Masonry Layout

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 …

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 …