The Nordic regions may be associated with cold and dark winters, but they're fast becoming a hotbed for startup communities - and investors are helping to stoke the fire.

Finnish events management startup Lyyti has recently landed another new high-profile customer. Be Viacom, provider of marketing solutions for global brands including Comedy Central and MTV, joins a growing army of companies who use Lyyti's software to organise over 30,000 events worldwide each year. The question is, why are businesses flocking to adopt Lyyti's offering?

Finnish blog ArcticStartup is preparing to hold its third annual Arctic15 conference on the 27/28 May in Helsinki and, as its official title (Arctic 15: Exit Path) suggests, it looks set to deliver value for the whole startup lifecycle, from inception right up to exit. And matching David to Goliath is one of its primary aims.

Building on the technological foundations laid by the likes of BlackBerry and Nokia, Senseg - the latest in a long line of disruptive Finnish startups - is aiming to revolutionise the way we interact with our smartphones and tablets. Following on from a successful $6million fundraise led by NXP Semiconductors, Senseg is ramping up the commercialisation of its "Feelscreen" haptics technology, which allows smart device users to "feel" different textures directly on their screen.

Payments solutions business Pay Corporation, part of Boxhill Technologies PLC, has signed an agreement with CRM software business Bright Office, further extending its reach outside of the gaming and lottery sectors.

On Friday 1st November, the Crowdfunding: Deep Impact Conference will be offering a once in a lifetime opportunity to hear from the founders of various crowdfunding platforms, as well as meet with likeminded business owners and investors. 

Finland might not be on most people's startup radars, but to my mind, it's a country we might all do well to pay a little more attention to in the new few years.

Even by the standards of Silicon Valley, where dramatic predictions are as common as hot dinners, to say that “Retail is Dead” is still quite shocking. What, you mean dead dead, not just say, resting? Yes, that is what Marc Andreessen of Venture Capital firm Andreessen Horowitz recently told PandoDaily's Sarah Lacy.

At first glance the title of this piece may sound counter-intuitive to some readers. After all, there have been phenomenal advances seen in healthcare over the last two decades. Advances in diagnostic processes and treatments have given us state of the art scanners and robotic surgery. The development of new drug therapies have enabled physicians to substantially extend life, and sometimes even offer cure, to those with previously terminal diagnoses. So surely everything is ticking along nicely in the land of healthcare innovation?