This piece is part of the Slush Chronicles series, “Founders Unplugged,” where we interview founders and key personnel of innovative companies, to hear their thoughts on the event we’re attending or dive into other spontaneously chosen topics. Slush 2024 founder: Timo Poijärvi SaluStim Group Got a message from Timo saying he is onto something amazing, …
This piece is part of the Slush Chronicles series, “Founders Unplugged,” where we interview founders and key personnel of innovative companies, to hear their thoughts on the event we’re attending or dive into other spontaneously chosen topics. Slush 2024 founder: Jukka Tuhkanen, HIIL I ran into Jukka Tuhkanen, Director of Sales and Partnerships from Hiil, …
Slush100, the annual race for the 1 Million and all the glory, is on again at Slush2024 The Slush 100 competition offers a €1 million equity investment for its winner, backed by Cherry Ventures and General Catalyst. Open to early-stage startups founded in 2021 or later, with less than €2M raised, it emphasizes Europe and …
Another warm beginning of the warm Finnish summer – and another warm welcome to the old Cable Factory for the annual Arctic15 startup-investor conference. This story is the annual “vibes collection” from the Arctic15 floor, backstage, DealRoom meetings, official afterparties, unofficial gatherings and most importantly about HI, maybe with some added AI. (Got carried away …
In the era of AI, Hunome talks mostly about HI So, at Arctic15 we met many AI companies, and then we met Hunome, more into Human Intelligence, HI, and especially for Collective Sensemaking. With that, and a bit wider purpose statement of “helping humanity make sense of itself”, I had a pleasure to talk …
Helsinki — In a stride towards revolutionizing the European hospitality sector, Finnish tech-enabled hospitality operator Bob W has announced its Series B funding of EUR 40 million. This round, led by Evli Growth Partners and joined by growth capital investors and prominent European entrepreneurs, including Taavet+Sten, the investment firm of Wise’s founder Taavet Hinrikus and …
Stockholm — A Swedish deep technology company N-ink is announced as the winner of a science challenge by Voima Ventures, an early-stage investor based in Helsinki and Stockholm. The challenge targeted Nordic and Baltic early-stage startups and research teams with groundbreaking science-based innovations. By winning the challenge, N-ink secures a €1M investment as a convertible …
Failup Ventures, a new globally operating early-stage venture capital fund, has announced the first closing of €30 million of its new early-stage fund of €50 million. Founded by three previous Finnish entrepreneurs – Jesse Heikkilä, Topias Soininen, and Oscar Andersin – Failup Ventures backs early-stage startups with strong, mission-driven teams. Failup’s typical initial investments range …
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 …
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 …