By Mary Emily O’Hara On September 9, 2013 Recently, Safe IQ, a startup based in Ireland, launched an app aimed at better protecting sex workers in Ireland, the UK, Sweden, and Norway, countries where prostitution is legal. (Canada is next.) The “…
On Thursday, August 29th, 2013 the Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce San Francisco and Silicon Valley hosted a delegation of 30 people visiting us from Chalmers University of Technology's Born Global development program. Among those visiting will be 9 Swedish startups which were selected for this exclusive development program because of their estimated large growth potential by a group of Serial Entrepreneurs, Venture Capitalists and Investment Managers. Born Global is an Almi-financed action-research project run by researchers at the Center for Business Innovation (CBI) at Chalmers.
Volumental is the world’s first cloud-based 3D scanning service. Volumental’s online service lets anyone create 3D models of people, objects and rooms. With only a few clicks you record a short film that we convert into a 3D model within minutes. The models can easily be shared online, downloaded, edited and printed in 3D or used in virtual environments. Volumental offers tailored solutions to solve companies’ specific needs for simple and robust 3D scanning.
VKB Technologies (Virtual KeyBoard, the Virtual Mouse or the Virtual Gesture Recognizer) is a further development of a technology that once made the Senseboard an interesting technology. The technology makes it possible to measure both the fingers position in each hand and the position of the hand relative to other objects such as a table or your legs (in case you use your legs as the base for your Virtual Keyboard). With the VKB you have a portable input device that can be used anywhere.
This project intends to create environments centered on one or several collaborative industrial robots. By adapting this approach we also point the direction of where industrial robotics and automation might be in 10 years from now. Environments created in this initiative will be tested and demonstrated throughout the project, thus we intend to create a synergy through the interaction between the research and the feedback from the presumptive users.
Dr. Maombi is a mobile app that enables health workers in rural Tanzania to seek input from doctors in city hospitals about the patients in their village. Due to limited infrastructure, it is often too expensive or time-consuming for patients to make the trek from their village to a city hospital. Instead, they visit their local health worker. These health workers are not trained doctors and serious medical conditions may not be identified or managed adequately.
Blicko is a democratic music service that lets the actual listeners influence the playback. We like to compare it to a modern day digital jukebox solution, that fits perfectly for public venues and establishments, such as: cafés, restaurants, bars and hotels etc. The service is to be offered as a monthly subscription for businesses, and is best described as a: legal, engaging, complete and flexible solution for public playback.
A new way to compare mobile price plans. Comparific is a unique mobile app that recommends the best mobile subscription, based on your real phone usage. By choosing a price plan that suits their needs, our users can cut their costs by an average of $300 each year. Since Comparific bases the analysis on every single call and message sent by the user and the actual data traffic consumed, the recommendations from Comparific are much more accurate than traditional web based comparison services.
Kiwied develops a mobile learning platform for teachers and students created by teachers and students. Because of time saving for teachers, and increased learning pace for students the two schools introduced to the initial concept is now on board to test it. Since we target mobile devices from the start, assigning and grading tasks is in our prototype done by less than three clicks. Kiwied will not only save precious time for teachers, it will also enable the student to learn more.
Centive Solutions has developed the first affordable and usable technology allowing users to step inside all computer 3D models. Being inside a 3D model as in reality helps the user understand and get a feel for the model beyond what is possible on a normal screen. Our solution has helped our first client in architecture finding errors in their 3D model for a large building project saving them 50,000 dollars with a couple of hours work. Using our solution, all involved parties will know what to expect from the finished product already at the modeling stage saving both time and money.
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:
For sex workers, an app that provides extra protection (via Pando Daily)
.jpg)
