Swedish Startup Offers Cable TV With No TV. Interview With Magine. [video][disrupt]

Magine,Swedish startup,cable tv,TechCrunch DisruptCompanies like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu have started making a dent in traditional cable tv consumption. More and more people, globally, are watching tv shows and movies on other screens like, laptops, mobile phones and tablets. This has caused most cable companies (especially in the US) to move to other sources for revenue like telephone lines and cable internet.

Hulu, Amazon, Netflix and other similar companies are offering shows and movies a la carte and on demand. You subscribe to one of these services for a nominal fee and you can access whatever programs you want to watch, when you want to watch them.  This model is working very well for many consumers, but the space as a whole is gearing up for another disruption.

There are some startups like, Jacksonville startup whata.tv, that are hoping to reinvent tv by allowing users to subscribe to one channel a la carte and get the entire programming from that channel in real time or on demand.  Many analysts have suggested that this kind of model is where tv is heading.

On the other hand, you have startups like Sweden’s Magine, which is a full fledged cable operator, delivering the same programming, and functionality as traditional cable companies, on multiple screens and with even more features.

Magine allows viewers to watch programs in real time or on demand, without the need for a dvr. Magine, of course allows you to watch the content on any connected device.

With the stranglehold that the US cable operators have, it’s not likely that Magine will ever find it’s way onto US soil, but people in Europe love the freedom that the service is giving them. Beta testers, including TechCrunch’s Frederic Lardinois, love Magine, and of course we see why.

Check out our interview with Simon at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013, below.

Check out these other awesome startup stories from TechCrunch

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Swedish Startup Truecaller Global Directory App For Anyone In The World

Truecaller,Swedish startup,startup,startups,startup interviewA startup based in Stockholm Sweden, called Truecaller, says they are the global phone directory linking you to anyone in the world. If you get a call from a number you don’t know you should be able to tap into Truecaller and find out who is actually calling you. In addition to traditional reverse directory information, Truecaller also says they have millions of prepaid phone users in their directory as well.

By coupling existing directory information and crowdsourcing their user-bases contact lists (opt-in) they create a hybrid of publicly available data and crowdsourced information to put together the TrueCaller directory.

Truecaller is a great way to prevent spam from sales calls and others that users don’t want to talk to.

The founders of Truecaller originally started the idea as a side project. They were tired of missing calls from people who were important but necessarily in their contact list already. As they tell us in the interview below, they released the original, rough version of the app and saw over 10,000 downloads immediately. That’s when they realized they should push forward and turn Truecaller into a real startup.

This is the third startup for founding duo Alan Mamedi and Nami Zarringhalam who met while studying at the Royal Institute of Technology.

We got a chance to interview Mamedi, check out the interview below:

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Swedish Startup Foap Raises $500M From Asian Investors

You know we love startups with silly names. Obviously Foap is one of those startups.  The Swedish startup is creating a stock photography market place where the photographers can be anyone in the world with a smartphone or a connected camera.

The premise is simple. The user registers with the Foap platform. They upload pictures of whatever they want to and Foap sells the pictures for $10 a piece to news outlets, bloggers, and other users. You sell the rights to the photo away but heck most smartphone pics happen by accident and even if they aren’t by accident, they don’t take but a second to shoot.

Foap splits the $10 right down the middle and the photographer gets paid. Funny name, easy startup right?

To date Foap has nearly 1 million images for sale on their platform. They’ve seen over $150,000 downloads of their app and 1.4 million photos uploaded since launch.

That was enough to land $500,000 from Asian investment firm Jade Global Investments.

“We always knew we had something pretty special to offer iPhone users but the success we’ve experienced so far is unbelievable and the interest in investors from Asia has been overwhelming”, said co-founder, David Los. “We’re fully focused on growing our market of iPhone images and establishing ourselves as one of the major players in the stock imagery industry.”

“We are delighted to announcement our investment in Foap, a company that we’ve been monitoring closely over the past six months,” said Jacky Lu, CEO of Jade Global Investments based in Asia. “We believe Foap can be extremely successful and as one of the first in this space to go to market, it stands a great chance of success. The company is perfectly positioned to make a big impact on the stock photography industry and that’s something we want to be a part of.”

“We are very excited to have such an experienced investor on board.  It’s not just the funding that will benefit the company, but the knowledge and expertise Jacky and the team will be able to offer”, commented Los. “The success we’ve experienced so far has been unbelievable and this round of funding means we can continue to drive forward towards reaching the ambitious goals we have set for the company

Linkage:

Check out Foap here

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Swedish Startup: Studemia Is A Collaboration Platform For Students INTERVIEW

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We are finding more and more great educational, student facing startups, are coming from overseas.  Take Prague startup MySchoolNotebook for instance. Their platform allows students to easily take notes, share notes, sync notes and reference notes on and offline, digitally, in a super easy to use platform and a graphically appealing UI.
Today, we’ve got an interview with Swedish Startup Studemia which allows students to collaborate in a Google Wave/Asana type fashion with the focus being on students in either college or high school.
Now you can collaborate with friends and schoolmates in the same class or across the ocean.  As they explain in the interview below it’s a seamless sharing platform for students to share resources and keep projects organized.
Studemia allows students to organize projects by project or by course. Also, just about any kind of media can be uploaded to the platform.
They’ve built the platform for students by students. Studemia’s co-founders; Vilhelm Josander, Per Almhorn and Markus Sackemark are all students themselves and realized the need for a platform like this, specifically geared towards students, quickly and have been working on it ever since.
Check out our interview below:

Swedish Startup: Jobylon Looks To Simplify The Job Search INTERVIEW

The job space is ripe for a good disruption. Monster has been one of the kings of the industry for quite some time. A new startup in Sweden is looking to innovate in the job space.  Jobylon’s founders want to simplify the job seeking process while allowing job hunters more options to connect with employers over things that could matter when looking for their next career.

Jobylon integrates social media, job bounties, and the cultural component of the job search to become a “one stop shop” of sorts for job hunters.

We got to interview Jobylon CEO Aref Abedi who tells us how Jobylon is different than any other job site out there. He also talks to us about Sweden’s startup and entrepreneurial ecosystem.  Check out the interview below:

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