The Club of Leaders Good 2 Work with seems to be one of the well-kept secrets of Russia (and would have stayed so, had it not been registered on ArcticIndex). Good 2 Work is a virtual place (or sort of a closed social network) for executives and entrepreneurs of different levels and from different industries and countries.

This is our periodic thank you note to our blog sponsors to describe what they have to offer.

There’s a startup in Denmark that went by the name of Porta for a long time. Since then, they have changed their name to TradeShift. TradeShift is looking to disrupt and shatter the oligopolies of EDI between large corporations and banks so that the technologies could be used by anyone – small and medium sized companies included. The founders of the company include an experienced bunch. They are Christian Lanng, Mikkel Hippe Brun and Gert Sylvest.

I ask myself pretty often why there is so much great web innovation coming from Sweden. Really awesome ideas and startups are much less common in my home country Germany, despite a population almost ten times as large as Sweden’s.

TechCrunch reports that Spotify has signed an exclusive deal with the Finnish side of TeliaSonera. The two year deal will give TeliaSonera the exclusive rights to sell Spotify Premium in Finland. The announcement comes on the same day as TeliaSonera unveils its IPTV service that is complete with a certain selection of television channels, video rentals and Spotify Premium.

Mediatonic Management has closed a 5 million euro fund that will begin to finance games and media products from Finland. The fund has been set up by investments from Fennia insurance, Henki-Fennia insurance as well as the Sonera Pension fund. People behind the fund include Tanu-Matti Tuominen and Marko Tulonen.

Those following the mobile gaming industry paid notice that the Finnish gaming studio Universomo was shut down (in Finnish) by its owner THQ Wireless, which acquired the Finnish firm back in 2007. Rumors started to spread on Tuesday this week and pretty soon THQ confirmed the liquidation of the studio. This is part of a bigger shift in the game industry.

There’s much talk about the new Aalto University in Finland, which is what came out when Helsinki School of Economics, Helsinki University of Technology and Helsinki University of Art and Design were molded into one school to rule them all. A lot of potential I’m sure, but wait, there’s more!

Picmeleo is a new Finnish photo startup that recently got in touch with us. They’re developing a new kind of service which in essence is a photo editing tool, but positioned in the market in a wise manner. The tool itself is sort of an external application that companies providing services online can add on top of their own service, instead of having to come up with their own tool.

TNS Gallup, Finnish subsidiary of the biggest industry market research expert TNS Global, has teamed up with a mobile customer experience management startup QAim to provide Finland wide tracking of mobile website usage metrics.

Three Nordic and Baltic companies have made it to the group of finalists in the Plugg.eu Startups Rally 2010. In total, 116 applications were left to the competition and of these the 20 made it to the final. Plugg.eu is a very entrepreneurship focused conference organised in Brussels, Belgium and we’re happy to one of their media partners promoting the event. The three companies making it into the final are Estonian Fits.me the two Finnish startups Lumo Research and GigsWiz.

Fuugo is a new kind of television product created by Axel Technologies, a company based in Turku. You can’t really call Axel Technologies a startup as it has been registered way back in 1988. However, Fuugo is a very interesting concept that requires more analysis into it. Fuugo claims to be the next generation TV application for mobile and handheld devices.

We recently argued that Schibsted will give Finnish media companies a run for their money in classifieds and market places. Now Schibsted Classified Media Finland’s CEO, Jussi Lystimäki, tells us that Tori.fi just passed the one million unique visitor water mark last week. This comes from a firm who just opened their Finnish site in December.

Those who say there are no interesting opportunities in the Nordics clearly don’t know what they are talking about. An ideal place to start the exploration is our job board at http://www.arcticstartup.com/jobs/. This is invaluable destination for those who are not yet confortable setting up their own shop, but want to learn to the ropes with a solid team that already know what they are doing, but still want to be in the eye of the storm.

Scred, a house hold Finnish startup who we have used to seeing tracking debts and shared expenses is now shifting their focus towards more comprehensively managing money.
They start with managing money for different groups such as bands, indie film crews, event organisers and associations. The point is to offer a solution for communities which often don’t have good online financial applications and don’t know about accounting.

The debate on the tax code for entrepreneurs in Finland is becoming more surreal by the day. The origins of the debate lie in the tax code working group set up by the Finnish Parliament. This group, headed by Martti Hetemäki, is to devise a new tax code for areas such as capital gains, options and carried interest for VC funds. The biggest verbal and rhetorical battle is waged around the double taxing of dividends in non-listed companies.

According to the EU’s climate and energy package, Finland is expected to increase its share of renewable sources from the present 28 per cent to 38 per cent of energy production by 2020. Fulfilling this obligation require a significant increase in Finland’s use of wood-based energy, waste fuels, heat pumps, biogas and wind energy during next years.

We’ve been looking closely at the startup scene in the Nordics and Baltics for the last two and a half years and I have to say, the amount of events on the market these days is very attractive. There are a lot of different kind of events and I’m sure there’s something for everyone. While these events have their own functions and drive their own agendas, there’s no getting round it – they’re great fun and will surely improve your business if not by any other means than at least by networking with the other visitors there.

Are Nordic countries particularly entrepreneurial? How do our societies perceive entrepreneurship as a career choice?