Last Friday, Microsoft launched a new program called Bizspark that offers startups of different ages and stages tools to take care of their software and hosting requirements. Technopolis Ventures, Veraventure, The Finnish Software Entrepeneurs Association and Venture Cup has partnered with Microsoft in Finland to accept participants into the program.

Startups must meet the following requirements to be accepted into the program:

• Be actively engaged in development of a software-based product or service that will form a core of its current or intended business
• Be privately held
• Be in business for less than 3 years and
• Have less than 1 million USD annual turnover.

Despite being a Mac fanatic, I have to give it to Microsoft for pulling this off. They are sponsoring a wide range of products that suit many companies working in the internet space especially. Also, the packages being offered are tailored for companies in different stages of their growth and thus are also bundled together with their capability to pay for the software.

For more information, visit Microsoft Bizspark. You can also find your partners in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the Baltics through this link.

IdeaForum is a pitching competition being organised by Venture Cup Finland on the 29th of October in Helsinki. The idea is simple of course, you have two minutes to pitch your idea to a group of investors (the jury) and you cannot use any additional materials, except for a piece of paper (or perhaps you have the product available at hand).

If you wish to participate, you should send in your details by the 27th of October to this address including participant’s name, phone number and the idea that is going to be presented. Participants will be contacted by phone. The grand prize for two minutes’ of work is 1000€.

The jury is made up of five people, Moaffak Ahmed (Veturi Growth Partners), Teemu Seppälä (Helsinki University of Technology/Innovation centre), Petri Laine (Vera Venture), Juho Kinnunen (Eqvitec) and Antti Vilpponen (ArcticStartup). More information on the event here (the english part is at the bottom).

I received a tip from an unnamed source last night that Venture Cup Finland is rumoured to have partnered with Tekes to enable a one million euro grand prize for the winner. The grand prize will be given in the form of the Young Innovative Companies -fund.

Venture Cup is a business plan competition where the best business plans will be awarded. The deadline for the Idea Phase is 19th of November. See Venture Cup website for more details.

There has been some debate on whether anyone has ever actually received the young innovative company -Tekes support. This prize would thus actually conclude that debate and give the winner an excellent possibility to develop their business.

Venture Cup Finland, the national business plan competition, announced the winners for the second round of this year’s competition. The award criteria emphasized innovativeness, customer benefits and potential market, and feasibility of the business model.

Numcore from Kuopio won the main award, and got also additional environment and safety prize. The company develops and markets innovative high-tech monitoring and controlling instruments for online use in process industry. With its products complex processes can be monitored and controlled continuously, helping its customers to refine their processes and reduce the environmental impact. Numcore is planning to expand internationally and is looking for venture capital at the moment. The CEO Anssi Lehikoinen states they are now ready to commercialize more than a decade of research, and have invested a lot in their team, which has industry experience and expertise in R&D, sales, and financing.

Other winners and their business concepts:

• Beautiful9 - offering a virtual wardrobe for pregnant women, from which they can rent affordable evening dresses and business outfits.
• BlueFors - commercial fully automated cooling device capable of reaching -273.15 degrees Celsius, just 0.025 degrees away from the absolute zero.
• LaTiDa - skin care products produced without any chemicals and with environmentally-friendly supply chain.
• Sinteri - natural baby food produced locally, innovatively combining production, sales, and community-based service.

I attended a pitching competition organized by Venture Cup Finland on last Thursday. I was hoping hear some excellent pitchs, of which to grab some good takeaways. But I have to say I was a bit disappointed.

Two things let me down, the pitches and the jury work. I’m not saying either ones were bad, but I didn’t really see much excelling there. Beforehand, it was claimed the jury will judge the pitches by the presentation skills and by the business idea. However, watching the competition, it felt like the jury was missing a common criteria for evaluating the pitches. They were each picking up different things in different pitches, be it the idea in general, presumed technical feasibility or financial outlook, subjective feeling, etc… Also, what came to the presentations as such, very few comments were made - I would’ve expected a lot more comments than just “your presentation was nice…” And, if a pitch clearly gets cut off due to time ending, while missing some information, it should not get three times 4 points (out of 5) from the five-member jury, in my opinion…

Regarding the pitches, they were slightly modest, and some even unstimulating. There were a couple of exceptions, including the winning Maija Itkonen’s Power Kiss (in Finnish), which was delivered nicely. Also the content of the pitches was quite varying. Again, there were a few clearly rehearsed ones, but the rest would’ve needed a lot more dry runs beforehand. From two I couldn’t even figure out what the opportunity or product was exactly, and in many the financial opportunity was completely left out.

I’m not claiming I’d be any expert on this subject, but the way I see it, you need to start with the customer’s pain, i.e. the problem statement: who’s got a problem, and why it’s important? After that you need to state a clear, compelling value proposition: why it’s you(r company) who can solve the problem, and how? Then you’ll proceed to the financial potential. Of course you can start with your strongest point, but each element should be there. Four key attributes in a pitch would be: the pitch should be be succinct, easy to understand, induce greed, and be irrefutable. It should not leave the investor with more questions than answers. And you’d better show some enthusiasm.

A lot of the pitches I witnessed were missing much of the above, unfortunately. The organizers had done a good job, though - the cocktail catering afterwards was great, and facilitated some good conversation among those of us remaining… Anyway, I’d recommend checking out MIT 100k Elevator Pitch Contest and some other guidelines if you’re interested.

PS. We were discussing with Antti Vilpponen it might be nice to organize some sort of a gettogether around pitching, providing an opportunity to practice, present your company, and to discuss with likeminded people. If you think that’d interest you, let us know: info (at) arcticstartup.com.