We all know that the nordic scene is very active, and hopefully it will continue delivering great startups. 
I got an email from Asmo Halinen informing me that some finnish entrepreneurs created a new accelerator fund, Magnifier. The Helsinki based project will focus on innovative startups regarding mobile, social media and entertainment.

Having founded more than 30 companies, and having participated in more than 25 M&A these guys surely know what they are doing. There are ten partners and most of them were first generation 20 something when they first started their companies. Now they decided to help other young finnish and european entrepreneurs.

Y Combinator and SeedCamp surely come to mind when talking about these incubators and we’ll see what Magnifier will do to differentiate itself.
The model is simple: Magnifier provides the initial investment to the company, the partners work together with the founders through the early development stages for closing a larger investment round, they scale the business, they sell. Everybody is happy.

If you are based in Finland, the fund is launching right now and is welcoming the first proposals!

Imbera Electronics, a finnish Integrated Module Board developer, announced that it has secured USD $15 million in series B funding from NorthZone Ventures, Index Ventures and Conor Venture Partners.

That’s a good news considering that everyone thought European VCs just stopped investing.
Generally interested in clean tech, electronics and telco companies this VCs have often invested in early stage companies, and have in their portfolio monsters such as Skype, MySQL and Lastminute. Not bad.

For more information about the company and the VCs you can read the official press release.