TheStartup.eu

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!

Sorry for the lack of posts, I have been in Prague for some time and got back with a pretty huge fever. Posts will be back as usual, with some great news on the way.

This is actually not so new bu wasn’t covered that much by the european blogosphere, and due to its importante for european startups I would like to share it with you.

Atomico Ventures is looking to raise $266 millions within the end of the year. The fund is headed by Skye cofounders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, counts around 15 people and has already made some nice investments.

“We primarily invest in entrepreneurs working in consumer facing technology businesses in Europe” can be found on Atomico’s website. “We invest in early stage ideas but can be opportunistic when we find a compelling opportunity”

If you haven’t heard of this before, I suggest you read the complete story on peHUB

Finally good news for european startups, the times reports that a new development fund is being put together to invest in early stage technology companies.

European Founders Capital (EFC) will have initially £20 millions to play with, but is looking to reach at least the £50 millions mark. The plan is to make early stage funding more available to european companies, imitating the valley’s seed funding mentality.

The fund will be led by two of the most know english tech entrepreneurs, Michael Birch and Brent Hoberman. Micheal is the co-founder of  the social networking site Bebo, founded in 2005 and sold to AOL (Micheal and his wife made a combined profit of $595 million from the deal). Brent is the co-founder of Lastminute.com Ltd, an online discount vacations website that survived the dot-com bubble and was sold to Sabre Holdings for £577 millions.

They clearly know what they are doing. They will be joined by Rogan Angelini-Hurll and Peter Dubens. “We aren’t taking institutional money,” Birch said said. “All the money comes from founders – people who have done it before.” Birch plans on positioning the fund between angel investments (£50.000 to £100.000) and venture capitalists which invest several millions per company.

It is really great and refreshing to see such news, and see the stratup-focused funds grow in Europe, joining two pioneering experiments: European Founders and Team Europe Ventures in the effort of promoting and strengthening european entrepreneurship.