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Finland has had many unicorns, from gaming giants Rovio and Supercell to database administration system MySQL and meals supply service Wolt. And it’s residence to one of many world’s most famed startup occasions, Slush, which is held yearly on the metropolis’s Expo and Conference Middle.
Those that make the annual go to to Slush are inclined to deal with town as a stop-off level, however doing so misses out on participating immediately with Helsinki’s vibrant startup sector. “An important factor is the tradition,” says Mia-Stiina Heikkala, startup enterprise adviser at NewCo Helsinki, town’s foremost enterprise growth service. “We’ve got a really open and trustful mindset, so everyone seems to be speaking about their enterprise concepts.” Helsinki’s a small metropolis in a relatively small nation, which suggests its funding sector is relatively underpowered—however that’s altering, and quick. The town has acknowledged the significance of attracting worldwide expertise and is particularly funding new arrivals whereas additionally bolstering homegrown startup firms.
Tuure Parviainen, cofounder of Volare.{Photograph}: Jussi Puikkonen
Volare
Tuure Parviainen and Matti Tähtinen, cofounders of Volare, assume the black soldier fly could be the answer to 2 main issues within the international meals chain: meals waste and the demand for protein. The 2 labored collectively at VTT, the Technical Analysis Centre of Finland, to develop a solution to farm the fly, and in spring 2021, they spun out of VTT to scale up the thought to an industrial stage. Black soldier fly larvae are fed meals waste—collected inside a 50-kilometer radius of their HQ—to develop into bugs that can be utilized in pet meals and animal feed. Seed funding of €700,000 (about $690,000 at present alternate charges) from Maki.vc has helped construct the crew of 9 and can fund the development of an industrial plant able to producing 5,000 tons of protein a yr in Hyvinkää, about 50 kilometers north of Helsinki, in 2023. volare.fi
Gubbe
When Sandra Lounamaa’s grandfather died, she confronted a conundrum: Who would assist look after her widowed grandmother? The advertising and marketing skilled struggled to discover a firm that would present trusted employees to tackle nursing tasks and assist with family actions—so in 2018, she based an organization that might do it for her. She enlisted the assistance of cofounder Meri-Tuuli Laaksonen, a buddy she met on a brand new moms’ Fb group, and created Gubbe, named after a beloved canine. “Gubbe is the very best aged care service on your aged liked one,” says Lounamaa. The agency brokers connections between pupil caregivers, who endure a seven-step screening course of, and people who want taking care of—it’s like Wolt, however for caring. Greater than 1,000 caregivers have signed up with the service in Sweden and Finland, with the corporate launching within the UK in August. The 45-strong firm has raised €6.1 million from buyers—together with Spintop Ventures, Nidoco AB, and Tesi. gubbe.com
Mjuk
Mjuk was based in 2019 by Rickard Zilliacus, Max Heino, and Casper von Pfaler, as they needed an inexpensive and handy manner of buying high quality secondhand furnishings. “We take away the effort of shopping for and reselling used furnishings with a service that picks up and delivers your stuff when it fits you,” says Zilliacus. Logistics, together with pickups and deliveries, are dealt with in-house and managed utilizing purpose-built apps. In all, the corporate has offered 25,000 items of furnishings because it was based, with a gross merchandise worth run fee of €5 million, which is more likely to double this yr. A March 2022 funding spherical—the corporate’s second—took the whole quantity the corporate has gained from buyers to €5.5 million. Will probably be used to increase into mainland Europe in 2023 and to develop the agency’s workforce from its present 25. “Our five-year aim is to turn into the main secondhand furnishings participant in Europe,” says Zilliacus. mjukhome.com
GraphoGame
By the age of 30, Jesper Ryynänen had lived in six international locations, and he realized that Finnish academic practices—like having all learners, no matter ability ranges, in a single classroom—stood out from the remainder of the world. In 2017 he launched GraphoGame with cofounder Mervi Palander, who has 25 years’ expertise creating digital studying options, comparable to on-line studying platform Claned. GraphoGame gamifies literacy studying for youngsters of ages 4 to 9, supported by analysis output from the likes of the College of Cambridge and Yale. “We work with governments to distribute our apps to youngsters who want it essentially the most, and within the course of, we create lasting academic impression on a nationwide scale,” says Ryynänen. Kids choose up fundamental literacy inside a month or two of utilizing GraphoGame. The app is out there in 15 international locations and is utilized by 400,000 college students a month in a wide range of languages, together with Zambian tribal dialects. graphogame.com
Photo voltaic Meals
All through historical past, the meals chain has been reliant on agriculture as its supply, however Photo voltaic Meals CEO and cofounder Pasi Vainikka thinks it doesn’t should be that manner. The agency, based in 2017 after being spun out of VTT, produces a protein powder known as Solein that can be utilized as a uncooked ingredient in meals like meatballs, noodles, and ice cream. The fermented powder, which is between 65 and 70 % protein, 5 to eight % fats, 10 to fifteen % dietary fibers, and three to five % mineral vitamins, is created from microbes. Industrial manufacturing will happen at a manufacturing facility in Vantaa, 20 kilometers north of Helsinki, funded with a February 2022 €10m funding from the Finnish Pharmacy Pension Fund, beginning within the first half of 2023. solarfoods.com
Rickard Zilliacus, cofounder of secondhand furnishings platform Mjuk.{Photograph}: Jussi Puikkonen
Flowrite
Swamped by the burden of writing repetitive emails, Aaro Isosaari—then chief of Finnish startup accelerator Kiuas—thought there needed to be an answer. So, in 2020, he switched from advising startups to launching his personal: Flowrite. The corporate’s foremost product is an AI-powered writing assistant that turns brief directions comparable to “cal invite?” into ready-to-send emails and messages. At present in beta, the Google Chrome browser extension is utilized by greater than 50,000 individuals. These not at the moment utilizing it must look ahead to it to come back out of beta later this yr. Flowrite’s $5 million in funding has helped construct out an 18-strong crew, all of whom work remotely. flowrite.com
Pixieray
Pixieray hopes to supply excellent imaginative and prescient to everybody, in every single place, on a regular basis. Based in 2021 by Niko Eiden, Rebecca Xu, Klaus Melakari, and Ville Miettinen, the corporate goes a number of steps past varifocal lenses. Its adaptive glasses work like a telephone digicam’s, continually readjusting focus and zooming out and in roughly each 100 milliseconds. The corporate raised $4.4 million in seed funding in June 2021 from the likes of Maki.vc and the Amazon Alexa Fund, with plans to ship its first glasses in 2023. pixieray.com
IQM
Spun out of Aalto College in 2018, quantum {hardware} firm IQM is the brainchild of Jan Goetz, Kuan Yen Tan, Mikko Möttönen, and Juha Vartiainen. IQM builds quantum computer systems utilizing superconducting qubits, with 180 staff throughout 4 workplaces in Espoo, Munich, Paris, and Madrid engaged on the duty of dashing up processing energy. The corporate has delivered a five-qubit processor to Finland’s VTT analysis middle, and a quantum pc to contribute to the Q-Exa challenge in Germany. Moderately than engaged on a one-size-fits-all foundation, IQM develops its processors for particular duties, comparable to nanoscale nuclear magnetic resonance imagery—an idea that has helped the corporate increase money from buyers, most lately a €128 million round in July 2022. meetiqm.com
Helppy
Finland has one of many five fastest-aging populations worldwide, so the elder care sector is a significant focus—and Helppy is one other startup, alongside Gubbe, making an attempt to assist. The platform permits continuity of care between nurses who historically work shifts and know little about their sufferers, giving them knowledge in regards to the sufferers’ wants. It’s attracted 5,000 nurses, whom the app connects to these needing care, since its founding in 2018 by Richard Nordström. In all, the nurses look after 1,000 sufferers. In Might 2022, Helppy landed €3 million in funding from Wolt cofounder Elias Aalto and others, together with VC agency Alliance Enterprise. The funding will allow Helppy to increase into central Europe, in keeping with Nordström. helppy.com
Mainframe Industries
Massively multiplayer on-line (MMO) video games are a $43 billion business—however they’re ill-equipped for the cloud. Mainframe Industries—based in 2019 by 13 veterans of recreation builders together with Ubisoft, Blizzard Leisure, and CCP Video games (creators of EVE On-line)—needs to treatment that. The cloud-native gaming that Mainframe is growing will enable gamers to select up and play in a device-agnostic manner, much like the best way you’ll be able to entry Netflix. The corporate, which has 60 staff, has raised practically €30 million from buyers, together with the cofounders of Twitch and King—creators of Sweet Crush Saga. themainframe.com
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