Swedish social blog reader Bloglovin just got a sizable investment from American Betaworks along with former Glam CFO and Microsoft executive Bruce Jaffea (more about the investment at GigaOm). It’s the first step to an even stronger international presence. Bloglovin already have fashion fans from all over the world using their service to follow their favorite fashion blogs.
I had a chat with CEO and co-founder Mattias Swenson on young entrepreneurs, the new force in aggregation and curation, and of course how you get a prominent company like Betaworks to invest in your startup.
Readmill is about to revolutionize how we read book through sharing of quotes, thoughts, notes and tips. THe company’s co-founder and VP of Happiness Henrik Berggren says it’s not about being social. When reading we don’t want to chat with friends about the book at the same time or getting disturbed by status messages of who is reading what. What we want is to share the reading experience, something quite different from being social when reading.
I sat down to talk with Henrik at the Next12 conference in Berlin. We talked about the disruption of the publishing industry, the disruption of books and about being a startup in hot hot Berlin. Henrik also have great tips on how to get funding for your startup!
Ted Valentin is one of the Swedish startup superstars. He’s created a host of map and aggregation sites as well as founded 24 Hour Business Camp, 24hbc. Currently he is working on the new social travelling app Tripbirds.
I sat down with Ted and talked about Tripbirds, entrepreneurship, startup funding, Seedcamp and the rocking Swedish startup scene.
MoSync have since 2006 developed from a consulting firm to a startup in the mobile app space with an open source framework that can translate your code into something that works on almost any mobile phone under the sun.
I sat down with CTO and co-founder Alex Jonsson to talk about open source, making mobile apps and why starting companies in Sweden gives you a beautiful life.
Few startups have the European Space Agency as their reason to be, but Load Impact is one. After getting commissioned to build a kick-ass load testing tool for earth to space internet connections, Load Impact had the perfect code base to turn it into an online performace testing tool. The startup went global from day one with the help of an angel investor and Hacker News.
I sat down with CEO and co-founder Ragnar Lönn to talk about the effects of slash-dotting, how to raise money and the importance of social networking.
Crowdfunding is one hot item right now through out the world after the success of Kickstarter in the US and President Obama recently signing new legislation making crowdfunding of companies easier.
In Northern Europe, Swedish Funded by Me is the main crowdfunding platform with a multitude of projects, many of them cultural. But the company also aims for company funding through their new equity funding program.
Watch my interview with CEO and co-funder Daniel Daboczy on crowdfunding, startup funding and the Swedish startup climate. Enjoy!
Mission: To make sure that all entrepreneurs and creative people have a chance to meet all the people out there that want to be part of a projects funding and creation.
Offices: Stockholm
Team: Arno Smit, Daniel Daboczy, Johan Jörgensen, Fredrik Weisner (advisor)
A great interview with Scrive founder Lukas Duczko on how to start a technology startup without a technical background, on modern document management and how companies can save substantial sums on smart document signing, and why Scrive choose the rather odd programming language Haskell.
Monitoring online buzz and social media are quickly becoming critical to many businesses that are leveraging new communication tools and building relations in new ways with customers.
Silverbakk is a Swedish startup that monitors social media based on language and relevance with some pretty unique tools. Most of their customers are big multinational corporations, mainly in Europe. I had a chat with founder and CEO Fredrik Stenbeck on how you become and online success and how you bootstrap a successful startup.
Are you reading excellent blogs or using open source software? Wishing you could pay the creators a small sum in a simple way? That is the idea behind Malmö-based online payment company Flattr, one of the smaller Swedish startups that have gotten a lot of international recognition.
I talked with CEO Linus Olsson about startups (naturally), the business and revenue model behind Flattr but also about the small number - and vulnerability - of online payment and the systems behind it. Flattr got a lot of recognition last year when it was the only way for Wikileaks to get donations after all the big payment companies had blocked donations to the organisation.
This year, representation of young Scandinavian startups at LeWeb were poor. But support from the home front was even poorer.
While it’s great to see Swedish startup stars like Spotify (video) and Soundcloud (video) on the main stage, and Rovio from Finland last year, Scandinavian governments should think about the future and help their startups.
It’s the startups that are created now that are going to bring the jobs and prosperity in the future. While Ireland, Belgium and Switzerland are showcasing their startups and innovation, the Scandinavian governments are not yet supporting their startups at international web conferences.
or download the MP3!
