NEWS October 23, 2018

Skillbreak launches a platform to democratize creativity

Skillbreak founding team. From left Lina Johansson and Matilda Hannäs (CEO).

Swedish impact-tech company Skillbreak has created a new social learning platform aiming to spread creativity and allow people to meet in a time when we live increasingly isolated and screen-dependent. The idea is to make expert knowledge in arts, crafts and design available to the public.

Stockholm-based Skillbreak was founded in 2016 by Matilda Hannäs and Lina Johansson with the vision of becoming Europe’s leading platform for unique learning experiences. Skillbreak offers hundreds of unique, short and social learning experiences with the leading creative experts in Sweden. Through the platform, creators in design, arts and crafts are matched with people who want to learn new things. Experts share their skills in their own homes, studios and workshops and through the Skillbreak platform they get the tools to earn money on their expertise.

“We want to enable hundreds of thousands of craftsmen, creators and artists around the world to make a living on their creativity,” says Matilda Hannäs, CEO and one of the founders of Skillbreak. “In this way, it is also a sustainability strategy that contributes to new jobs, professional skill training and preserves culture and traditions. The workshops we offer make it easier to lead a sustainable lifestyle and we focus on categories such as green cooking, farming, minimalism, textile recycling and ceramics.”

The vision is to become Europe’s leading platform for unique learning experiences. In the long term, Skillbreak will offer a new way of traveling and learning new things locally.

“Our big idea is about democratizing creativity. There’s something mysterious and unattainable with creativity and we want to make it more available to each and every one. In the long term, anyone should be able to learn anything anywhere in the world,” Matilda continues.

The Skillbreak concept has since inception been about spreading creativity and allowing people to meet in a time when we live increasingly isolated.

“The social part is extremely important, we long for good reasons to meet in depth and make meaningful things with family and friends. A lot of people I know are tired of going out to have a beer to socialize. Also, when you work in an office, like I do, we also yearn for getting away from the computer screens and to do something with our hands,” says Matilda.

Matilda Hannäs comes from a craftsman family but has worked her whole career in the tech industry, most recently at Spotify. She has been featured on DI’s list of hottest tech entrepreneurs under 40. The Skillbreak team is expanding and has now signed a Marketing Manager and Development Manager in September to advance faster. Skillbreak’s product range is growing rapidly (currently including more than 150 different workshops) and all courses are booked online at skillbreak.com. The courses are physical and packaged in a bite-sized format of approximately 2-5 hours per course. Some examples of Skillbreaks are “create a chic wall hanging in macrame“, “sprout seeds“, “design and create in ceramics“, “ink painting with a focus on flowers” as well as “sensory techniques and bubbles“.

More information
Matilda Hannäs, CEO / Founder Skillbreak, matilda@skillbreak.com, + 4670-776 60 06, Visiting address: Norrsken House, Birger Jarlsgatan 57c, Stockholm.

Platform: www.skillbreak.com
Blog: https://blog.skillbreak.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/goskillbreak/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goskillbreak/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMlFWBxIoD8
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.se/goskillbreak/boards/

NEWS September 6, 2018

Almi Invest and Söderberg & Partners invest in the Edtech company Learnster

Almi Invest invests in the Edtech company Learnster, which develops the next generation’s learning platform for companies engaged in education or internal competence development. Söderberg & Partners also participates in the financing round. The capital will be used for further development of the platform and for continued market launch.

Stockholm-based Learnster offers a cloud-based learning platform, where trainers can design and distribute courses and educations in relevant learning environments. Learnster is suitable for both the teacher-led, physical classroom and e-learning programs and everything in between.

The learning platform contains a user-friendly design tool to easily create courses and educations, as well as functionality for publishing courses, handling course participants and course programs, automation of bookings and handling of payments.
The platform is built with state-of-the-art technology and is responsive, making it work on all types of digital devices – from computer to mobile. This enables the participant to learn on his / her terms and take part in the course content – before, during and after the training.

“Learnster facilitates lifelong learning, which is becoming more important in today’s working life,” says Jens Bäckbom, investment manager at Almi Invest. “The platform is as powerful for small educational companies as for large companies and is fully adapted to today’s and the future’s digital climate, giving the company good potential to succeed,” he continues.

Although the Learnster learning platform was launched relatively recently on the market, it has already proven itself very competitive in terms of large-scale, established systems. The customer list includes the SATSELIXIA gym chain, which is already running and uses the system for introductory training for its 8,000 employees.

“We are very pleased to welcome Almi Invest as an investor,” says Learnster’s CEO Mikael Larsson. “With the help of their capital, skills and network, we can further increase the pace of our development.”

For further information contact
Mikael Larsson, CEO of Learnster, tel 070-431 48 16, mail mikael.larsson@learnster.com
More information about Learnster can be found at www.learnster.se

NEWS September 3, 2018

Here are the 14 new Sting companies

Democratization of artificial intelligence, micro lending on equal terms, speech synthesis, ID hijackings, crowd funding of music, leisure activities, language challenges in healthcare and interpretation of radiographs are some of the areas addressed by the 14 carefully selected companies that have been accepted to Sting this autumn. The list of companies is announced today when the entrepreneurs meet for the first time at Sting’s newly opened premises at A house.

“It has been a tough selection process leading up to the start of the autumn programs,” says Karin Ruiz, business coach at Sting. “It’s a strong line up of companies that represent a wide range of exciting business ideas. We see a clear trend in an increasing number of startups that utilize the power of artificial intelligence and deep learning to tackle major challenges related to for example safety, health and climate,” she continues.

In addition to office space at A house and the network with each other and the Sting team, the companies will get individual coaching in business development and financing, recruitment support and access to Sting’s wide network of industry contacts and investors. The companies also have the opportunity to get an investment of SEK 300,000 from Propel Capital, Sweden’s most active private seed investor.

“With our new premises at A house, we now have the opportunity to run the Incubate and Accelerate programs in one place, which we believe will contribute to an even stronger Sting Community and better opportunity for the startups to exchange experiences and networks with each other,” says Fredrik Rosengren, new Program Manager of the Sting Accelerate Program.

Poki Robotics is one of the new Sting Incubate companies. The company develops task-specific robots to help businesses become more efficient and sustainable.

“Our participation in the Sting Incubate program will give us a great opportunity to scale up Poki Robotics. We are looking forward to getting to know the network and being inspired by the other companies, as well as challenging ourselves. In the spring, the goal is to sell the first robots to customers in Sweden. A challenge for us will therefore be to further develop our product with limited time and resources,” says Fredrika Kringberg, co-founder at Poki Robotics.

Fairlo, one of the new Accelerate companies, challenges the micro loan market with its service that gives people the opportunity to solve an unexpected expense with a loan on equal terms.

“We launched Fairlo in April and got off for a good start. Now we want to use the momentum we have to accelerate into 2019, with the goal of making “Vardagslånet” the obvious choice for unexpected expenses. We hope that Sting, with its solid and proven models, will help us to identify the next-generation star developers, and that the network and experience in the organization will provide great support in the international expansion of our business,” says Jimmy Hanna, CEO and co-founder of Fairlo.

Sting has coached over 240 startups since the start in 2002. The companies had revenues of over 210 MEUR in 2017 and have attracted almost 450 MEUR in private capital. Stings alumni companies include companies like Barnebys, Bioservo, DPOrganizer, Karma, Videoplaza, Volumental and Yubico.

Companies selected to Sting Accelerate
Defentry is a cybersecurity company that combats ID hijackings and hacked accounts through the use of large data acquisition, AI and machine learning. Defentry supports its customers in anticipating risks and finding new solutions that prevent intrusion and fraud with the objective of making them less exposed on the internet. Defentry also offers a personal and secure platform for its customers to monitor its data, identity and integrity. www.defentry.com

Fairlo is a TechFin startup that launches a new era for small loans. With a system based on the latest technology, Fairlo offers people the opportunity to solve an unexpected expense with a small loan at equal terms. Whoever borrows from Fairlo owns the power and can at any time pay off the loan, change the amortization plan or change the due date, all in one click and free of charge. fairlo.se

Friendtivity provides leisure activities for school kids in a new way –at home, in small groups around an interest such as music, programming or something totally different and led by an employed friendtivity leader. Via the platform , parents can seamlessly find leaders, book and pay for the activity at a very competitive price.  friendtivity.se

Signe is a digital platform for crowdfunding of concerts. Organizers, artists and fans can easily create an event and start raising money for an upcoming concert. Signe allows fans to participate and influence who organizers should book, whilst minimizing risk for the organizer to lose money on the event. Signe.io

Språk i Vården develops a medical interpretation tool for healthcare providers that reduces healthcare costs and increases effectivity while it at the same time strengthens patient safety and integrity. Our tool is available as an application for smart devices and can be used by all healthcare professionals in a broad range of healthcare situations. www.sprakivarden.se

Ugglo is a multi-lingual audio book service for kids. We combine the picture book with the audio book to create a truly fun and captivating reading experience. Thousands of kids in Sweden improve their reading and language skills with Ugglo every day. www.ugglo.se

Zenia provides high converting E-Commerce marketing traffic to webstores, helping sellers to market their products organically and through paid posts by sharing – promoting – converting. www.zenia.ai

Companies selected to Sting Incubate
DeepMed’s vision is to redefine how radiographs (x-ray images) are being used in orthopaedics by applying artificial intelligence for the use in x-ray interpretation. With our software, built on deep learning, we support radiologist and other healthcare-professionals in detecting and classifying orthopaedic radiographs in a more efficient and accurate way. deep-med.com

Greenlytics provides data science solutions for the power industry. Our vision is to harness the power of data to create a sustainable energy future. Our first product, WindMind, is a tool that, with the help of advanced analytics and artificial intelligence, creates ultra-accurate wind power forecasts, which enables wind power producers to lower imbalance costs, increase profitability of wind power and make wind power cheaper for the consumer. www.greenlytics.io

Kavalri Games emerged from the passion for creating qualitative equestrian games. We’re developing the mobile game Equestrian the Horse game – a game which lets the player build their equestrian career from the ground up. Our players are mostly girls with an equestrian interest, and they’re passionately supporting our development. equestrianthegame.com

PerceptiLabs is a Deep Learning company developing the software QuantumNet. With a vision of democratizing artificial intelligence, QuantumNet simplifies the creation and understanding of AI-models by removing the need of programming and deep mathematical knowledge. The programming is replaced with a simple drag & drop of building blocks where the user e.g. can go into each building block and see how the AI-model learns in real-time. www.perceptilabs.com

Poki Robotics develops task-specific autonomous robots to help companies become more efficient and sustainable. The products are based on a robotics platform that is adjustable to different needs and environments. Our first product is a smart, self-navigating robot that collects golf balls on golf ranges. We offer a technical solution that includes high accuracy local positioning together with intelligent software. www.pokirobotics.com

SciPro’s Thesis Management System is an online IT-support system for management and supervision of theses at bachelor, master and PhD education levels. It allows the entire thesis writing process to be managed in a clear and structured way.  It gives students a clear methodology, supervisors a channel to communicate with students and decrease their administrative workload and school administrators a total overview. www.sciproprojects.com

TorTalk creates text to speech applications for schools, universities and workplaces.
Our end users are people with dyslexia, ADHD and those who prefer to listen to their second language. TorTalk’s software removes barriers, help increase efficiency and reduce stress for users. tortalk.se

NEWS February 28, 2018

Söderberg & Partners invests in Learnster

Learnster, a company that develops the next generation’s learning platform for companies and educational consultants, gets a new investors in Söderberg & Partners.

Since its inception in February 2017, Learnster has developed its SaaS service for more efficient training, skills development and on-boarding of employees. Now Learnster gets a new external investor and expands the team with several key roles.

Learnster’s cloud-based service combines the physical classroom with digital formats. This increases the effect of each given educational effort, both for the teacher and for the one who will get the learning experience. Furthermore, the service is used to design and administer training in a simpler and more cost-effective way.

“There is a great demand for Learnster’s innovative solutions for education and skills development. The fact that one of our customers sees the same potential as we do, and chooses to invest is both flattering and a receipt that we are on track”, says Mikael Larsson, CEO of Learnster. “With Söderberg & Partners, we get a long-term owner with whom we can grow together”.

Gustaf Rentzhog, CEO of Söderberg & Partners, sees great potential in both the service and the market. One of the ambitions of the investment is to eventually offer Learnster’s solutions as part of the delivery to Söderberg & Partners’ own customers.

“We see great potential in our collaboration with Learnster and what we can achieve together. Continuous knowledge development is a fundamental part of managing the retirement challenge linked to the aging of our population and the need to work longer. We believe that more and more companies will demand such solutions in the future”, says Gustaf Rentzhog, CEO of Söderberg & Partners.

In connection with the investment, several key persons have been recruited to Learnster. The team is being strengthened with Marketing Manager Peter Hedström; Anette Andersson, Head of Sales and Customer Relationship; Daniel Eek, designer / UX and Michael Smietana CTO.

For more information contact:
Mikael Larsson, CEO of Learnster
mikael.larsson@learnster.com
Mobile: 070-431 48 16