Summer Of Startups Moving Forward By Leaps
AaltoES is one of the more active organisers of different entrepreneurial activities in the Helsinki region in Finland and last night saw one of its programs coming to an end with the Demo Day of Summer of Startups 2011. This year Summer of Startups was organised for the second year running and it needs to be said out clearly that the quality and level of ambition these teams had this year, had tremendously increased from last year. During the event, I tweeted that it wouldn't be a surprise if some of the startups got acquired soon.
Kristian Segerstrale Believes In Northern Europe
Kristian Segerstrale, the former CEO of Playfish, a social gaming company before it was sold to Electronic Arts for $300 million back in 2009. Today he leads the Playfish team in EA and invests through some smaller funds, like that of Lifeline Ventures here in Finland. Playfish wasn't Segerstrale's first startup. Before Playfish he sucessfully build up Macrospace that since then changed to Glu Mobile and went onto IPO into Nasdaq. Segerstrale was on stage yesterday at the Summer of Startups demo day event. He was energetic, inspiring yet very easy to approach - everything you'd expect from a man of such success and experience.
