LeWeb: Today We're Launching...
I'm writing this from LeWeb, actually from the back of a mobile sauna the Travelling Salesman Crew brought in. It's about the only place I could find a seat outside of the main hall to work a little. If you are in LeWeb, do pay the sauna a visit! Loïc and Geraldine have been able to pull together one big event once again in Paris with some 3300 people from all around the world.
It must be part of the evolution of LeWeb and technology conferences in general (us included with Arctic15), but most of the content in the first day of Le Web this year seemed to be full of product launches.
Well Done Arctic Valley!
The startup ecosystem in the Arctic Valley (pardon us for our selfish term) hasn't always been a very well functioning one. Not that it is extremely functioning today, we're increasingly getting more evidence that the world is noticing your startups, your efforts and most importantly - your passion to change the world.
This week Wired UK wrote a piece on the hottest startup cities in Europe. Three of the nine startup cities in the outlined story are from the region; Tallinn, Stockholm and Helsinki.
Edicy Turns One And Celebrates With 85k Sites
Edicy, the Estonian startup that enables people to create their own websites without knowing any technical issues affiliated with website design. I first met Tõnu Runnel in Le Web Paris last year and interviewed them regarding the product. He was also pitching their company in the startup track among other European startups.
Finnish Startups Taking A Sauna Truck To LeWeb
ArcticStartup and Digibusiness Helsinki Region are organizing a trip for Finnish startups to LeWeb which takes place in Paris on 9th and 10th December.
LeWeb is the brainchild of Loic le Meur and his wife Geraldine le Meur. Loic is also steering the much talked about startup Seesmic. LeWeb is currently hands down the biggest and most talked about startup event in Europe that features many of the world famous anti-heroes and heroes such as Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, Dan Farber of CNET News, Steve Gillmor of The Gillmor Gang, Om Malik of GigaOm and Robert Scoble of Fast Company along with hundreds of startups.
A group of Finnish startups will invade LeWeb with a massive Sauna Truck. Yes! You heard right, a Sauna Truck! The hottest Finnish social media startups, metaphorically and literally after a few hours in the sauna truck, will combine their efforts at Le Web’08 in Paris in December. The trip is a continuum to a successful joint business trip to the Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco last April.
The Finnish startup mafia will arrive in Paris on Monday December 8th and the Sauna will be open for press, bloggers and industry leaders already in the same evening. If you're a Finnish startup and want to tag along contact tommi.rissanen [at] culminatum [dot] fi. There's still room for a few so hurry up!
Hope to see you all in the sauna.
Photo by wili_hybrid (CC:BY).
MindTrek prizes for start-ups a positive surprise
We speculated earlier on that this year's MindTrek's Startup Launchpad prizes would be pretty good, and nice they are.The guys at MindTrek have shown that when it comes to getting start-ups on board, Tampere knows what its doing. Here's what they have on offer quote on quote:
The winner elected by the jury will be nominated as the MindTrek Startup of the Year 2008, and given the right to pick up the prize first from the basket. The three prizes are:
- Two tickets for an international conference (max á 1300 €), like Le Web 3 Le Web08 in Paris (December 12th – 13th) December 9th – 10th*
- Supercoaching training by Sharon Ballard
- Technopolis Ventures incubation program (12 months contract, worth 3 000 €) and an opportunity to participate in the Money Talks Forum
In addition, the winner will get two tickets for the MindTrek 2009 conference and one hour face-time with one jury member to discuss about the concept, business model, financing opportunities, markets, etc.
The company nominated as second will select prize after the winner, and the bronze-medallist will get the remaining prize.All companies selected to present their pitches in the conference will be given an opportunity to participate in a half-day pitch training session before the conference.
If the prizes are noteworthy, so it the jury. The jury line up includes Marc Davis from Yahoo!, Sharon C. Ballard, the founding President/CEO of Enable Ventures Inc., Tapio Siik from Nokia Growth Partners, Pekka Pärnänen theHead of Finpro at Silicon Valley and Henri Rantalainen the CEO and Business Development Advisor at Technopolis Ventures Professia.
But as they say there's no such thing as a free lunch and even start-ups have to invest real money sometimes as much as it hurts. There is no real registration fee for the Launchpad competition, but if a start-up is selected it will have to register for the conference to get to pitch and be eligible for the prizes. The registration fee is 75 euro (+VAT) for the Thursday when the actual pitching competiton will take place, and if you want join the whole two days you have to pay 110 euro (+VAT) for a two day ticket, ie Wednesday and Thursday.
To ease the pain a bit, we are co-organizing with Culminatum, Sombiz, Floobs and MindTrek a free bus ride for all the startups to Tampere and back. Regardless of whether you're pitching or not, you're most welcome to join the ride. write me at ville [at] arcticstartup [dot] com if you wanna come and I'll reserve a seat for your team.
You can read more about the competition and fill in the registration for here. Good luck!
*Edit: A correction to The MindTrek website: The first prize that includes two tickets for an international conference (max á 1300 €), should read "like Le Web08 in Paris (December 9th – 10th)", not 'LeWeb3 that was held in Paris last year on December 12th and 13th.
