Swedish Startups Pitching for Investors!!!!!!!

On Thursday, August 22nd, 2013 at 6pm at Runway in San Francisco, Silicon Vikings organized an event for the Swedish Innovation office InterAct. A group of young Swedish companies pitched to a distinguished panel of Silicon Valley investors Allan Young - Runway, Ullas Naik - Streamlined Ventures, John McIntyre - Citrix Startup Accelerator, Marlon C. Nichols - Intel Capital and Sarah Cone - Illuminate Ventures, moderated by Max Shapiro - People Connect and Keiretsu Forum.

The Success Story of a Nordic Startup, Wrapp!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

While ’gift cards’ is a massive, $100 billion industry, the market hasn’t really been disrupting with social and mobile technologies until Wrapp entered the market. After only three months live in Sweden, one percent of the Swedish population had interacted with Wrapp and in January 16, the company had 1 million users according to Techcrunch.

Wrapp announced on June 13 that it has closed on $15 million in fresh funding to continue to grow its business, which is jointly based in Stockholm, Sweden and San Francisco, California. The round, which serves as Wrapp’s Series B, included participation from existing Wrapp investors Greylock Partners, Atomico- the VC firm formed by Niklas Zennström, the co-founder of Skype and Kazaa, and Creandum, along with new investors American Express, Qualcomm Ventures, and SEB Private Equity. This brings the total amount invested in Wrapp to $25.5 million.

Hjalmar Winbladh

Wrapp’s board of directors includes Greylock partner and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Niklas Zennström and Creandum partner Johan Brenner.

Here is an interview with Hjalmar Winbladh of Wrapp and Adiba Cremonini - Executive Director Silicon Vikings: