Funding news:
Heimdal, maker of carbon-negative concrete and glass, has raised $6.4M from Liquid2 Ventures, Marc Benioff, and others. Link
Mentorcam, a platform for getting personalized advice, has raised $4.1M in a round led by Snö Ventures. Link ($)
Construction tech company Bygr has raised 30MNOK in a round led by Kistefos. Link ($)
White-label community software Indyriot has raised 26MNOK in a round led by Spintop Ventures and Lyse Vekst. Link
ONiO, building battery-free IoT solutions for healthcare, has raised €2.3M from MP Pensjon and the EIC Accelerator. Link
Playpulse, a gaming console on an exercise bike, has raised $2M in a round led by Courtside VC and Initial Capital. Link
MyOnvent, software for online and hybrid events, has raised 11MNOK from Knut Asplund and others. Link ($)
Heimdall Power, technology to digitize the electrical grid, has raised 9.6MNOK from Saga Pure. Link
Aidee Health, blood pressure measuring technology, has raised 8.8MNOK from SINTEF, Datek, Stratel, Startuplab, TRK Group, Mehrat Rafaz, and Hypersensation. Link
Digital patient follow-up software Flow Technologies has raised 5.5MNOK from Roman Rosenkranz and others. Link ($)
Wibl, a "hotels.com for restaurants", has raised 1.5MNOK. Link
Secundo, a pawn shop app aka a site for quickly selling used stuff, has raised an undisclosed amount from Arne Kvale, Shafi Adan, and Jan Oftedal. Link
Lesemester, an app for teaching kids to read, has been acquired by Lexplore for 35MNOK. Link
CGE Partners has acquired a majority stake in Inspera, software for the examination process in schools, for an undisclosed amount. Link ($)
Price comparison site Prisguiden has been acquired by Sweden-based competitor PriceRunner for an undisclosed amount. Link
Dry bulk intelligence platform OceanBolt has been acquired by Veson Nautical for an undisclosed amount. Link
Compliance software company Quesnay has been acquired by Stacc for an undisclosed amount. Link
Drone company KVS Technologies has merged with geodata company Terratec. Link ($)
A new, yet-to-be-named investor group has announced 100MNOK to back impact startups located on the Norwegian west coast. Link
Other notable stories:
Story on the Norwegian mobility market and the very high number of apps users need to engage with. Problematic, but I'm confident the answer is not to make one app to manage them all (as someone in the article suggests). Link ($)
44.9% of Norwegian "Aksjeselskap" (LLCs) are still operational 5 years in, according to recent statistics. The story is mostly about one of the "survivors", Foodora, who in 5 years has grown to 344MNOK in revenue and 270 employees (that's excluding bikers). Fast! Link ($)
Startup news site Shifter has been running a series of stories on how hard it is for founders to get a residence permit in Norway. Founders talk about being forced to leave or having to find workarounds, both very unfortunate. Great companies can be built from anywhere, and with Norway being a great place to live it's a shame it's not more accessible for company builders.
UK news site Verdict covering Norway the "cleantech hotbed". Looking past the hypocrisy related to oil production, there are actually many arguments why future cleantech winners might be built here. Link
Story on the many unsuccessful smart home initiatives that have been launched in the past 10 years. Link ($)
Online grocery store Oda is reducing prices to be competitive with the least expensive brick-and-mortar chains. "Experts" are skeptical about whether they'll be profitable, personally, I'm siding with the builders on this one. Link
Some revenue numbers for 2020: Identity management company Signicat: 446MNOK ($), HR software company CatalystOne: 76MNOK ($), Unmanned naval drone Maritime Robotics: 52MNOK ($), Field service management software Zeekit: 34MNOK ($)
From abroad:
Bessemer with an extensive report on "Scaling to $100M in ARR". Very good, and especially recommended for SaaS-founders, both because of how it walks through the most important metrics for SaaS companies, but also because of all the benchmark data for companies at different revenue levels. Link
Good thread on the negative effects of the current funding market. Large funds are moving earlier meaning less mature companies get large amounts of capital without really being ready to spend. As I've shared here before, the main reason startups fail is premature scaling, and with capital in abundance, more founders risk running into this exact problem. Don't start scaling before you have product-market fit! Link
Also on the current funding market: Michael Dempsey on how it affects recruiting, and what to do about it. Tl;dr: founders take less dilution than ever before, and should give some/all of the excess equity to early employees to win them over. I've been saying this for a while; founders should share more equity with early employees - and it seems it's finally starting to happen. Link
On that note: If you want a free startup idea, go read Who is Mike Ovitz and go build something like CAA for startup employees. There is an extreme information asymmetry between founders and employees in early-stage startups, and increasingly it makes sense for employees to agent up to get the compensation they deserve. Let me know if you're building this as I would love to talk (and invest).
Climate crisis tracker: The atmosphere is filling up with CO2. We must avoid a level of 450 parts per million. Current level: 412.3ppm (12 months ago: 410.8ppm, likely to exceed the target in 9-14 years).
Disclaimer: I indirectly have ownership in Playpulse, Aidee Health, and Bygr,
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