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.

Helene Auramo, Zipipop CEO, hinted ArcticStartup that the colorful Finnish start-up is finally preparing for taking in investments.

Zipipop will head to San Francisco to present in Mobile 2.0 on the 3rd November after winning at the Mobile 2.0 Europe. This will also be a good change to kick-start the talks with potential investors on both sides of the Atlantic.

On a related note, we just heard that Zipiko CTO/CPO Stefano J. Attardi (Taro being the CTO of Zipipop in large) was approached by four(!) Bay Area startups to join their ranks. He interviewed with all of them but finally rejected all their offers to join Zipipop instead. Acrctic Startup congratulates Stefano for the choice.

Stefano told us that shortly after he joined Zipipop, Biz Stone, the Twitter co-founder, heard about him and asked him join Twitter. According to Stefano, Biz was “excited to speak to him” for a position as an interface designer and front-end developer. Stefano decided to turn down the offer.

Incidentally, another CEO wrote to him again last week renewing the offer he made earlier saying that they still haven’t found anyone as good as Stefano. Stefano prefers not to name all the start-ups in question.

Stefano further explains that the reason he turned down the San Francisco offers was because he wanted to start a project of his own and Zipiko gave him the possibility to do that. He started Zipiko as a collaboration with Zipipop Creative Director Richard von Kauffman.

Here’s Stefano on Technology Gazette Podcast talking about Zipiko service, how it compares to Twitter and what they have in plans for the future.

Below you can find Zipipop’s latest presentation (in Finnish).

Zipipop won the competition for the best Early Stage Start-up at Mobile 2.0 Europe in Barcelona. The winning service application was Zipiko (more about Zipiko here). The grand prize was an invitation to present at the next Mobile 2.0 event on 3 November in San Francisco – the home of Mobile 2.0.

Arctic Startup talked to Helene Auramo, Zipipop CEO, after it was announced that they would win. Here’s Helene’s feelings after the announcement:

During the seminar we were just working in the corridors, coding and other stuff.We would have wanted to listen to all the great presentations, but we just didn’t have time. We were really nervous during the whole seminar and we were not expecting anything like this at all. When they announced that we won, we were just really surprised. After the winning we just went back to working, sending press releases and more coding. And after that some champagne and relaxing.

We come back on Monday to our new office in Museokatu, Helsinki, and then we will focus on developing Zipiko service even better. We are hoping to receive a lot of feedback that we can make it even better.

[...]

We want to thank also all “Mennäänkö Yhdelle?” users for their feedback that we could use to make Zipiko service as good as possible. We are so grateful for everyone who has helped us and giving us good advices.

We congratulate Zipipop for the great achievement so far! The service is in closed public beta and we’re waiting to see how it will go down with the wider public when it opens up and whether Zipipop can lure enough advertisers to sign up.

Zipipop has been chosen to present their latest mobile service tomorrow in the Mobile 2.0 Europe in Barcelona. Mobile 2.0 Europe is a extension of the famous Mobile 2.0 event which started in San Francisco. The new service is called Zipiko and has been kept secret until the Mobile 2.0 Europe launch.

Zipiko is a quick and effortless way to see what your friends are doing and a way to invite them to your chosen venue whether it’s it a local cafe or your own place for drinks, lunch or whatever you fancy. You can also see what your friends are doing throughout the day from the main page where it’s only a matter of a few clicks to join an event, given that you’re invited.

The service itself has born out of Facebook application Mennäänkö Yhdelle (Let’s go for a one in Finnish) that Zipipop developed earlier on, where the best bits have been transferred to this new browser based mobile service.

I interviewed Zipipop CEO, Helene Auramo, after the festives had already started in Barcelona and she explained that “when you invite friends to a party they will receive an SMS to which they can then answer ‘Yes’ with a mere SMS. So the idea is that you don’t necessarily have to access the web at all to tell that you’re coming. And to make the experience complete one will receive a text message just before the event to know who else has answered ‘Yes’ to know who will eventually make it to the party” . Helene emphasized that the value of the service is in spontaneity and the ease of setting up a meeting on the fly.

Once you register to Zipiko you will receive 30 free SMS for organizing get-togethers, but in the long run Zipipop wants to bring in advertisers that would pay for the SMS messages, thus making the service free for the users. The advertisers would get their name on a discreet message at the end of the invitation SMS.

It seems that Zipipop has found a simple way to bring an aspect of a Jaiku/Twitter like service, SMS and Meetup together to organize spontaneous get-togethers . Now they only need to get the advertisers on board to pay for the SMS messages.

You can see a demo of the service here.

Techcruch also made a note about Mobile 2.0 Europe event and Zipko.

Zipipop (see our previous coverage) launched recently an English version of their “Mennäänkö yhdelle?” application in Facebook, now called “Going for one?“. It’s an application designed to make it easier to get your friends in the same place for a drink. Helene Auramo, CEO of Zipipop, provided us a bit more insight into the company’s plans.

Helene comments it was clear from the beginning that if the application would fare well in Finland, they would produce an English version. The Finnish user interface has done the trick in getting the application to spread around, and it seemed right now was a good time to make the international debut.

Helene reveales Zipipop has actually used the Going for One? application as a demo for a bigger “Event Organizer”, to learn about users’ wishes and behavior. They were especially interested in learning how spontaneous small event organizing works with social media.

Then the obvious follow-up question, where’s the money? Helene comments Zipipop is currently developing “creative advertising models” supporting the usability of the applications and providing thus added value for the users, as opposed to banner advertising. In addition Zipipop continues to make Facebook applications for other companies. Helene confirms Zipipop is profitable already, so seems they have been able to keep costs under control so far.

In the future Zipipop will be expanding into mobile. Going for One application is already usable on mobile, and according to Helene the main focus of development will be seen on that front. She also flashes iPhone as one of the target platforms, and the company is also looking into Open Social.

While the Facebook/social network sector can be a tough place to do business in, it’s good to see brave activity there (and there are some good examples also). These days it seems everyone’s up to creating different advertising models, though, but I hope Zipipop finds the correct mix. I also heard through the grapevine Zipipop has something to do with a Finnish technology consulting firm, who is among other things specialized ramping up startups and acquiring funding…maybe there’s something coming up?