Espoo Otaniemi boomed of startups and investors when Invest Tech Finland was held for the first time on last Tuesday and Wednesday. There was a real mix of companies from all round consumer web, nano, medical and material tech.
We got some taste of new startups, more seasoned companies seeking growth and some familiar faces marching forward with their plans. There were quite a few interesting companies to write about, the full list can be found here – check these out. Note that most of companies presented at the event already had some prototypes, partnerships, customers or revenues. Here is some of my picks (not in any particular order):
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Venture Cup Finland has chosen the seven finalists that will compete for the million euro prize money. We rumoured of this back in October 2008 and the competition, along with the amount of prize money. The prize itself won’t be an immediate million euros in the bank account, but an admission to the Finnish Tekes’ innovative young companies -pipeline.
The jury that has done the picking includes Risto Siilasmaa (F-Secure), Hannu Järvinen (Tekes), Will Cardwell (Technopolis Ventures), Moaffak Ahmed (Veturi), Pekka Roine (InnoSpa), Heikki Mäkijärvi (Accel), Petri Laine (Vera Venture), Michael Panaccio (Starfish Ventures), Margus Uudam (Ambien Sound Investments), Tsvika Ben-Porat (Maayan Ventures) as well as Daniel Blomquist (Creandum). A pretty comprehensive line-up indeed.
The companies that have been picked as the finalists are in no particular order ClaroVision, Ekogen, Entetrainer, Navigil, Oncos Therapeutics, Pixpolar and ZenRobotics. Unfortunately many of the companies have decided to neglect their web presence so it is very difficult for the public to know what they are after.
The companies come from multiple industries. They divide into entertainment, hardware manufacturers, clean tech companies as well as medicare companies, just to mention some. The winner of the competition will be announced on June 9th in Ravintola Sipuli, Helsinki.
Update: The event is organised on June 9th – this has been corrected to the text as well. Apologies for that.
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