The 16 Companies Of The Startup Sauna Fall 2013 Batch


The 8th Startup Sauna batch sessions started last week and we have had the chance to check out the teams and talk to Juho Kokkola, Head of Operations at Startup Sauna and the Captain about the program.

This time around there are 16 companies, representing 40 people from 7 different countries. There is no specific theme, but the startups are split evenly in terms or B2B vs. B2C focus.

According to Kokkola, “The program’s overall structure and content stays pretty same as in the spring, but we’re constantly bringing in a couple of new coaches. Also, our Local Event tour (prior the batch) reached more Nordic countries than before (Denmark, Norway).

So without further adieu, let’s check out the startups:

Ambro

Tired of spending your time eating? Then this is for you, the company claims that you will be able to get a complete meal replacement with their meal powder. This is supposed to be “healthy”, but there have been some concerns that were raised around this and alternatives such as Soylent. Still, when somebody does solve this for real, I will be first in line.

Beatsy

AirBnB for music DJ’s. For some reason or other they are currently focusing on just Electronic music DJ’s. So if you want to have one at your next company breakfast meet-up, then you can get one here.

Braci

We love startups that try to solve real problems, so we were happy to see Braci. Basically they want to help deaf people to detect emergencies and other important events that they otherwise can’t hear. For instance baby crying, fire alarms, doorbells, etc. Once the device identifies the sound type, it can start vibrating and flashing lights in a specific pattern. Realistically this does not have to be an emergency device but a day-to-day helper. Pretty neat.

BuzzTale (Full disclosure, we are working on another project with Eegloo Business Lab, which is where BuzzTale takes its roots)

Formerly GotLatte, the startup aims to create a real-time content platform, which makes it possible to create curated and embeddable stories. Basically live blogging and storytelling, which can be extremely neat during events for instance.

EasyAntiCheat

The name says it all, they want to disable cheating in-games. Not exactly sure what the plan is, especially considering that many recent games have quite good in-game anti-cheat mechanisms and most casual players do not really care that much. However the team does seem to have a strong background, so let’s see what they come up with.

FruitFlan

Analytics and dashboard for publishers. If it sounds like Google Analytics, it is kinda like it, however there is a pretty good twist to it. It wants to enable you to make quick decisions as to what to do about the content. So say you are the editor at Wall Street Journal and you suddenly see that there is a traffic spike on one story, you will be able to put pre-selected ads there, move the story to the headline of your site, etc. Basically optimize for traffic on the go. ArcticStartup would love to test it out. Hint. Hint.

Insjö

Get ready. This one is meta. It is a bag, that you put inside your bag! So instead of moving all of your items from one bag to the next, you just take this thing out and put it in your bag of choice for the day. Women, beware, they are trying to make you organized and logical.

Mewo

Another AirBnB model, this time for wedding photographers. To be honest, it is kind of a real problem. It is difficult to find one, to judge their skills and make a choice in a reliable way. That being said, the last we heard – they already pivoted. So we are not sure what they are going to be doing.

Ostohyvitys.fi

A rewards card for online shopping. In essence they are an affiliate program but they give you some money back from their commission – i.e. a discount and hence you use them as you would a rewards card. They claim to have generated millions of euros in addition sales to 400 or so partners in Finland. We sincerely hope they consider rebranding for global expansion.

Piiine

If you are going on a car-trip then this is for you. It helps to select the route in an easy draggable fashion and suggests hotels, stops and we think interesting sights on the way. This would be perfect for me, as my childhood dream is to go around the world in a car. Just hope you can remember the triple “i”.

RoboPhone

Robots, phones, toys all mashed in one. You can dock your iPhone in it and then it will do something magical. You even get a “graphical programming language”. Oh and it teaches you stuff too. To be honest, we are not sure what it does, but it sounds complicated and fun.

Search The Milky Way

A meta search engine, where you can search on other search engines. We hope that they have some really creative and extremely smart IPR and that they will take over Google. Speaking of which, did something happen to it that you need other search engines?

StartHQ

Covered a number of times by ArcticStartup, it is a directory and launcher for your software as a service apps in the cloud. We have it running on our machines and it does help us with productivity.

Synetiq

“Provides businesses with valuable emotional insights about their marketing material directly from their customers’ brain.” – Don’t think we can or should add anything to that. NSA will be super happy about this one.

Uniqul

Perhaps the future of payment, which allows to pay with your face instead of your credit card or phone? We have written about the startup previously and we can’t wait to test it out.

Zazler

An impressive promise. Basically it is a ready-made back-end solution for your mobile and web needs. Sounds like magic and to me – it probably is.

So now that you have seen the 16 companies out of the new batch, what do you think?