Reaktor POLTE Makes Their First Investment Into Helsinki Based Ninchat


    Reaktor is not your average software house, they have been winning “best place to work” awards in Finland and Europe left and right and have a very impressive track record. In fact, we heard a rumor that they decline participation in the ‘best place to work in Finland’ competition, just to “let somebody else win”. So with all the good vibe and money in the pot, they started investing in early stage start-ups. In order to do so, they created an investment arm – POLTE and the first investment with that brand is Ninchat. (Reaktor itself has previously invested into VALO, FUSION and RBN)

    POLTE has gone through nearly a hundred startups before they made the choice. As to why they chose Ninchat, Oskari Kettunen, Reaktor’s Business Development Director comments:


    “We did not know what we were looking for and once we saw all these companies, there were so many variables that the stars just had to align.

    With Ninchat there is a lot to like. Good team, loyal to each other with a long history. They are developers with a track record and business experience.

    It was impressive how they put lean startup stuff to work. They even had a pivot during negotiations. Its really about the speed rather than where it is right now. “



    The investment from POLTE will be the private component of the 300-400k round that Ninchat is raising with the other part to be matched by TEKES. 
POLTE is quite hands on and according to Kettunen, their team will often visit Ninchat offices and vice-versa in order to provide experience, and “help to avoid all mistakes that [they] have done in 13 years.”

    Ninchat is a brand under Somia Reality, the same team that was behind the famous IRC-Galleria. The company aims to solve team communication problems in an agile and technologically interesting way, they even wrote their own communication protocol.

    Of course, everything is in the cloud and allows really simple and easy company wide communications. They also support video, kind of like Google Hangouts but Ninchat is proud to say that their latency is faster than that of Google. It is definitely a team to watch out for.

    According to Ville Mujunen, CEO of Ninchat, “the funding allows [them] to do what [they] wanted, to develop the product quickly and launch it on the international markets. Ninchat’s launch on the US market is set for March at the huge South by Southwest event.”

    You can check out Ninchat in action at their website here.