ArcticEvening Tampere Tomorrow
Tomorrow we'll be having another ArcticEvening event in Tampere. The event will revolve around some interesting startup pitches and a panel with some very interesting industry heavy weights. Last week we went through our procedure to pick three companies available for pitching at the event and the chosen ones are (in random order): Tagregator, Tribe Flame and There Corporation. On the panel we'll have Jussi Harvela, Otto Chrons and Heikki Halme.
You can read more about the event on its own page. Want to come? Sign up now, there are still some tickets available. The show will kick off around 6pm at Demola.
ArcticEvening Tampere taking place November 17th
ArcticStartup will be travelling to Tampere to tap into the entrpreneurial buzz there we've heard so much of. The evening will be an interesting one wrapped around the theme of Networking and Pitching. More specifically, we'll be discussing the different ways entrepreneurs can take advantage networking to grow their business. We'll have some very practical advice from industry heavy weights and local entrepreneurs.
Building And Managing A Successful Sales Team In The U.S. Market, Part I
Pirjo Tuomi, an experienced Finnish saleswoman who has worked in the U.S. for the past 16 years, presented her experiences and tips for Building and Managing a Successful Sales Team in the U.S. Market at Verso Software Sales Camp last week (see our previous post from the event). Pirjo has long experience from the U.S. B2B sales, positions from Sales Rep to SVP Worldwide Sales, going through 5 M&A's and 1 IPO, growing a firm from zero to $250M in revenues and up to 120 team size, among other things. In the following, I will also reflect points from Jussi Harvela's presentation also covered in the previous post.
Kicking Off B2B Software Sales - Lessons From The Field
I attended Software Sales Camp seminar organized by Tekes (the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology) earlier this week. The event was a two-day "bootcamp" aimed for improving Finnish software firms' business-to-business sales and marketing skills. Going forward, I will summarize a few interesting tips and experiences shared by the seasoned speakers at the event. One main theme throughout the event was also the U.S. market entry and issues related - I will get back to that later.
Government Backed Accelerators Chosen - March On Finland!
Vigo, a Finnish government run program to strengthen the currently rather dismal foundation of Finnish risk capital ecosystem and to create international venture accelerators and investors in Finland (see our previous story here), has come to an end and now it's time to see what we got. And it does not look that bad at all.
In total, three venture accelerators where chosen by the steering board, which was lead by Mr. Risto Siilasmaa, Chairman, founder and former Chief Executive Officer of F-Secure Corporation, Member of the Board at Nokia and a prominent business angel among other things. It seems that the Vigo steering board was looking into finding teams to cover various different industries and compliment each other instead of creating competition into the Finnish venture capital scene. They seems to have found three such 'mutually exclusive' teams to fit the bill, namely Lifeline Ventures, Lots and Veturi Venture Accelerator. Here's a short description of each in turn.
ArcticEvening Helsinki Registration Open
ArcticEvening in Tallinn was a success in January.
ArcticEvening Helsinki registration is open. You can get your free ticket below. ArcticEvening will be held in Dubrovnik Lounge and Lobby on the 3rd of March, from 6pm to 9pm.
Just to summarise, we'll have one excellent panel on startup financing with Artturi Tarjanne, Jussi Harvela, Nils Forsblom and Jouko Kiesi. These gentlemen have a lot of experience and I'm sure we'll hear some interesting stories. You can read more about the panelists on the ArcticEvening page.
We'd also like to thank our sponsors Sombiz and Hammarström Puhakka Partners for making the event possible.
Get your ticket here:
Sold out!
ArcticEvening Helsinki - 3rd of March, 2009
ArcticStartup will be hosting its 5th event in Helsinki, in the good old Dubrovnik Lounge and Lobby on the 3rd of March from 6pm to 9pm. The evening's theme will be financing which will surely be of interest to many startups and early stage companies as it's one of the corner stones of building a successful business.
The structure of the evening will take into account the wishes of participants from earlier events. We have been asked to leave more time for networking, but still with build the evening with some presentations and talks. Therefore, we will have one panel with very strong industry experts and the rest of the evening will be left for networking and discussions between participants. Each panel participant will have a chance to introduce themselves before the panel.
We will have a sign-up system to the event, which we will be opening on the 18th of February at 9am. We will have at least 100 tickets available for participants. Last time we organised our event in Tallinn, the tickets sold out extremely fast, so make sure you are here to get your ticket. We are able to host the event free of charge for participants due to our wonderful sponsors. Our sponsors are presented below.
Panelists
Artturi Tarjanne, General Partner, Nexit Ventures
Artturi Tarjanne is one of the most experienced Finnish investors out there, he has more than 20 years' investing experience from various industries - mainly telecom.Jussi Harvela, Partner, Veturi Growth Partners
Jussi Harvela has more than 20 years' experience in running and managing high tech startups and corporations. He successfully transformed a small Finnish startup to an established global software company, from Finland to Cupertino, California.Nils Forsblom, Founder, Fruugo
Nils Forsblom has a colorful career starting companies here and there. His latest thrill has been the hyped, feared and appreciated e-commerce startup named Fruugo. He has gathered financing in many different economical conditions so he will surely have a say in the panel.Jouko Kiesi, Attorney at law, senior advicer, Hammarström Puhakka Partners
Jouko Kiesi is one of the corner stones of HPP's success. He has a strong background in startup financing, about 30 years worth. He has worked with legendary startups such as Riot-E and Iobox. Needless to say, there will be some interesting stories told.With more than 80 years' worth of experience on the panel - it'll surely be one of the most anticipated get togethers ever experienced in Finland. Make sure you get your ticket on the morning of the 18th of February. If Madonna's concert in Helsinki sold out in a few hours - we'll be quicker.
The ticket's will be available on this blog on the morning of the 18th of February and on the ArcticEvening page.
Sponsors
Our event is made available by our Sponsors. Do take time to get to know them - they are one of the most interesting organisations in the industry. We hand pick our sponsors to bring value to the evenings - these guys are truly worth your time.
Sombiz
Sombiz is a Social Media Business Network of Finnish social media & Web 2.0 companies, research institutions, and other organisations and individuals operating in the field of social media.
Sombiz provides a network for organisations to collaborate, learn from each other, and create partnerships. By connecting business with research Sombiz is stimulating the creation of new innovations. The ultimate goal for Sombiz is to find new business opportunities and help companies to grow and go international.
Sombiz operates as a thematic network of the Finnish Digibusiness Cluster and is a part of the government funded Centre of Expertise Programme (OSKE). In 2008 the building of the Sombiz network was selected as the national "OSKE Top Project". The project is funded by the Ministry of Employment and the Economy.
The background organisation of Sombiz is Technology Centre Hermia Ltd.
Sombiz is a Finnish-based network operating internationally. The strategy of Sombiz is a "BUGC" approach: linking Business, Universities, Government, and Communities in order to build and boost the social media business ecosystem.
Hammarström Puhakka Partners
Hammarström Puhakka Partners, Attorneys Ltd is a law firm specialised in business law. The firm has a good corporate practice with experienced M&A advisers acting constantly for domestic and cross-border clients. Specialists provide M&A services to public and private companies relating to assignments concerning private equity and venture capital transactions. The firm is constantly involved with complex transactions in connection with private equity firms and experienced in advising private equity/venture capital investors in divesting their investments.
IVA conference: the aftermath
As you probably know from our earlier posts the IVA conference was held last week in Tel Aviv, Israel. Now it's time for a recap. I had an opportunity to interview Jussi Harvela, Pekka Roine and Kristian Järnefelt from Concilio Networks who all participated in the event. They all agreed that the whole trip was a success.
The Finnish delegation of fifteen people attended the conference (with total of 1700 attendees) itself and the companies also pitched for a selected VC audience just after the conference. Furthermore, all eight companies had private meetings with potential investors and partners. The advice from the experts (check the video) was clearly followed by the companies as the quality of pitches was described as "very good" or "excellent". The Finnish companies were pretty unknown for Israeli VCs who were anyhow impressed by the absence of "me-too" startups among the pitchers.
Mr. Järnefelt also provided some personal insights on Israeli business as well. He said that Israel resembles Silicon Valley a great deal and many of leading US VCs are also present in Israel. There are quite a lot early stage capital available and a bubbling startup scene as well. One notable thing is the amount of serial entrepreneurs who yet are rare (at least in software business) in Finland. According to Mr. Järnefelt Israeli startups have a strong level of ambition in general and the incubators (that acccept only 3-5% of applicants) encourage such behavior. However, one thing the Israeli ICT segment yet lacks is "a Nokia", so that gives the Finns something to chat about.
One the trip's goals was to deepen the co-operation between Finland and Israel. Thus, representatives from Finnish Ministry of Employment and the Economy, TEKES, Finnvera and Technopolis Ventures got a first-hand look on, for example, the Israeli VC industry and the incubator system. After the Finnish delegation returns we hope the co-operation gradually deepens and gains momentum. The signs seem promising in any case.
There were discussions that an Israeli delegation consisting of VCs and government officials would visit Finland sometime during the Autumn. It would be great if Estonian and Russian startups could attend such an event along with Finnish companies. We will keep you posted if and when we hear more of this kind of plans.
In conclusion, an excellent event and we hope to see a more deeper interaction between Israel and Finland in the future.
IVA conference prepping: killer advice on pitching to VCs
Thanks for Peter in helping out with the video conversion tech.
(NB! video in Finnish; Length 6min.)
