Notes from Sweden - US Entrepreneurial Forum 2009, Sep 16 in Stockholm

I attended the first day of this event in Stockholm. Here are some key notes and comments from some of the presenters;

Magnus Aronsson, Managing Director for ESBRI, the institute for entrepreneurs and small business research, http://www.esbri.se and Randy Mitchell, Private Equite Specialist, U.S. Department of Commerce were the co-chairs of this event. Randy talked among other things about the usefulness of the SBIC, Small Business Investment Company. For more info see http://www.smallbusinessnotes.com/financing/sbic.html

Jöran Hägglund the State Secretary, Ministry of Enterprise, Energy and COmmunications was also part of the introduction. A panel about the role of government followed. Us view basically "Get the Government out of the way"... where as the Swedish version is more of Government guidance and control...

My two cents out of this is basically, I think Sweden needs to explore the "Chinese" way of developing businesses, "create economical free zones" where you as an entrepreneur can get a number of years of no tax and other benefits to get a chance succeeding building a new business that can become a big enterprise. All the political parties and people are just too focused on getting (re)-elected to their offices and cannot do what it takes. One simple example is, why should I have to pay 100k SEK (about 15k+ USD) to register a corporation in Sweden when it will cost you about 30 USD in Las Vegas and less than 250 pounds in UK... and why should you have to pay about 55% tax on personal company income (salary)??

The next session focused on how to get funded these days in the aftermath of a world-wide financial crisis.

Kimberlie Cerrone, entreprenuer and involved with The Angels Forum in Palo Alto, CA. See http://www.angelsforum.com and kimberlie at gmail.com or +14153782838.

Some points;

• 1M USD in revenue is what investors are looking for
• "Put me as no 1 on your B round of funding"
• Intrapreneurship
• Great crop of companies will evolve in the years 2012-2014 in the valley once liquidity available

As a reference for Kimberlie, see also

http://www.esbri.se/pdf/Panel_4_Kimberlie_Cerrone.pdf

Clare Fairfield, Managing Director Concerto Ventures was next, for more info about Clare see http://www.esbri.se/artikel_visa.asp?id=506

Some points;

• Government programs can be more useful for entrepreneurs these days
• Use service providers
• VC companies with over 50M USD will get new SEC regulatory rules
• Consider cross border alliances
• Break down funding needs into smaller pieces
• Conserve, conserve, conserve your cash needs
• Use milestones whenever possible
• Funding rate 1-2%
• Success rate 10-20%
• Fail rate 20-40%

A conclusion I make of his presentation was basically as before, do not use VC money unless you have no other way of getting funded.

Katarina Bonde, Managing Director of Kubicorp was up next in the funding section. See for e.g. http://www.linkedin.com/pub/katarina-bonde/0/23/78b for her public LinkedIn profile.

Here are her options for getting funded;

• Through revenues
• Regional funds
• If you have got positive sales go to bank
• If you are in the export business go to EKN (Exportkreditnämden), http://www.ekn.se
• Use covertible debt
• Finance through invoices
• Joint projects with customers
• Partner with distributors
• Create a pre pay business model
• Barter of trade your products or services
• In Sweden check out the SVCA list of VCs, http://www.svca.se
• Look in different regions of the country and start there
• Partner with customers in a coop, example given, in state of Washington, a wine development company started by inviting interested customers to buy shares of the company to get started

Mikael Karlsson, Managing Director and Fund Manager presented the newly created ALMI Invest.

ALMI has been around for quite some time but this spring they have launched the new investment part of the company. See http://www.almi.se

• Regional offices owned by Swedish counties to 49%
• They do equity investments
• 1-10 MSEK put up by them
• Mission is to bridge gap to get started
• They have 7 regional funds, 1B SEK, launched in spring 09, 50% EU funding
• Max 50% co-funding is the rule
• They are looking for 5-15 MSEK investments, companies with good potential and within 7 yrs an exit

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Microblog vs. Blog, nanoblogg or macroblog, Where is blogging heading?

I have noticed being in Sweden which is a blog-heavy country that people have got infected with the idea of blogging in every size or shape or whereever you are. A couple of weeks ago, when Google announced their saving plans for the company by e.g. shutting down the Finnish acquisition of Jaiku the Finnish mobile microblogging company and transforming it into an open source based solution service. Then Morris Packer at Bonnier media started pushing for Swedish Jaiku users to start using the new Swedish microblogging service Bloggy created by Jonas Lejon and then microblogging really took off in Sweden not just on Bloggy but also on Twitter since most people on Bloggy also have noticed Twitter without using it that much.

Now other services are also taking off, such as "What can you say with one word?" such as the new Nanoblogging site http://nanoblogg.se/tlidforss which works to emulate Bloggy's success but for even shorter blogs. This new service has recently picked up more than 400 users in a couple of days. Recently, people have stared mciroblogging about that they ned 2000 characters at least to say something meaningful raising the question about the need for a macroblog service? I like all the comments and think that this goes all way back to the starting of websites that ended up being too difficult to manage and maintain, then the first blogs came around and much later mobile phone updates and need for short updates. And now finally back to the beginning again.

Hmm, technology is amazing, we seem to go in circles sometimes...maybe it is time to learn from history and check out of internet for a while.

For all twitter and bloggers, also be aware of #blmon on Twitter and http://www.bloggersmonday.com/

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Twingly update - search for microblogs

In case you have not noticed, Twingly has updated their blogsearch to also include microblog search. Works very well. Try it!

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Bloggparti.se - Check what political party you belong to according to your blog

Bloggparti.se is a service from a Swedish startup idea created for the 24 hour business startup camp going on right now. Mattias Johansson who came up with the idea did not get to apply for the bootcamp in time but I tested his new service and I have to say I like it. By using uClassify to classify the words used, Mattias used 100 different bloggers from each of the political parties to analyze what words they use as a based for the service.

I tested the service and noticed I ended up (not quite sure how?) with a 50-50 mix almost for the conservative and christian party affiliations.

Anyway, I like the idea, you can apply that during election campaigns to check what your favorite bloggers write.

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Headweb.com - Head for the web and grab your movies

Headweb is a Swedish startup using bittorrent filesharing technology to distribute movies without piracy but still with no DRM or copy protection. You can (if you want to) burn a DVD and watch your movie without having to depend on DLNA compliant computer and TV on your regular TV with an old DVD player.

Headweb is using embedded watermark technology to control illegal copying. To encoruage the use of the their client software to actively partcipate in the filesharing connections, you get points for your movies which you can use against purchase of new movies. I met with Peter Alvarsson, COO at Headweb (http://www.headweb.com/) at a startup event earlier this month and Headweb seems to be getting traction and a lot of attention. I think most people though, don't understand the differences between Headweb and Pirate Bay, that may be need further clarifications. But Headweb is a great service, in particular for those of you having 10Mb/s (or better) internet connections. I like the no DRM approach, nobody wants to have nowadays some DRM scheme that will screw up your files later. A cheap RAID server and a fast internet connection and you have your own entertainment store.

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Recordunion.com - A music sharing and distribution company

Here's another Swedish startup company, RecordUnion, http://www.recordunion.com who will help people who own tracks of music to share, distribute and sell through various companies. David Nilsson is CEO and co-founder of the company. The service is not commercially launched but check out the talking dog, nice homepage. It reminds me of the old cartoons with "Deputy Dog".

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Spontu - Get your ideas on Facebook

Here's a tip during the holidays, if you have a lot of ideas about what you would like to create on Facebook but don't know how to get started or where to begin. I can highly recommend the Swedish startup company, Spontu, http://www.spontu.com I have met twice recently with the founder, David Haddad and belive in what Spontu is doing. Check it out and contact David.

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Hitta.se does streetview maps for Stockholm

The Swedish company http://www.hitta.se just introduced their version of "Google Streetview" for Hitta's Stockholm maps. Nice quality, now anyone can be a tourist and walk around the city of Stockholm but for fun and for business. You can easily search for a business and walk to the door of the building.

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Turbo charge your Twitter - Use Bloggy, a Multimedia Twitter

Thanks to Jonas Lejon, founder of http://www.bloggy.se, you can now enjoy a multi-media version of Twitter called Bloggy. Works very well, it works like combining Twitter with Twitpic and an whole array of other Twitter piggyback services including cross feeding of information from blogs, bookmarking sites and so on. Check it out I can highly recommend it. See http://jonasl.bloggy.se/ for Jonas and http://tlidforss.bloggy.se/ for my Bloggy micro-blog.

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MoYuMe - More of you and Me, mobile picture lifestream service

MoYuMe (More of You and Me) is a mobile picture lifestream style sharing service. A good friend of mine, Peter Sandberg launched this business. I ran into Peter at the SIME event in Stockholm earlier this week. I like the MoYuMe services, to see a live example, check out Peter's own photo lifestream on the Disruptive blog.

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MobileFocus2008 - LociLoci does mobile social networking without the need for GPS

The Swedish startup Lociloci has started with an interesting twist, do mobile social networking with location services without the need for using GPS. Their philosophy is that a lot people have or may have concerns about having GPS set to enabled in their phones all the time. So, they have started offering location based networking where you can leave GPS set to off. Since keeping track of where your friends are when you need to know precisely where works well in particular in cities where the cell sites are small, I think the quality of this social networking site is OK.

Lociloci will also soon integrate with Blogger, tumblr, facebook and twitter.

The company behind Lociloci, is XYZ Technology AB has offices in Stockholm and Boston and works as a technology and services provider to any company that wants to use and get a neworking and location services platform.

I also met with a good friend of mine, Mary Larson who works for this company now.

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

Whitelines - Make my lines disappear, interesting new cleantech paper product for your writing needs

If you have ever got irritated about the black (usually) lines on a writing pad stand out too much and distract your design, here's the perfect solution from you. Buy Whitelines paper products available in all sizes and shapes. Whitelines is a Swedish, Stockholm based startup company where Roland Elander (the founder) and his team have come up with a great product. The company has recently got 6M SEK in VC funding and is looking for introduction opportunities in other countries such as USA.

Whitelines paper products are environmentally friendly produced and include carbon footprint information. The paper products have white lines on a light grey background which makes the lines "go away" when you scan, copy or fax the documents. See the flash intro on the homepage.

Congratulations to Roland and his team for the success so far.

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Bloglovin for all you blog loving readers

The Swedish startup Bloggkoll.com who provides the easy to use with a nice clean interface blog reader with subscription and search based on among others things most subscribed blogs has launched the English version of their service called Bloglovin'. Check out this service and register at http://www.bloglovin.com/

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Vironova - Nothing to sneeze at, virus image analysis and diagnostic services

Time to get blogging again, I have had an ugly cold lately slowing down work needed to be done. But today's first blogpost is about anti-virus in a different way. When you hear virus image analysis in the IT business, you almost all the time think, anti-virus software for your computer, but in this case we talk about the real viruses that affect our bodies. Vironova is a hot Swedish startup combining digital image analysis software and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) to quickly analyze and identify key parts of a virus. Vironova also provides diagnostics services. The company has been funded so far by EU research grant and private investors. They are presently open for additional funding, see home page for details (available both in Swedish and English). If the cross-over between IT and medical research is of interest for your investments, I suggest check out this company right now!

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Hitta.se in 3D better than Google Earth

An update to Google Earth made me testdrive again the "Swedish Google" company Hitta (which means find in Swedish) and their new see your city in fantastic 3D views as if you are flying over the buildings and cars. The 3D engine used is provided by the Swedish startup company, Agency9, 3D Maps (tm) EX engine. To appreciate the quality you should testdrive it here. See a snapshot below.

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OculusAI - Computer AI for face recognition

Oculus AI is a Swedish startup based i Stockholm that recently won the Sweden Venture Cup award. OculusAI is a new company with a lot of promise in the image and video processing field based on the latest computer research in vision recognition.

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MobileSorcery - Meet the sorcerers of mobile development tools

Mobile Sorcery is a Swedish startup company focusing on easily enabling making mobile phone applications for J2ME and Symbian environments even if you start out using your standard C/C++ library of software. Mobile Sorcery and the MoSync development tools have been used 100+ mobile devices. I have met with several of the guys behind Mobile Sorcery and I have seen that they live up to their promises. Mobile Sorcery as a company has roots from the mophun mobile game development areas.

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TerraNet - Wireless P2P using your mobile phones

TerraNet is an interesting wireless P2P communications company developing solutions for e.g. mobile phone to mobile phone communications using ordinary phones without the need to use radio basestations. This is a concept that has been explored and developed for quite some time in the WiFi area. TerraNet is a Swedish startup in Lund in Southern Sweden. I like this area, I think there is a lot of potential here, Red Herring has recently listed TerraNet as a company on their watchlist. I do think Anders Carlius, the CEO should have a chat with (if he has not so far) Francis DaCosta, founder of Santa Clara based Mesh Dynamics, a pioneer in mesh networking for voice and video using multi-radio wifi hardware. I met Francis at an early stage of development but I have seen what you can do with smart radio software when it comes to QoS and throughput. TerraNet is I think working on something similar using regular cellular/mobile phone radio technology. Keep an eye on the this company.

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Infviz Labs - Making sense out of large amounts of data

Infviz Labs is a Swedish startup specializing in Microsoft based software environments for efficient data analysis tools. Pattern recognition and data analysis is the speciliaty of the software from Infviz. Infviz is based in Norrkoping in Sweden and part of Swedish initiative for startups in the eastern part of Sweden, Linkoping and Norrkoping. Infviz Labs are specialists on C#, .NET, 2D/3D presentation methods. Please have a look at the demo about Swedish counties, statistics and trend analysis demo, http://www.infviz.com/demo/index.html

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imCMS - Role based open source content management system

imCMS is a powerful open source role based content management system that can easily be used to manage complex websites, intranets and works with mySQL and other webservice applications. imCMS is a product from imCode Partner, a small Swedish kind of startup (has been around since 1998) but kept itself small and nimble as a software startup. The company is based on the beautiful island of Gotland in Visby, Sweden and has a number of customers. Check out the software from the website, http://www.imcms.net/1273.

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for help with contacts with Swedish startups and the Sweden market.