Arctic Startup

Musiikki&Media organizes a free seminar with the theme “New revenue models of music” on May 16th 10.00-15.00 at Sibelius Academy, Helsinki. The seminar features opinions and insights around what seem to be the revenue models of the future and what are the changes already taken place in the music industry.

Why I’m picking it up is because the event might interest also those not directly involved in music business as Johan Vosmeijer, Managing Director of the interesting German startup SellaBand will participate. Crowd sourcing is one of themes covered in the seminar.

Free registration before May 13th is required. The enrollment and later on event details are available on the Musiikki&Media 08 web site.

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Photo by malingering.

There will be a special startup developers get together event in Helsinki on May 22. The purpose of the event is to exchange knowledge about technologies and conventions touching startup developers, and also to demonstrate students “how cool it is to run and work in a startup”.

There’s quite a good bunch of startup speakers participating, including Lare Lekman, CTO of Star Wreck Studios, Jani Luostarinen, System Administrator at Floobs, Joakim Achren, founder and CEO of Ironstar Helsinki (MoiPal service), and Taro Morimoto, CTO of Zipipop. After the afternoon event there will be an evening party as well, place to be declared later.

The event will take place on Thursday, May 22, starting at 1pm at HAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Science in Helsinki. Check out the detailed agenda and enrollment on Yahoo upcoming or Facebook.

If you can’t make it, you can see the live stream from Floobs. Sponsors are also sought after, so if you’re interested, contact Kai Lemmetty @Floobs.

Another Technopolis event coming up is MoneyTalks™ Forum Special on 8th of May, claimed to be the largest investor event in Finland during the spring of 2008. The event is invitation-only and targeted to VCs, business angels and promising high-tech & innovation based start-ups seeking financing. Companies interested in pitching in the event should check for further information.

The bi-annual special event promises to feature the rising stars of the Finnish high-tech scene and prominent early stage investors from Finland and abroad. Participants should have plenty of opportunities for one-one-one meetings with investors and entrepreneurs.

Photo by cpalmieri.

Technopolis and Technopolis Ventures organize a brief morning seminar on April 29th in Espoo with a theme “Virtual Communities as a Tool for New Businesses”. The free of charge event is quite short, light even, but does feature a keynote from the software business research legend David G. Messerschmitt, what might make it just worth your visit.

More information and registration (due April 24th).

There’s some good comments being thrown around as Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch interviewed the developers of Scred in Amsterdam’s NextWeb Conference. There are a lot of competitor’s names as well and it just shows what kind of competition you usually end up with once you execute.

I’d be even daring to say that the idea is nothing, execution is everything.

I and Miikka had a chat yesterday with Tatu Laurila, CEO of Greater Helsinki Promotions about a venture they are organising for Finnish startups and prospects to Israel. Greater Helsinki Promotions is co-organising the event with Technopolis ventures.

Ten of the finest Finnish companies eligible for this venture will be sent to Israel to the IVA Hi-Tech Conference 2008. The event is held in Tel Aviv 19.-20.5.2008. The Israeli Venture Capital Association (IVA) has offered the Finnish organizers an opportunity to bring 5-10 promising start-ups plus an accompanying delegation to Tel Aviv for IVA’s annual conference, which attracts about 1,500 global players from the high tech industry, including VC and Corporate investors. Large number of global VC’s will attend the conference. The estimated cost for the whole program is a maximum of 5000 € at the maximum, a more exact budget will be available in the next couple weeks.

Deadline for enrollment is 2.4.2008. If you’re interested, contact Will Cardwell of Technopolis Ventures for more information on how to apply.

For those who are unaware with the startup and entrepreneurship environment in Israel, it is a lot more effective than it is in Finland. The countries themselves are similar in size and population. With a focus on entrepreneurship and a 15-year strong track record, Israel has managed to enlist over 100 companies to Nasdaq and there seems to be more in the pipeline. There’s definitely a lot there to learn. Arctic Startup will try to cover the process, preparaion up to the event and the event itself as thoroughly as possible. Stay tuned!

Tekes organizes a free morning seminar “Doing Business in the USA - An Overview of the Opportunities and Challenges” April 7th in Helsinki.

Keynote will be delivered by Marshall S. Ferrin, Director, International Business Development Program, George Mason University. He will provide an overview to business opportunities in the East Coast USA, especially in the capital area, and related challenges to Finnish firms. You can also schedule one-on-one with Mr. Ferrin, taking place after the event.

I’d personally like to thank everyone once more for showing up last night and making the night what it was. I really enjoyed organising an event like that when there are so many interested people and points of views to be told. We received a lot of postive feedback from different people and ideas where to take the event next month.

We’ll start working with Ville on the next event as soon as possible to guarantee a better organised experience for everyone. If you have any feedback you’d like to give us, don’t hesitate to contact me at antti(at)arcticstartup(dot)com and Ville at Villevesterinen(at)gmail(dot)com.

We’ll be putting up the video’s as soon as possible!

The first ever Ignite Helsinki -event is being organised this Friday in Dubrovnik Lounge and Lobby.

Those who are unaware of the ignite format - it is a set of short 5 minute presentations given by speakers on various topics where the presentation slides change automatically every 15 seconds. Therefore you have 5 minutes and 20 slides to get your point and issue to the crowd. Ignite events have been held in many of the large tech cities of the world and now for the first time it will be organised in Helsinki.

I was asked to speak there about Finnish Startups and would have done so if I’d be in Finland. If you’re interested in giving a speech - send an e-mail to the organisers. I’m sure they’re interested in getting more submissions.

The doors will open 5.30pm and the event will start at 6pm, free entry. Update: A slight shift in schedules as Antti told us in the comments - the doors will open at 6pm and the event will start at 7pm. And it’s still free entry :)

First Line Angel Group FLAG.fi, a Finnish business angel community with a global reach, is launching on 25-26th of February 2008 at EU EASY Event in Milano, Italy. FLAG.fi is stated to be the the first and only global portal dedicated to investors, entrepreneurs, and business angels.

The founder Peter Bougdanos, a well-acclaimed business angel, hopes FLAG will be “a solution to the startup situation in Finland and all over Europe”. The problem statement manifests that many entrepreneurs and opportunities go unnoticed and/or unfunded in Finland - and also in Europe in general - because of a lack of a true angel community, consensus, support, and meaningful interaction among professionals in the field. This is something that was also identified recently in Growth Forum 08 as reported by Tomi. In addition many investors get caught up in long exit cycles, ending up tying up their valuable resources of time, money, and expertise.

The vision of FLAG is to become the first true Angel Group in Finland which mirrors the activities of angel groups in the USA. It’s mission is to make Finland, Finnish companies, Finnish business angels, and the Finnish venture capital industry a healthy, competitive, and interactive community. FLAG targets to create a currently missing dynamic forum with both a professional and social function for business angels to meet and discuss angel investments. Peter Bougdanos aims to promote Finnish startups and help them “get the commercialization and business concept traction that many fail to do”. Recent members of FLAG include online business traveller tool Dopplr and free news service forum ampparit.com.

The service will be Finland centric, but it’s claimed that already over 3000 pan-European interested members have been identified, and the majority of them have expressed keen interest to enroll. FLAG also looks to integrate Middle Eastern and Asian flare of active members. It is planned to be the melting pot for existing angel associations, stand-alone organizations, network clusters, and independent actors on local, regional, and international levels, operating both online and offline.

FLAG will offer a whole community universe for connecting investors, with a wide spectrum of tools and services, including facilitating selling of companies angel-to-angel, and providing company information and management bios. FLAG also believes in giving back to the community and 25 percent of profits will go to funding stipends for young students, lower income families’ teens, and budding entrepreneurs to gain international experience, overseas exposure and professional and academics skills.

Greek American Bougdanos has helped to foster nearly 50 startups in Finland, since moving from NYC after surviving 9/11/2001. His background includes investments in companies like Google, Skype, and Finnish Helmi Technologies, Nordic Koivu, FogScreen, Concilio Networks, and Trackway, among many others. Peter is also a founding partner of FirstRound Startup Center, which has a unique smart money approach to incubating fast track early stage companies.

It is great to see something of this scale being initiated in Finland, and hopefully FLAG will be able to give rise to new business angels activity and many new fast growing firms. If you’re interested in joining FLAG, be sure to check the web page. We can also put you in touch with Mr. Bougdanos, just drop a note at info [at] arcticstartup.com.

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Edit: I have heard there are some two-fold opinions on how Mr. Bougdanos works, so it’s advisable that you first discuss with people who have worked with him before jumping right in, to make sure there is a good match (as would be good with any new relationship in general).