out on the European tech community, its tech talent, capital flow, entrepreneurial mindset, and success stories. Niklas Zennström, CEO and co-founder of the investment firm Atomico, co-writers of the report,  spoke at Slush about the big changes …

If negotiations regarding the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement are finalized, European FinTech startups will be in a great position to become world leaders in the peer-to-peer finance market. Here are 3 reasons why. 1. Experience advantage Due to the dynamic increase in equity crowdfunding, which can be expressed by more than one hundred percent growth annually, Americans will …

Icelandic startup KeyWe is creating an app that ties together an emotional, visual, and logical approach to learning. Olafur Stefansson and Halldor Thorsteinsson are brothers in law and co-founders of the ed-tech startup KeyWe. I’m meeting with them at  the Innovation House in Seltjarnarnes, Iceland for a chat about their startup. They arrive on time. Composed and confident, with a spark …

Phillip Moehring one of 30 employees at Angellist, visited Mesh in Oslo to give some tips about how to raise money in the Nordics. AngelList was originally a blog started in Silicon Valley, based on the idea of tracking funding and investors for startups.  It is now a home for startups and investors around the world, and has become the …

The German investment company Paua Ventures has just announced a new fund of €40 million which will be invested, among other things, in Nordic startups. Paua Ventures, established in 2010, is an investment company based in Berlin. The fund has now collected about €40 million in its new fund to support promising European companies in the Seed or Series A …

Finnish ed-tech startup Funzi starts with a premise you may be familiar with – learning on a mobile phone. But their unique focus on emerging markets has people around the world sitting up and taking notice. Funzi is reinventing how learning is delivered – not in terms of content, but in terms of the delivery of learning to the individual. …

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 …

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 …

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 pitching competition at the massive startup conference Slush is high stakes and high pressure.  After some stressful preparations, I was called onto stage to pitch my start, EdTech Foundry, in front of an audience in hopes of winning an investment. Last night ended on a high note, and I felt ready to pitch. But in the morning, will all …

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 …

Icelandic startup Breakroom provides its users with a private virtual reality workspace for wherever and whenever they may need it. A simple request: Imagine your current work surroundings. Next, imagine yourself working in a café tucked away on a peaceful and quaint street somewhere in beautiful Vienna, Austria or perhaps imagine yourself reading through work documents somewhere on a beach …

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 …