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Thursday, February 21, 2019View this email in your browser

Standout News is a quarterly(ish) newsletter from Standout Capital about tech deals, trends and posts from our blog. New subscribers can subscribe to the newsletter here.

Latest from Standout

To check the state of the Software as a Service (SaaS) industry, Standout visited Silicon Valley, and We went to the SaaStr 2019 conference, here’s what you should know!

We're proud to support another Nordic growth story, as Standout invests in VisBook, a Norwegian Property Management Systems for hotels, to accelerate growth

Tech deals in the Nordics

Notable recent Nordic tech deals in digital healthcare, cloud and IT infrastructure, consumer and commerce, enterprise software, consulting, adtech, CRM, AI and VR.  

Private Equity continues to be active in digital infrastructure - Segulah acquired the Swedish datacenters from Sungard and changed the name to Conapto. Norwegian IT-infrastructure group NetNordic (owned by Norvestor) acquired Tedako and Radpoint, while IT-gården (also owned by Norvestor) acquired Dimac Hosting. Adelis invested in DataCenter Finland.

Digital healthcare is one of the major growth areas - To name a few deals, Varian Medical Systems, a US manufacturer, acquired Noona Healthcare, a Finnish provider of cancer care software. EQT Ventures invested in Siilo, a secure mobile messaging service for medical teams. Pamoja Capital, a Swiss PE firm, acquired Three Plus Group, a Finnish provider of veterinary software. Gullspång invested in Medpeople, a digital recruitment service for healthcare staff. Standout believes strongly in this sector and recently invested in BCB Medical

Enterprise software continues to be a busy Nordic tech sector - For example, VIA Equity invested in C&B Systemer, the Danish developer of enterprise software for real estate agencies, while Visma, acquired Websystemer, a Norwegian provider of cloud-based solutions for real estate and Standout Capital became the new majority owner in VisBook, a Property Management System for hotels. Tantalum, a UK provider of IoT software for cars, acquired Springworks, the Swedish developer of connected car platform Spark, and Volkswagen acquired WirelessCar, a Swedish telematics services for automotive industry, from Volvo. Neo4j, a leader in graph databases, closed an $80 million funding round led by Morgan Stanley. Summit Partners, the US PE firm, made a $67M growth investment in Syncron, the Swedish SaaS for enterprise resource planning.

Retail struggles, but investors remain confident in consumers - Litorina partnered with online menswear retailer Care of Carl. Scope invested in Miss Mary of Sweden, an underwear brand for women. VOI, the e-scooter sharing startup, raised $50m from Balderton and others to launch cities across Europe. Verdane acquired Hylte Jakt and Maskinklippet to create a niche outdoor e-tailer. TicTail, the Swedish e-commerce platform, was sold to Canada-based Shopify.

Despite Silicon Valley dominance, Nordic deals in adtech, marketing and CRM - Novax bought a stake in Revide, a Swedish marketing and CRM platform, and Verdane acquired a 70% stake in Penetrace, a Norwegian marketing intelligence platform. Another CRM, Lime from Lund in Sweden, listed on Nasdaq. Offspring Capital, a Danish PE firm, acquired Mouseflow, a Danish web and ad analytics software, while Cision acquired Falcon, a SaaS for social media marketing.

Demand for IT resources is surging, consulting firms consolidate - For example, Devoteam, a French software group, acquired 75% of the shares in Jayway, the Swedish software developer. Omegapoint acquired Qurit, a Swedish IT consulting companies within e-health. Sobro invested in TrueSec, specialists in cyber security, and Stockholm’s Beamon People was sold to Alten, an international IT consulting group.

We will see more of AI and VR, but Nordic deals are still few - A Swedish software for conversational AI, Artificial Solutionsraised $15.7M in a funding round led by Scope. Memory, a Norwegian AI company for work time-tracking has raised $5m. Finland’s Varjo raised $31m from Atomico to build a human-eye resolution VR product.


Tech trends, research and events

Now 7.9 billion global mobile subscriptions, according to Ericsson Mobility Report

Benedict Evans, A16Z, gave his End of the Beginning Presentation, about smartphones

As usual at Slush in Helsinki, Atomico released their State of European Tech report 

We also thank our Finnish friends at Slush for their useful Resource Bank

The Swedish Internet Foundation's study: The Swedes and the Internet 2018

The Artificial Intelligence Index published the The 2018 AI Index Report

Waymo (i.e. Google) self-driving cars have now crossed 10 million miles on public roads 

Welcome to join our company Neptune Software for their annual summit on mobility and enterprise systems, at SALT on Langkaia in Oslo, Norway. Register here.

Bildresultat för neptune summit