Zipipop, a new media start-up that develops web-based services for making everyday life easier, is going to Mobile 2.0 in San Francisco on the 3rd November. Zipipop was selected to present at the conference when it won Mobile 2.0 Europe.

Zipipop CEO Helene Auramo informed ArcticStartup that Zipipop is going to San Francisco to win Mobile 2.0, but that they are also looking forward of seeing many interesting people and are going to spend an extra one and a half weeks over in the US. We believe that the extra week and a half will be spent driving between venture capital firms looking for investors. (Previous story on the topic here)

Why we have reason to believe this is because Zipipop has gone public with its Advisory Board and one of the Board Members who has already unofficially worked for a long time with the company, Peter Vesterbacka, has been making arrangements for the company’s trip to US for weeks now. These arrangements have very likely included setting up those magical meetings with the venture capitalists.

On a related note the company has revealed that they have a new partner, Robert Aarts. Aarts worked previously as Director of Engineering at start-up Trustgenix which was acquired by HP at the end of 2005. Earlier on Robert was a Senior Architect for  Nokia Web Services for seven year.

All this looks very much like the company is getting itself tidied up and presentable for the investors. All well, except that as we all know venture financing has dried up almost over night due to gloomy predictions and the general downturn in the global economy. Let’s hope that Zipipop can assure the wary investors that they have what it takes to make Zipipop’s flagship product, Zipiko, the next Twitter or at least a nice quick exit.

Zipiko is a SMS based social intention broadcasting application. I believe that Zipiko has potential since it is build from simple enough elements which potentially make it easy enough to use by anyone in the larger public, unlike many other web 2.0 services which just dazzle you. Having said that, when it comes to predicting success, how I go about it is by trying out something at least a couple of times and if after a while notice myself using it, even every now and then it can be a success at least for a niche. I don’t use Zipiko even after having tried it out a few times, which is a sign that it needs more work. Twisting the service and letting the users decide which variations work and which doesn’t might do just that, since the right elements are there.

Have you tried the service? What did you think?

The Internet Agency Valve has been all quiet about its plans, but there is something going on about its operations abroad. The agency is a famous flash house in Finland, that has hogged numerous awards from many different competitions. It seems like they have something going on in the US at the moment, more specifically San Francisco.

Valve is recruiting game developers and game designers with the work being located either in Helsinki, Finland or San Francisco, US. A guess is that they are looking towards some sort of Flash based social game as they emphasize the need for “good up-to-date understanding of social networks and web-trends“.

I’ve heard from an industry insider that the person pulling together team is a former Sulake employee. Sulake is the house behind the world famous Habbo Hotel. An educated guess is that Valve is planning something similar, with a different target market perhaps?

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).

VentureBeat finds Juhani and his party list for San Francisco in a post titled Web 2.0 - The ultimate party.

If you haven’t checked out Juhani’s post yet on the parties do read it, lot’s of interesting events if you’re in San Francisco :)

I caught sight of Jyri’s tweet on a gathering of Finnish entrepreneurs in Mission, San Francisco this coming Monday. An event co-organised by DIGIBUSINESS and Sombiz (Social Media Business Network).

Companies taking part are TripSay, Ironstar, ConnectedDay, Ideakone, Apprix, Waraamo, Ramblas, XIHA Ltd and Futurice.

Read more about the event here.