Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 26th November 2008
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Peter Robinett, Web Programmer and Founder of Lunch 2.0.nl
Continuing from my first post, I’d like to share my observations from the rest of the Slush Helsinki conference on Monday. The first speakers set a great tone for the day and talked openly about their successes and slipups. Subsequent speakers followed their lead, with Petteri Koponen winning the prize for funniest story: he told us how he was forced to ask his hairdresser for a ride because he was running late for a meeting with a top VC firm. Of course, the fact that a hairdresser was so enthusiastic that he drove Petteri to all his VC meetings across Silicon Valley didn’t go unnoticed, with once firm so impressed that they came out to the parking lot to meet up.
As much as the speakers were good, I especially enjoyed meeting local startups. I had a good chat with the people behind Zipiko (covered here before) and was particularly interested to how how the service has evolved. For instance, one of the popular uses of the personal activity announcement service is the management of deviations from regular schedules by recurring events. Thinking about this, this use makes sense, as a service built around SMS notifications makes passing along updates easy regardless of how late the changes happen. However, the Zipiko team also surprised me: during a panel Helene Auramo, their CEO, declared that she wasn’t worried about the current decline in advertising spending despite running an advertising-supported service. I guess time will tell whether she is right to be so sanguine. (more…)
Written on 24th November 2008
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Peter Robinett, Web Programmer and Founder of Lunch 2.0.nl
Slush Helsinki has gotten off to a great start, with the heavy snow yesterday doing little to dampen people’s spirits. We started off with presentations from some of the heroes of the Finnish startup scene: Risto Siilasmaa of F-Secure, Monty Widenius of MySQL, and Ilkka Paananen of Digital Chocolate. After insightful and introductions, Matt Marshall of VentureBeat moderated a panel with all the entrepreneurs.
A common thread in the three entrepeneurs’ comments were the difficulty raising funding. While all three were successful raising money, it was getting money at the right time with the right conditions that was tricky. Paananen says his company, after successfully bootstrapping for several years, was forced to chose between selling the company, raising venture capital, or merging with another company. They chose the latter because Digital Chocolate complemented their business and already had Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins as investors. Likewise MySQL turned down a $15M investment only to take a $10M investment a year or two later. The difference? The former would have seen the founders loosing a controlling stake, while the latter let Widenius and his fellow co-founders keep their involvement. This commitment served them well and enabled them to profit hansomely this year with the billion dollar sale of MySQL to Sun. Since it was been challenging, at best, for them to raise money from Finnish investors, both Widenius and Siilasmaa are now devoting time and money to Finnish startups. Predictably this announcement sent local startups scrabbling to corner both men after the panel.
One question European startups often struggle with is whether to move to Silicon Valley. Widenius said MySQL only moved there because their CEO wanted to be there. Despite drawing laughs from the crowd, this view seems to be widespread. All the panelists are happy with the ability to develop great products from Finland but emphasized the minuscule size of the Finnish market and the importance of having a management and sales presence in the US. Risto Siilasmaa, despite starting F-Secure in Silicon Valley, would have actually preferred to have been in Boston or another city on the US East Coast, due to the time difference if nothing else.
To follow Slush as it happens, you can watch the live video feeds from the business and development tracks. The #slush Jaiku channel and #slush Twitter search results are also a great way to take the pulse of the Slush attendees. If you have any questions for me, I’m @pr1001 on Twitter and on Jaiku.
Written on 21st November 2008
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Peter Robinett, Web Programmer and Founder of Lunch 2.0.nl
The slush falling down this evening as I biked home from The Next Web offices must be a sign of things to come, as I will be representing The Next Web on Monday at Slush Helsinki. Slush is a one day startup conference showcasing the latest and greatest in the Finnish startup scene, including big success stories such as Jaiku and MySQL. I’m looking foward to meeting all these entrepeneurs and reporting back to you here at The Next Web about what we can expect next out of the icy north.
If you’re also in town, I’d love to meet up. Please email me (peter@bubblefoundry.com) or send me a message on Twitter (@pr1001).
Written on 10th September 2008
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Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Every once in a while we publish an interview with a start-up. We ask five questions, hoping the answers will give you inspiration and new views.
This time we’re interviewing Asmo Halinen from Playray, a social minigames community from Helsinki, Finland. People from sixteen different countries can log in to the site and enjoy games in their own language, while staying in touch with their gaming buddy’s. 
The service raised €1.75 million from Estonia-based venture capital fund Martinson Trigon Venture Partners about a year ago. That’s not the last part of company history that you’ll readm, as Asmo told us quite a lot about how Playray started.
How did you come up with the idea of Playray?
“Actually we started as a B2B service company, producing sites, web commercials and other stuff like that. But since all the three founders (Pasi Laaksonen, Janne Matilainen and me) had some background on online gaming, we started building our own online casual gaming service during 2002. At the beginning it was only a hobby, but as that side in our company grew, we later (in 2004) split the original company in two: I recruited a new CEO for the B2B side and all we three founders continued in the “new” gaming company.
Since that we’ve focused 100% on the development and internationalization of our Playray service. During the early days it was only about browser based online games; nowadays it’s much more about the active player community around the casual gaming experience.” (more…)
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
