sources of information

If you want to keep taps on what's going on in the startup scene with a bit more international focus, here are couple of blogs and websties to check out:

http://www.texasstartupblog.com/

Good stuff about Texas -area (and wider) startups. They often write about going head to head with Silicon Valley and from that perspective are not unlike European or Scandinavian startups also trying to get attention and not being in The Valley.

http://www.texasstartupblog.com/2007/10/24/venture-capital-blog-list/

Texas startup blog also has a list of VC blogs, that is a whopping 103 entries long! If you go through all of that; please tell me what you found.. since that's quite an effort to keep taps on all of those ;) The list originally compiled by Jeffrey Stewart a serial-entrepreneur from New York CIty. Good stuff.

http://startupblog.wordpress.com/

Good blog about startup thinking, attitude, planning, ideas and insights

http://startup.blogscorp.com/

Startup blog that focuses on hardware/chip industry quite a bit, but occasionally shares something that's universally useful.

http://startup.partnerup.com/

They say they are "all about startups, entrepreneurs, and small businesses. All the time" sounds about right ;)

http://onstartups.com/

Blog for entrepreneurs by Dharmesh Shah

http://www.floridastartupblog.com/

A sister-site to the Texas Startup Blog. Also good stuff.

http://www.startupping.com/

Claims to be "one-of-a-kind community resource for Internet entrepreneurs" haven't tried it out myself, yet..

http://startupnewz.com/blog/

Silicon Valley blog, startup coverage.

http://www.startups.co.uk/

UK startup website with a rather broad focus: all small businesses really.

http://blog.timberry.com/

Tim Berry's insights on planning, starting and growing your business

http://www.sampa.com/seattle-blogs/

A long list of blogs and such from the Seattle area - interesting to glance at a totally different scene.

http://www.startupspark.com/

Sparking startups with advice, inspiration and a bit of craziness

http://www.arcticstartup.com/

Naturally: Arctic Startup

http://www.startupbin.com/

Blog about the web and startups from Finland.

.. There's a rather endless list of blogs around, the trick is to filter the gems from the mass. Anything you have discovered as especially useful?

Are you having trouble and running out of ideas on where to find investors to pitch your company to?

In more than one ways the VCs have adapted a policy where they are "hiding" a bit; it is not easy to find out about the deals they have done, and there's no super-clear communication about their exact focus. I have talked about this quite a bit lately and one person commented that: "there isn't anybody working in VC firms that would know anything about marketing".

Here's a couple of tips on where to look for investor & VC names and contact info:

1. http://www.fvca.fi/?pageid=12&parent0=3

The Finnish Venture Capital association. Does not include all the local VCs here in Finland, but many of them are there. A word of advice: many of them are "later stage" so they are very unlikely to invest into companies that are "pre-product" or "pre-revenue".

2. http://www.thefunded.com/

The Funded is a brilliant website that lets founders/entrepreneurs rank and rate VCs and give public feedback on their usefulness, competence etc. The site also lists hundreds of them by investment focus, geography etc.

3. http://www.scandinavianinvestmentnetwork.com/investor

This is a business angel network, supposedly scandinavian wide. Don't know them my self, somebody referred them to me.

4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_venture_capital_firms

Wikipedia also lists the most well known and largest VC firms.

5. http://www.nvca.org/members.html

This is the Venture Capital association of the USA. There's a rather massive list of VCs here.

..Than then for something completely different:

6. http://www.isb.edu/WCED/VentureCapitalists.Shtml

Investors with an Indian / non-european base and perhaps focus as well.

It is quite likely that your company is "pre-product" and "pre-revenue", unfortunately this puts you out of the radar screen for almost every VC in the world. Only a tiny minority of them will ever finance pre-seed/seed cases, and in Finland the situation isn't that much rosier.

Who does finance the pre-seed/seed -phase then? You can try talking to these:

i. http://www.lagooncapital.fi/

ii. http://www.veraventure.fi/index.asp?language=2

iii. http://www.brv.com/

iv. http://www.inventure.fi/etusivu.asp

v. http://www.conor.vc/

vi. http://www.nordic.com/

vii. http://www.eng.firstround.fi/

There might be others but those I know either for a fact or through a reliable source have actually invested in pre-seed/seed companies, however for some of them doing just that is pretty rare still.

If you are in the graphics, video, advertising, broadcasting, Web -space, then there's also: http://www.lots.fi/ they are not investors as such, but have a lot of competence and potential to help you out.

And then there's always http://www.tekes.fi/eng/

Who did I miss? Any insights you would want to share on this?

Is sharing the list of blogs you follow a good idea? I think so. Might result in a few odd discoveries and shared insights on what to use as good sources for relevant events, news and insights.

I follow this entire list through www.newsgator.com and their iPhone app, NetNewsWire. Excellent stuff. When I have everything with me on the go it quite effectively at least doubles up the amount of reading I'll be able to get through in a day. Here's the list:

http://www.avc.com/
http://alwayson.goingon.com/
http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/
http://www.arcticstartup.com/
http://azeem.typepad.com/
http://www.centernetworks.com/
http://www.secretlair.com/index.php?/clickableculture
http://daringfireball.net/
http://digg.com/
http://www.digitoday.fi/
http://web2.socialcomputingmagazine.com/
http://www.energybulletin.net/
http://www.kanai.net/weblog/
http://gigaom.com/
http://www.torstensson.com/weblog/
http://www.imediaconnection.com/
http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars
http://joi.ito.com/
http://localglobe.blogspot.com/
http://loiclemeur.com/
http://www.macworld.com/
http://mashable.com/
http://www.micropersuasion.com/
http://radar.oreilly.com/
http://www.playnoevil.com/
http://www.programmableweb.com/
http://www.ranchero.com/
http://www.readwriteweb.com/
http://scobleizer.com/
http://www.screditcrunch.com/
http://www.37signals.com/svn/
http://www.smartmobs.com/
http://jussilaakkonen.wordpress.com/
http://socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com/
http://www.topix.com/business/social-software
http://www.texasstartupblog.com/
http://www.techcrunch.com/
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/
http://www.theequitykicker.com/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
http://vierityspalkki.wordpress.com/
http://web2list.com/
http://news.cnet.com/webware/
http://www.whiskeyandgunpowder.com/
http://www.worldofraids.com/
http://www.ypulse.com/
http://www.zengestrom.com/

Some personal favorites from that list:

The Big Picture = insightful macroeconomic analysis and viewpoints
Whiskey and Gunpowder = very similar to The Big Picture, good stuff
Energy Bulletin = news about the looming energy crisis
Huffington post = high quality opinions straight from the source
Texas Starup Blog = excellent startup stuff
Signal vs Noise = good source for design and attitude

What am I missing? What's on your list?