Slush, an event for startups by startups, will take place next Monday in Helsinki, Finland. We have a whole lot of people already coming, but wanted to give out 2 tickets for two lucky persons who still haven’t bought their tickets.

Also, we have two tickets to give away for the TechCrunch Brunch @ Slush that takes place the day after Slush itself. Mike Butcher, the editor of TechCrunch UK will come to Finland for the first time to host an event for the local startup scene:

TechCrunch UK is partnering with Slush, and we’ll be throwing a breakfast brunch event for 100 start-ups, entrepreneurs, investors and key industry players the day after the Slush conference, so you’ll be able to come along and network over some great Helsinki coffee. If you’re a Scandinavian or Baltic startup, then this should be an event right up your street. It will be on Tuesday, 25th November at 09:30am to 01:00pm.

We will award a ticket to Slush and to TechCrunch Brunch for two persons who come up with the best English translations for the Finnish word Sisu. Every successful entrepreneur has a lot of this magical stuff that gives her the will power to push through against all the odds. Here’s the Wikipedia translation to get you started.  You should write your own version into the comments below.

The description should be a one or two sentence punch line. We will choose the winner sometime tomorrow afternoon, so you have until that to write your version in the comments.

If you rather buy your tickets make sure you do it soon, since Slush is less than a week away. You can buy your ticket to Slush here, and your ticket to the TechCrunch Brunch for the day after here. Hope to see you at both.

Photo by Phineas H (CC:BY).

To continue from our partnership with the Nordic Venture Forum we have partnered with the European Venture Summit to bring more visibility for Nordic and Baltic startups among the investors in the region.

European Venture Summit is two day long conference in Dusseldorf, Germany in 1st and 2nd December that will give some of the most promising companies from Biotech & Industrial Biotech, ICT and New Energies the opportunity to grow their businesses across borders by facilitating contacts to an experienced and international network of venture capital and corporate investors, strategic partners and expert advisers.

Some of the companies present include Qrodo (SWE) - Easy to use internet service for live sports events using low cost equipment and infrastructure, Mobispine (SWE) - Mobile Internet and messaging, Valimo (FI) - Your ID online, and Vocab (SWE) - Mobile intelligent learning.

You can register here and choose from different packages the one that’s to your liking. They include everyting from access to company & research presentations to up to 6 pre-arranged meetings from a selection of 15 potential One2One partners.

There has been much talk around Slush lately. Yet, it has not yet been very clear at all what is happening and I’m partly to blame. Now I try to shed some light onto the issue and at the same time invite you all to Slush.

In a nutshell Slush is a new Helsinki originated event for startups by startups. The whole process started when I along with a few others passionate about the subject were trying to brainstorm on how to give a boost to the Finnish startup scene, home and abroad. We had an idea that a bigger annual event might be the answer for the lack of visibility among Finnish startups in the global arena. If nothing else, we saw that such an event was missing from the Finnish startup fabric.

After throwing ideas back and forth for while I, Peter Vesterbacka (of Mobile Monday fame) and Kai Lemmetty (of Floobs) came up with an event that would show the best Finland has to offer, once a year every year. Later on Helene Auramo from Zipipop jumped along to bring her positive energy to the team and give it an even stronger startup perspective. Peter came up with the name Slush and so it started.

Finnish summer can be an amazing experience with its nightless nights, but there’s also the dark winter we live with the other six months. Thus, any startup born in Finland have equal number of slushy and dark Novembers in their DNA as they have those warm sunny Julys. Many say the one quality a startup needs above all is perseverance against adversity and out of all the languages Finnish is the one that has its own word for describing just that. The word is Sisu and I believe that it has much to do with Finns pushing through those dark slushy winter months. Thus, an apt name especially for a startup event. Having said that, I believe this is the case with startup DNA all over the Nordic and Baltic countries.

After finding the right people to take on the challenge we were ready to start working. What we really aim to do is light up the startup scene, namely by showing students what entrepreneurship can be at its best, and show the international crowd that there is much more to Finnish startups than the tip of the iceberg they’ve seen so far. Naturally big part of the whole event is to enable the Finnish entrepreneurs meet not only each other but also investors and other businesses from home and abroad.

We know there’s a plethora of events that are not working as well as they could for the entrepreneurs themselves, and thus we decided that everything we do should be done in the interest of the startup scene in mind. If something is in conflict with that focus, it will be scrapped from the agenda. For startups by startups or nothing.

Now we are at a point where the website is up and running so we can tell people about the event, invite them along and spread the word. Even the fact that the website leaked out half ready turned out to be only beneficial, since many people wanted to help out. For example the nice guys at Valve volunteered to help out right away. I’ve also heard that the Bolder guys are ready to do their part and Scred has promised to make the actual platform for selling tickets for the event.

The event itself will take place 24th November at Korjaamo Culture Factory in Helsinki and run through the whole day. The program will be a combination of four parts:

1. Success Stories - This is were we have the Finland’s finest web entrepreneurs lined up. Risto Siilasmaa from F-Secure, Petteri Koponen from First Hop/Jaiku, Ilkka Paananen from Sumea/Digital Chocolate, Asmo Halinen from Apaja only to name a few of the entrepreneurs that have started small and made it big.
2. Technology track - This is modeled on the Startup Developer Gathering (SDG), which was put together by Kai Lemmetty. For Slush Kai is putting together a tech presentation bar none. This track will go on all day and have many Finnish heavy weights like Teemu Kurppa (Jaiku/Google) presenting their insight for the Slush attendees.
3. Thirdly, a showcase where up to 40 local startups can show what they have, be it products, services, their team, philosophy behind the concept and what not.
4. Fourthly, probably the most important reason pulling the event together in the first place, we have seven pre-screened teams presenting their business ideas to the audience. These teams will be funded by the Slush Fund. The Slush Fund will be in effect just as big as the combined sponsorship revenue plus the proceeds from the sold tickets will allow it to be. In another words we will channel all the money from the event (minus cost e.g. rent for the venue etc.) to the seven teams. If you are a student with an idea for the next big thing you should apply. Instead of writing code and making coffee at one of the big corporations next summer, you could spend the summer of 2009 working on your own idea and have the expertise of most of the Finnish startup community to draw from.

In a nutshell this is Slush Helsinki. An event for startups by startups.

If the website seems that it does not give out all the details yet, it is by no means because we want to keep you in the dark but rather because we are working on the agenda as we go along to make it as good as resources and time allow. ArcticStartup will be naturally reporting what is happening at the event itself but also how the event is developing from now until the day itself in late November. Welcome to the Slush everybody!

Edit: There was a mistake saying October instead of November. The correct date for Slush is NOVEMBER 24th.

We have partnered with the Nordic Venture Forum to bring more visibility for Nordic and Baltic startups among the investors in the region.

Nordic Venture Forum is a day long conference in Copenhagen, Denmark that will give the 50 most promising companies that have qualified to the conference a chance to present their business model to a long list of business angels, VC funds and other investors. 

The Forum facilitates quality local and international deal flow, which aims to highlight the high level of growth companies in the Nordics and to increase the appeal of the Region for local and international venture capital and corporate investors as well as potential institutional investors in venture capital funds.

Nordic Venture Forum report that the impact studies of the Forum results show that 58% of the presenting companies managed to raise new investments following the event. An impressive percentage and if the raised funds are even in that ballpark it’s definitely something to look out for to those startups that fill the application criteria. To qualify a startups needs to 1) be an independent company with operational headquarters in the Nordics, 2) active in ICT, life sciences or clean technologies (energy & environment), and 3) seeking growth funding in the next 24 months.

The applications are closed for this year but be on the lookout for next year and talk to the the organizers to see if the conference is a good match with your startup.

We’re back with events and would like to invite all of our readers to enjoy a laid back evening at Dubrovnik atmosphere with some drinks, networking and discussion on our very own startup scene on the 2nd October, 2008.

Wisened up from the feedback from you guys, we aim to keep the program brief and to the point, but still interesting. We will have Peter Robinett flying over from Amsterdam to come and chat with me about the lastest developements in the Amsterdam startup scene, the hottest Dutch startups, and even the Silicon Valley scene in general and what we could learn from the two to make the Finnish startup ecosystem more dynamic for all of us.

Peter is an accomplished coder and a web designer. He’s originally from Palo Alto, California which is undisputedly the most dynamic start-up ecosystem in the world. After moving to Europe he quickly settled in Amsterdam, Netherland and have been active impacting the local start-up scene by organizing Luch 2.0, Barcamps and most recently the iPhone Dev Camp.

In addition to the discussion with Peter, we will have an open mic for any start-up, entrepreneur or other like minded persona to talk about their project, product launch, open source project and what not. Addition to this we attempt to bring in one interesting speaker that will be revealed at the beginning of the evening itself.

The venue will be the tried and tested Dubrovnik Lounge & Lobby in Helsinki, Finland. We will start at 6pm and wind down the official program around 9pm. Naturally those willing are welcomed to go until the wee hours.

To pay the bills we are looking sponsors for the event. If your company is interested email Miikka your contact details at miikka [at] arcticstartup [dot] com and he will contact you. We’ll give you proper visibility and you can say a few words about your company at the beginning of the evening.

We’re are also celebrating our one-year birthday, so leave the NDAs at home and come along to toast with us to the buzzing local startup scene and to the entrepreneurs we have here.

Edit 14/09/2008: Please register here if you have a Facebook account and you’re planning on attending, so that we’ll have an idea of how many  will attend and can prepare for it. If you don’t have a Facebook account feel free to write me or tell us you’re coming at the comments. Thanks guys!