News December 14, 2022: Higher, Simppl, Greenely, WhistleLog, Klarna, Refurbly, BLANCHEstories and more
Here are today's news from Sweden's startup and tech sector, exclusively for subscribers of Swedish Tech News.
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Subscribe to Swedish Tech News to get access to a daily newsletter that brings you a brief overview of news from the Swedish startup & tech sector, curated by Martin Weigert.
Or, if you prefer a free weekly newsletter, subscribe to Swedish Tech Weekly!
Funding news
- Higher (Stockholm, mobile recruiting system that skips the CV): SEK22M (€2M, $2.2M) from existing investors, including Jens Engwall. The money will be used to develop AI-based enhancements for the platform. For 2022, the startup expects revenue of SEK11M, up from SEK3.6M in 2021 (Swedish, machine translation).
- Simppl (Stockholm, fintech developing "planet-positive" consumer services): SEK5M (€460K, $490K) in a pre-seed funding round from Icebreaker.vc (Swedish, machine translation).
>> 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
- Greenely, Stockholm-based next-generation household energy platform, has launched in Norway. That's the company's first market outside of Sweden. As in Sweden, Greenely will compete in Norway with Tibber (English).
- Elina Berglund, co-founder and co-CEO of Swedish digital birth control company Natural Cycles, shares her thoughts on and predictions for the femtech sector in 2023 (English).
- John Engholm, lawyer turned entrepreneur and partner at Stockholm-based VC firm blq Invest, is looking for someone interested in leading and developing two post-revenue legaltech startups that he founded, Poströsta.se and WhistleLog (English).
- The Swedish union "Unionen" is suing Klarna for SEK1.3M (€120K, $130K), for mishandling the mass layoffs earlier this year (Swedish, machine translation).
Swedish tech earnings
- Refurbly (Örebro, marketplace for refurbished phones) expects revenue of SEK18M (€1.7M, $1.7M) for 2022, up from SEK4.4M in 2021. The article doesn't include information on profitability/losses (Swedish / Breakit paywall).
- BLANCHEstories (Stockholm, subscription-based audio-erotic app for women) increased its revenue to SEK220K (€20K, $22K) during its second financial year of existence, up from SEK15K during the first year. Losses grew from SEK1.7M to SEK4.3M (Swedish, machine translation).
Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond
- Interesting funding considering that Stockholm-based Gimi has been in this space for 8 year: German startup Bling, operator of a pocket money card and financial education app for children, has secured €3.5M in seed funding just six months after launch (English).
- Intriguing use of OpenAI’s GPT-3 API: US startup DoNotPay is launching an AI chatbot that can negotiate a customer's bills (English).
- Worries of a climate investor: "If I fund the next unicorn that fails to mitigate the impact we are having on our planet I have won financially but failed morally" (English).
Other interesting things related to Sweden
- A 90 megawatt (MW) solar farm will be built around the Hultsfred airport’s runway in southeastern Sweden. It will be the country's largest solar power purchase agreement (PPA) contracted to date and provide H&M Group with local clean energy and guarantees of origin (English).
- Home values in Sweden are now down 15% from their peak in March 2022 (English / Bloomberg paywall, alternative URL).
End note
I've just added the 200th company to my list of Swedish tech startups and scaleups whose CEO is both a woman and founder.
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That's it for today.
