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teemu kurppa

ArcticEvening in Stockholm, Sweden – Startups And The Future Of Mobile

by Ville Vesterinen, March 12, 2009 — 5 Comments

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ArcticStartup will be hosting its 6th pan-regional event in Stockholm, in the Obaren (map) on the 2nd April from 6pm to 9pm. The evening’s theme will be startups and the future of mobile which is as topical it gets now when iPhone is pushing the industry forward in everything it does, bloggy.se is gaining ground from Jaiku across the region and Spotify is busy building its mobile version. Come and hear what’s where we are going, what’s in store for the future and where does the biggest opportunities for mobile startups lie.

Just as before, 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 have a solid panel in middle. Thus, we will have one panel with industry heavy weights 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.

They say best things in life are free and so is ArcticEvening (watch a short video on the event here), but we will still have a  sign-up system to the event, which we will be opening on the 16th March at 9am (GMT+1 ie. Swedish local time) . Without exceptions, the tickets have 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

Morris Packer, The Bonnier Group

morrispacker1Morris Packer, born 1962 i New York and living in Europe since 1968, continues to cross borders. With more than 15 years within the media industry he has closely followed the evolution from desk top publishing to the mobile web. With a slightly Faustian relationship to technology he loves print and always has a new gadget to show. Since April Fools Day 2004 he runs the department of Bonnier Mobile Services that provides know-how and technology to all brands within The Bonnier Group.

Teemu Kurppa, Co-founder, Huikea / Ex-Jaiku (Google)

teemukurppa2Teemu Kurppa is the co-fouder of Huikea, a mobile startup still in a stealth mode. Before co-founding his own startup he was part of the founding team of Jaiku, a microblogging service that was acquired by Google in 2007. After leaving Google last fall Teemu came back to Finland to found Huikea that he now runs. Teemu is an experienced mobile developer having over 6 years experience of developing end-user mobile applications.

More panelists will be announced in due course.

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

sombizSombiz 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 PartnersHammarström 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.

Jaiku Picks Up. Android Integration Soon In The Plans?

by Ville Vesterinen, December 17, 2008 — 3 Comments

We recently wrote about Jaiku losing users and subsequently got strong response from the Jaiku community telling us differently. Partly the reason why some users (link in Finnish) have moved to Twitter was Jaiku’s feature pack was seriously couching:  feeds not coming through and SMS messages were disabled.

Soon after Jaiku community stood up for their service the Jaiku team also woke up and already the next day feeds were back up, even if still a bit slow, and today SMS was also reactivated. The community effectively made itself heard and it worked at least to some extent.

There’s also new feature’s coming for example regarding the API that supports OAuth, but the gravest of the concerns’ has yet to be answered by the Jaiku team, namely when are we going to see these changes happen and especially where is the service going.

Jyri Engeström commented in Jaikido blog way back in August when Jaiku was being ported to Google App Engine, “We appreciate your patience and can’t wait to open up Jaiku to everyone”, but is Google’s corporate wheel too slow to turn and is Google’s silence policy regarding it’s products development slowly pushing the Jaiku community’s patience one step too far?

The same Jaikido blog entry talks about how 3rd party developers will have greater control over the system and can write applications that provide richer features to their users. This clearly shows that there are plans for the future. One could even speculate that Google has all along had a clear plan on what they are going to do with Jaiku. As Antti Akonniemi speculates, ” Jaiku’s location based and phone profile features pre-installed on Google phones could change everything.”

Now, if one wants to see this happening one easily could: Petteri Koponen has been working especifically on Android in Google’s London office, while Jyri Engeström is in Mountainview working on Google’s strategy for the social web. Has Google just waited until Android is ready to ramp up Jaiku development? Then again, last April Teemu Kurppa told (In Finnish) the Finnish crowd that Jaiku was being developed on the Google’s infamous “20% time”. Google would hardly make developers develop the corner stone of it’s mobile strategy on their ‘extra 20%’. Or would it? Jyri’s silence despite the lively conversation and many requests regarding an update on what’s happening could indicate that something’s up.

This is not a new idea, but could the time start to be ripe for the launch as Jaiku’s porting to Google App Engine is nearly finished which allows a rapid uptake of new users, and as Android is fully functioning and just starting to go after market share?

Edit 17.12.2008 at 3.36pm: Jyri Engeström posted today a new blog post in his blog where he carefully tells us about the future of Jaiku. Among other updates he says that “I regard the Jaiku community as friends, and your concern about the future of the service is legitimate. It warrants a response.”

To indicate what is to come, he goes on by saying that they “[...]plan to open up its development to the user community more in the future.” and that “People should be able to post and follow status updates across servers just like they send email. No single service, no matter how large and powerful, is the platform. The Web is the platform.”

The best indication on what’s to come is at the end of the blog post. I quote: “In spite of the decision to not throw resources at building Jaiku into an independent Web brand, recall that the acquisition announcement stated that ‘Activity streams and mobile presence are important areas where we believe Google can add a lot of value for users.’ Of course this statement still holds true, and you can bet your Android that there are completely new Wow!’s in store.”

At ArcticStartup we believe that we will soon see something that involves Jaiku’s microblogging model, Android and the Open Stack nicely mixed into a working solution for those handset manufacturers that decide to take upon Google’s open offer.

Teemu Kurppa Is Leaving Google

by Ville Vesterinen, November 21, 2008 — Leave a Comment

Teemu Kurppa, a mobile software developer and a member of the founding team of the activity stream and micro-blogging service Jaiku, is leaving Google. He joined Google with the rest of the Jaiku team when Google acquired the startup in October 2007.

In his blog, Teemu tells that the main driver for his departure was an illness in his family which subsequently brings him back to Helsinki, Finland. However, he is up beat about seeing his loved ones back in Helsinki and also mysteriously comments that: “on work related matters, I’ve some exciting plans. More about these later”.

ArcticStartup wishes the best to Teemu and his family and excitedly expects whether Teemu will set up a new mobile startup when he moves back to Helsinki. Welcome back to the Arctic region Teemu!

Jaiku developed through Google’s 20%

by Antti Vilpponen, April 24, 2008 — Leave a Comment

Yesterday at a lecture in the Helsinki University Teemu Kurppa, one of the Jaiku founders, told people that currently Jaiku is being developed on the 20% free time Googlers have for their own projects. We reported that Jaiku will be one of the first applications to be running on Google App Engine and this port will be done on “normal” working hours.

Vierityspalkki wrote about this first in Finland and soon the press coverage followed. It’s nice to see that blogs too generate discussion.

Therefore it’s clear that buying Jaiku for Google at this moment was more about recruiting the team rather than develop the product. We’ve also seen this in Jaiku’s development (or lack there of) in the recent months.

Here’s a video of Teemu Kurppa, being interviewed – he’s advice is skip the summer job, code all summer. :)