Northzone and actor Michael Nyqvist invests in movie search startup Vionlabs
In this week’s episode of Startupveckan the two podcasters Olle Aronsson and Stefan Lundell shed some light on one of Stockholm’s most secret startups – a project that is about to leave stealth mode.
The company’s name is Vionlabs, founded by Arash Pendari. He and a group of programmers have spent the last four years developing a new search engine, called Vionel, for the movie and television industry. Startupveckan reports that the company recently raised 25 million SEK in a round led by Northzone.
According to the podcast, Vionel is supposed to work something like this: A person is in the mood for a movie, but doesn’t know what to watch. Instead of asking a friend or searching through IMDB, the user performs a Vionel search for something like “romantic comedy sort of like My Best Friends Wedding”.
The algoritm then gets to work. It does not simply look for titles in the same genre – it analyzes the light, the sound, the atmosphere and so forth and figures out what the person wants to watch. Startupveckan also reports that famous Swedish actor Michael Nyvist is on the company’s advisory board and also a shareholder.
Listen to hear more about Vionlabs and other startup news from this week.
You can also listen to the show in podcast apps for IOS or Android.
Read the entire article here