Where are the winners of the Slush 100 startup competition now?

The yearly startup conference in Helsinki, Slush, is pretty particular in many ways: for example, the event, currently gathering more than 12 000 top innovators, investors and startups, and its multimillion euro budget, is still largely managed by students and volunteers. In addition, the conference production is quite different from any other tech show you might have attended: the venue is dark, with lots of lasers and other top DJ equipment (in fact, in some years there was not enough equipment in the whole Finland for Slush and it had to be sourced from foreign suppliers).

And, in my opinion, Slush has one of the few really meaningful startup competitions, Slush 100. As a rule, I haven’t met many investors paying attention to various startup cups, prizes and such, but in the case of Slush it seems to be at least a relevant quality mark. One of the reasons is the Slush 100 prize, which is currently not just prize money but a 1M€ equity investment from a syndicate of the leading investors (in 2023, those were Accel, General Catalyst, Lightspeed Venture Partners, NEA, and Northzone and in 2024 they are General Catalyst and Cherry Ventures). Quite a change from the early days of the competition, when 50K euro was seen as a good check!

In this article I wanted to go back in history and look at what happened to the startups- winners of Slush 100 since the conference’s inception in 2008. Caveat: in the Boro blog we don’t use AI for our articles, but this time I tried asking paid versions of several AI providers and their answers were not satisfactory. Which means that such an article is really needed, so let’s go! 

Total years of Slush100: 16 years and counting, from 2008 to 2023 

Total startups: 16 startups (2 winners in 2023, pandemic break in 2020)

Startups still in operation: 10 + 2 exits 

2 exits: BetterDoctor in 2018 and Operoo (ex CareMonkey) in 2021

Total money raised: +$196M 

Year 2008: the Slush100 winner was Illtags. The startup promised to get rid of the common cold by monitoring social media status updates, but the company stopped operations after 3 years of activity.

Year 2009: Sibesonke, a Nokia spin-off, won the competition with the initial idea to leverage USSD messages (still remember these?) to offer internet-like and life-enhancing services even for basic mobile phones. They focused on Africa as a target market and provided services connected to the Football World Cup as well as an anonymous chat room for HIV positive people to chat with their peers.

Later on, in 2018, Sibesonke pivoted to agrifarming, and in collaboration with ministries and other cooperation partners in Africa, started offering farmers information tailored to their needs on topics such as the weather, fertilizers and pests. Once they reach areas with better internet connection, farmers will be able to take a picture of, say, plant disease and send it to an expert for analysis. The company is still operational even if operations in Finland seem limited.

Year 2010: Dealmachine was a CRM software company that offered game-like customer management -a tool that would support the sales teams in a fun and addictive way.

The company was active for 3 years and in 2013 a San Francisco-based Linko Inc acquired their assets. Linko Inc offered automated CRM that turns data from salespeoples’ preferred mobile apps into a searchable feed.

Dealmachine’s co-founder, Tuomo Riekki later on co-founded Smartly.io, an AI-powered advertising technology company, now managing upwards of $5B in media spend.

Year 2011, Christopher Thür’s pitch of music edtech startup Ovelin (FI) won Slush 100. Ovelin was an interactive, gamified app for the iPad that helps teach youngsters how to play the guitar. In 2012, Ovelin raised $1.4M and later rebranded into Yousician (FI), becoming a music education platform which helps people learn how to play musical instruments (guitar, bass, piano, ukulele) and sing in a fun way. In 2021, Yousician closed a $28MSeries B round while reaching 20M monthly users. The Finnish team counts 120+ people.

Year 2012, the Slush 100 winner was FishBrain (SE), a social media aimed at fishermen. Fishbrain provides local fishing maps, catch forecasts, a fishing logbook, and a social network platform to make the most of the sport. Fishbrain has raised a total of $65 million with the latest investment occurring in August 2023 with a valuation of $119M. The app has over 15 million downloads and is now leveraging its data also to study the effects of climate change on fish.

In the year 2013 Slush 100 had 2 winners, Weekdone (Estonia) and BetterDoctor (Finland /US).

Weekdone has developed a work tracking tool for teams: a weekly employee status reporting and feedback dashboard. The company raised seed money from Trind VC and Kima Ventures, and by 2024 Weekdone’s revenue reached $1.5M.

BetterDoctor began a US doctor database with user rankings. Interestingly, already in 2013 health innovation was quite big at Slush 2013 with 120 health and wellness startups at the show. BetterDoctor later pivoted into helping to validate and deliver accurate doctor data to health plans, health systems, and other companies via data services and APIs. In 2017 BetterDoctor closed a $11M round led by Health Catalyst Capital and in 2018 the company was acquired by Quest Analytics (USA) for an undisclosed amount (both companies were of similar size).

Paolo Borella, Boro Founder on stage at Slush, awarding BetterDoctor with the prize

Photo: BetterDoctor

The 2014 pitching competition was won by Enbrite.ly (UK), the ad fraud stopping company based in London and Budapest, which developed internet traffic management services. The startup received an investment of 500k euros, which was the largest prize ever awarded in a similar competition at the time. The investment came from the Finnish Business Angels Network (FIBAN) and Evli, with additional 200K euros from Speedinvest.

The company appears no longer active.

In 2015 the winner was CareMonkey (AU) from Australia, which provided a cloud-based platform that enables schools, clubs, and associations to automate, manage, and track operational tasks. At Slush CareMonkey won a €650K grand prize.

Rebranded as Operoo (AU), the company raised $1.5M in 2019 and in 2021 was acquired by SchoolStatus Forms & Flows,  a student data and communication platform, for an undisclosed amount. 

Photo: Slush

The 2016 winner, the French CybelAngel (FR), created Big Data solutions to solve cybersecurity issues. CybelAngel scans the unindexed web to find data linked to your company and creates alerts to let you know that some of your files are freely available to anyone or are being exchanged in dark marketplaces.

CybelAngel, was offered an equity investment prize of 500K euros arranged by the Finnish Business Angel Network and EVLI Bank.

In 2020 the startup closed $36 million in Series B ( $51.7M in total funding). Today CybelAngel became a frontrunner in cybersecurity solutions and has developed the most extensive defense for external attack vectors, where the majority of cyber-attacks are initiated. Combining expanded discovery and analysis, CybelAngel finds unknown assets and exposures to preemptively diffuse attack vectors that cyber criminals use to breach systems and wreak havoc. 

In 2017 the winning prize went to Altum Technologies (FI), cleantech startup producing a software-driven ultrasound solution used to streamline industrial processes. They utilise ultrasound emitters to clean the inside of pipes, vats and machinery to combat the effects of fouling without having to shut down production. This solution is set to save its users in maintenance and make up for lost production.

In 2022 Altum Technologies announced completing an equity funding round closed at €5 million ($5.7M). The money was raised locally from investors from Finland, including Lähitapiola, Tesi and Maki Ventures.

2018 Finland-based startup Meeshkan won Slush 100. The startup developed a framework for interactive machine learning with the purpose of helping teams train machine learning models faster. It enabled engineers to monitor, tweak, and test machine learning models via business communication platform Slack.

The company raised 2M but is no longer operating.

In 2019, the Slush 100 prize went to Eversend (NIG), a neobank for Afrika. Ugandian Eversend developed a finance app for currency exchanges and cross-border money transfers with the best possible rates, focusing on the African market.

The total value of its transactions grew to $230 million in 2022. The company raised $1.7 million through grants, equity and debt funding, and crowdfunding. According to its website, Eversend now supports nine currencies, operates across seven countries including Nigeria and Uganda, has over 400,000 users, and 22 employees across the world.

In 2020 Slush was cancelled due to the pandemic 

In 2021 a women’s health startup took the Slush 100 prize. Hormona (UK) combines at-home tests (estrogen, progesterone, FSH) and an app to track, understand and optimise their hormonal cycles. Since its launch in 2023, the app has collected over 2M anonymous health data points from women all around the world from the users in more than 185 countries. In 2024, Hormona raised $2.8M from Nascent Invest, Techstars, and SFC Capital).

Read here why hormonal management for women’s health is so important.

Photo: Slush

2022 was initially attributed to Immigram (UK), a relocation platform for IT specialists and entrepreneurs. The award they were about to receive included an investment of €1M by five international venture capital companies: Accel, General Catalyst, Lightspeed Venture Partners, NEA, and Northzone. However, Slush revoked the prize due to Immigram’s ties to russia. The company is still in operations.

The 2023 award went to Faircado (DE), an AI-powered second-hand shopping assistant. The Berlin-based Faircado developed a browser extension that helps consumers automatically find second-hand alternatives when shopping online, drawing from a database of 60+ million products from 50 different partners including eBay, Back Market, Grailed, Rebuy and Vestiaire Collective. 

In 2024 Faircado closed a €3M round led by World Fund, Europe’s leading climate VC.

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With 10 startups and 2 exits across its 16 year history, Slush 100 shows a solid track record of attracting skillful entrepreneurs to the conference. With over 1000 startup applications to the competition in 2023, it seems to have become a great source of quality deal flow which not many other conferences or competitions can boast with.

Slush keeps many other mysteries and interesting stories. If you’d like to know more about Slush, from applying to Slush 100 to reaching relevant investors and finding ‘hidden’ side events - let’s talk! 

Written by Anastasiya Markvarde