News October 7, 2022: Alva Labs, DevSkills, deWiz, Nordic Angels, Bruce, Pixel, Storytel, lots of new Swedish tech startups, and more

Here is today's curation of news from Sweden's startup and tech sector, exclusively for subscribers of Swedish Tech News.

Mergers & acquisitions

• Alva Labs (Stockholm, data-driven recruitment tool) acquired Stockholm-based startup DevSkills, provider of a real-world coding test solution to identify the best developers. Financials were not disclosed (Swedish / Breakit paywall).

Funding news

• deWiz (Malmö, wearable tech to help golfers hit it longer, straighter and closer): SEK43M (€4M, $4M) in a Series B funding round from previous investors and new angel investors such as Patrick Rees, Vijay Singh and Annika Sörenstam (English).

>> Daily updated, subscriber-exclusive Google sheet with all funding rounds raised by private Swedish startups and scaleups.

News from Swedish startups, the tech sector and VCs

• Wired is doing an article series on "Europe's hottest startups", and as part of it published a piece featuring the "10 hottest startups in Stockholm": Treyd, LEIA, Doconomy, Cling Systems, Mindler, ClimateView, PocketLaw, Ellure, Dework, Validio. The selection is completely arbitrary but good for those mentioned (English).
• Profile of Nordic Angels, Stockholm-made invite-only social network for angel investors founded by the serial entrepreneurs Ash Pournouri, Andreas Grape and Stefan Iversen in 2020 (Swedish / PDF).
• Bruce, Stockholm-based fitness studio subscription service, is expanding into Denmark, while revenue is growing and losses are shrinking (Swedish, machine translation).
• Spotify is doing some fall cleaning among its original podcasts, reportedly cancelling 11 productions and laying off around 5% of original podcast staff (English).
• Google will sell its new Pixel 7 smartphone officially in Sweden. Previously, products from Google's own Pixel brand were not sold here (Swedish, machine translation).
• Caroline Wachtmeister has returned to her investor role at Industrifonden and was just promoted to Principal, after a year's secondment at Stockholm-based AI startup Hopsworks, where she led go-to-market strategy and finance (English).

>> This week, I've started to track a large number of new Swedish tech startups, including 18 that haven't been mentioned in the newsletters. Check out the subscriber-exclusive, regularly updated list (log in with your subscriber email).

The list is probably the next best alternative to having your own startup scout – or a good addition, if you happen to be a VC with access to a scout.

Swedish tech earnings reports

• Storytel (Stockholm, audiobook and ebook subscription service): English.

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

• Tiger Global is reportedly seeking to raise $6B for its next fund that invests in privately-held tech companies, which means the firm is targeting less than half of what it raised for its prior fund (English).
• Extensive guide, including many practical examples, on how to kickstart and scale a consumer business by doing things that don't scale (English).

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That's it for today.