News September 9, 2022: Turborilla, Songsay, FastPark, PodX, Hedvig, Vakta, Ingrid and more

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

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Funding news

  • Turborilla (Umeå, game studio): SEK30M (€2.8M, €2.8M) from Mind Detonator for 33% of the company (English, Swedish / DI Digital paywall).
  • Songsay (Stockholm, mobile app for sharing lyrics in music videos as messages): SEK5.4M (€500K, $500K) in a funding round led by angel investor Lena Apler, with participation from Antler and other undisclosed angel investors (Swedish, machine translation).
  • FastPark (Karlstad, mobile app for sharing of parking spots): SEK2.5M (€230K, $240K) from Almi Invest and undisclosed private investors (Swedish, machine translation).

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

News from Swedish startups, the tech sector and VCs

  • Bloomberg gives some background on the newly formed Swedish podcast conglomerate PodX Group, which is looking to acquire majority stakes in independent podcast production companies around the world (English / Bloomberg soft paywall, alternative URL).
  • Hedvig, Stockholm-based digital insurance provider, is launching a car insurance product (Swedish, machine translation).
  • Vakta, app-based subscription service for on demand private security guards from Stockholm, has launched a free feature which shows crimes reported for individual streets on a map (Swedish, machine translation).
  • Piotr Zaleski, founder and CEO of Stockholm-based SaaS solution for e-commerce shipping providers Ingrid, shared a few recent achievements and KPIs, including a +€1M contract signed during summer (English).
  • Spotify CFO Paul Vogel said at a conference that the music streaming platform will begin testing and trialing audiobooks “very soon" (English).
  • Norrsken announced the winners of this year's Impact100 list: Unacademy, India's largest learning platform ("Shining star"), and US-based Brimstone, maker of the world's first carbon-negative Portland cement ("Rising star") (English).
  • Cold email is "the best way to get in touch with me". "And if I don’t answer, then don’t be afraid to pester me", says Gwen Sandberg, a Texas native with a wide range of tech experiences, who in May was announced as new Sweden-based investment director at Inventure (English).
  • 📺 Swedish public TV broadcaster SVT published a 4-part program profiling the Swedish startup entrepreneurs and investors Sorosh Tavakoli, Hidayet Tercan, Pär Svärdson and Hellen Wohlin Lidgard (Swedish, 4x 30 minutes).

I'm tracking new Swedish tech startups on this page (log in with your subscriber email). Lots of additions even this week.

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

  • Snap ended up in a strange situation with Zenly, a French location-based social network which it acquired in 2017 for $213M. The app which employs a team of around 70 people, is hugely popular, but doesn't make any money. So it doesn't fit into Snap's new tightening-the-belt strategy. But it is i too successful to be sold, since that would create a potentially dangerous Snap rival. So Snap is shutting Zenly down (English).
  • Sifted looks at the M&A summer in Europe. It tracked 443 deals (for companies launched after 2010) in European tech. Many of these deals did not disclose how much companies had been acquired for (English).
  • Katariina Kari, lead ontologist at IKEA, writes about the company's 3-layered knowledge graph (English).
  • According to a representative survey, 37% of voters in Stockholm are in favor of blocking parts of the downtown area for drivers of private cars. 50% are against it (Swedish, machine translation).

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That's it for today.

Martin Weigert

Martin Weigert

Martin is the founder of Swedish Tech News. Every day he spends many hours gathering and curating the latest from Sweden's startup & tech sector. Contact: m@swedishtechnews.com
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