The Fall 2011 Startup Sauna Companies
The Helsinki Based seed accelerator, Startup Sauna, recently announced their Fall batch of startups. The 17 teams began working out of Otaniemi yesterday and will finish with a public demo day on December 15th. This year there are 8 Finnish teams, 5 Russian, 2 Polish, 1 Estonian, and one from Lithuania.
When A Blog Post Won't Do Justice
Even though this blog post will most likely be a feeble attempt in covering the importance and the effect of Steve Blank's visit to Finland and the region last week - I'll still have an attempt at it. Last week was packed full of action and discussion where Steve Blank talked not only with entrepreneurs but politicians, MPs and academia. He also upped entrepreneurship a few notches on the editorial importance for some of Finland's newspapers as he talked to a group of editors-in-chief (including us) why entrepreneurship is of vital importance to nations' success.
Steve Blank was visiting Finland last week to promote the importance of a working entrepreneurial ecosystem to the region. I have a feeling his visit will go down in one of those turning points in history for this part of the world. Not only did he incite more flames into the "Finnish spring" as he referred to the entrepreneurial revolution taking place in Finland, but he did so in a manner that politicians, mainstream media and academics can understand.
Startup Sauna Keeps Getting Better
Editorial note: This is a guest post by Natalie Gaudet, who is one of the active people behind Startup Sauna - a Nordic and Baltic startup seed accelerator helping companies get further. While we don't usually promote individual programs as such, Startup Sauna is a great initiative, non-profit started by our good friends at AaltoES.
The Startup Sauna seed accelerator program is getting bigger and better. Since there has been an incredible response from Russia last year, the program decided to add three more Russian cities to the list. The number of coaches that will be mentoring the teams has also increased.
Interview With Steve Blank
Editor's note: This is a cross-post from the Steve Blank visits Finland -website. His visit and the awesome agenda for the week is made possible with the help of AaltoES, Tekes, Sitra, Teknologiateollisuus and others. Original text by Kalpana Shah.
Steve Blank is that rare combination of successful entrepreneur and inspiring teacher who’s also an insightful writer. His writings define, explain and predict trends that are sweeping the entrepreneurial world. Customer Development, Agile Development, the Lean Startup, The Four Steps to the Epiphany, Business Model Generation are all terms for methodologies that can actually help startups get on in life.
Summer Of Startups Moving Forward By Leaps
AaltoES is one of the more active organisers of different entrepreneurial activities in the Helsinki region in Finland and last night saw one of its programs coming to an end with the Demo Day of Summer of Startups 2011. This year Summer of Startups was organised for the second year running and it needs to be said out clearly that the quality and level of ambition these teams had this year, had tremendously increased from last year. During the event, I tweeted that it wouldn't be a surprise if some of the startups got acquired soon.
Link: AaltoES Talk With Sami Inkinen
Sami Inkinen is perhaps one of the most successful Finnish born entrepreneurs in the Valley. He is the co-founder and Chairman of Board at Trulia, a real-estate service helping people find homes. He gave a talk last week at Aalto Entrepreneurship Society's event and shared some of his advice and experience as an entrepreneur. I was present at the event and I have to say it was one of the best ones I've seen in a long time.
Link: AaltoES Talk With Sami Inkinen (vimeo.com).
Summer of Startups 2.0
After last year's overwhelming success, Aalto Entrepreneurship society is organizing Summer of Startups again this year. The program is targeted at entrepreneurial-minded people that have an idea but so far have not done anything about it. Summer of Startups help develop and refine such ideas, build a good team and teach the participants 'what needs to be taken into account when launching a startup – and beyond' as their website states. The program lasts for 10 weeks during which the teams would go from idea to early-stage prototypes. To facilitate the work, teams get free co-working space for the whole duration of the program, coaching and mentoring from leading people in the local start-up scene plus 4000-5000€ pre-seed funding.
Startup Sauna Participants Announced
The Helsinki based Aalto Venture Garage is putting together in international incubation/acceleration program for very early stage projects that should turn to startups later this summer. In total, 17 teams from the region were accepted into the program from around the Baltic Sea. 3 teams were from Russia, 2 from Latvia, 1 from Lithuania and Estonia as well as Sweden and the rest were from Finland (9).
Finland Post Welfare (Live Blog Log)
We live blogged the Finland Post Welfare from Finlandia Hall. Below, you'll be able to find the log of the live blog. We'll have a summary of the event available on ArcticStartup tomorrow morning.
Finland Gets its Startup School this Summer
Nordic media, take note. Finland is notorious for its lack of entrepreneurs. A collaboration between student-run associations from the top 3 schools in Helsinki (Aaltoes, Hankenes and Hues) has raised 50,000 euros in public funding, to encourage students to create startups during the Summer.
Summer of Startups will take place during July and August and will provide 750 euros per month in funding to each team member, regardless of their school or country of origin. This is the first time such a program does not take any equity, unlike programs such as Y-Combinator, Techstars, or Startup Bootcamp Denmark. The goal is purely educational, in order for students to try entrepreneurship without having to fear from failure. Stanford started a similar initiative called SSE Labs, which will run from June 15th-Sept 15th.
Disclaimer: I am the main coach of this program.
Aalto Bootcamp, Y Combinator-esque Program For Students And Researchers
There's much talk about the new Aalto University in Finland, which is what came out when Helsinki School of Economics, Helsinki University of Technology and Helsinki University of Art and Design were molded into one school to rule them all. A lot of potential I'm sure, but wait, there's more!
There's a new kid in town. Many of our readers felt the waves from Aalto Entrepreneur Society last year. The student group headed by Kristo Ovaska hasn't been resting on their laurels. Now they are coming with a new Y Combinator-esque university accelerator program, Aalto Bootcamp. It's a five week program for students and researchers to get a feel for the joys of entrepreneurship and build a company. And yes, become a bona fide entrepreneur.
