(Written by Ola Keul and shared from Oslo Business Region)
At the Angel Challenge Finale Tuesday night, the 20 investors participating in the program choose Socius as the winner of the 1,3 MNOK investment.
Innovative solutions
– It has been an exciting journey the last 7 weeks from the first pitch days in October throughout the 5 workshops and now the final, As investors we have had the opportunity to follow some real good cases and great teams. Sadly, all things has to come to an end or as we hope not an end but a promising future for the winner and the rest of the start-ups participating in the Angel Challenge. It was a close call but let us now present the winner. The winner has a strong team, the company is entering into an already existing global market with a new inovative service and solution. There is always a risk with investments but throughout the program the winner has listened to the advice from the investors and turned some of those into good progress during a short seven weeks period. The winner has also proved its execution ability during the program, both signing customers and gaining investments. Like all investors we would like to have good return on our investments and we believe the winning company is well positioned for a future profitable growth and success; …and the winner is Socius, said angel investor representative, Thomas Berglund on Tuesday when the winner was announced.
Positioned to scale
The winner of the investment, Socius, is a new content provider for publishers to tell stories using social media. Socius allows publishers to be everywhere and cover any topic, seamlessly on their properties. Among their customers are publishers Condè Nast in the US, and Germany-based Axel Springer.
– The Angel Challenge program has lead us to focus on the customers where we give the biggest value, and has helped us sharpen our communication to both investors, partners and customers. As the angels have pushed us on all sides of our business we are in a much stronger position to scale internationally in 2016, said CEO of Socius, Daniel Butler, upon receiving the award together with founder Frode Jensen.
Learning by doing
This fall, at the Angel Challenge, hosted by Startup Norway, in collaboration Oslo Business Region, Innovation Norway and Føyen Torkildsen, 20 investors and 20 startups came together to build competence and deal investments. There´s a rapid growing number of startups with tons of talent and enthusiasm, and the Angel Challenge is on a mission to help unleash a great, future potential for the startups that takes part. In short, the Angel Challenge is all about learning angel investing by doing it, both from an investor and startup perspective.
In addition to Socius, these are the four startups that made it all the way to the big Angel Challenge Finale:
Konus:
Konsus makes outsourcing of simple but time-consuming office tasks simple for companies and allow companies to spend time on their core competencies. With top international freelancers in its cloud-based portfolio Konsus is able to deliver top results at a fifth of the local agency price. Since the launch in June they have seen a doubling of turnover each month.
Vio Media:
Vio is the “Netflix for Magazines”, giving you access to articles from a the best magazines in one central place. Tailored content will be highlighted based on your interest and your reading habits. Currently in a closed Beta with a number of publishers including Egmont and Aller.
Feat.fm:
feat.fm is a social live streaming platform that offers artists a new way of communicating directly with their fans. In addition to streaming concerts, feat.fm allows artists to engage their fans through live streaming of studio sessions, Q&As and exclusive backstage sessions. This engagement increases sales of merchendise and concert tickets. Among their users are artists such as Bendik, Kakkmaddafakka and Casa Murilo.
Systemapic:
Systemapic is an online portal for quick and efficient management of geographical data in a secure environment. Their solution is time- and cost-efficient for businesses working with geographical (GIS) data, and drastically simplifies the workflow from raw data to a published map.
