LeWeb has announced their startup contestors and judges for this year’s Startup Competition. From the 30 companies there is one from China and Israel, five from US and 23 European companies, including Finnish Zipipop(previously covered) and Estonian based instant website creator Edicy.

The deal is that each company gets 7 minutes to pitch to the judges on the day. Winners of the competition will then have a chance to present their companies on the LeWeb main stage and additionally SUN Microsystems will offer a server to three final winners.

We at ArcticStartup congratulate and hope for the best for all startups but especially for our own Zipipop and Edicy. At least Zipipop has a nice track record with a win at Mobile 2.0 Europe and recent experience at Mindrek Startup Launchpad.
See the full list.

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?

MindTrek Startup Launchpad finalists have been chosen. The following companies made the cut (in alphabetical order):

Floobs
HammerKit
MahShelf
One Did It
RunToShop
Star Wreck Studios
TripSay
Zipipop

There will be eight finalist in total in the pitch competition and each startup will have 6 minute pitch to present to the high profile jury. Read more about the Startup Launchpad here.

Congratulations and good luck to all the finalists!

The free bus ride for startups to the MindTrek and back from Helsinki on 8.-9.10.2008 will depart 8.10. Wednesday morning at 7.15am in fron of Kiasma  (the bus has MindTrek sign on it).

The bus will head back to Helsinki on 9.10. Thursday at 4pm departing in front of Hotel Rosendahlin at Tampere. If you want to come along contact Hanne Lehtola at hanne.lehtola [at] culminatum.fi

Antti Akonniemi from Kisko Labs is also running an Ignite while we are driving up there. Antti wrote a short intro on what’s on offer for the ride up:

If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? And what if your stage was an actual bus full of startup entrepreneurs? Fun of karaoke and excitement of Powerpoint combined. Sounds too much like the movie Speed? Introducing Ignite:Mobile. Join ArcticStartup’s bus trip to MindTrek and experience the first ever Ignite:Mobile.

There should still be plenty of room in the bus, so drop Hanne a mail and come along.

There has been much talk around Slush lately. Yet, it has not yet been very clear at all what is happening and I’m partly to blame. Now I try to shed some light onto the issue and at the same time invite you all to Slush.

In a nutshell Slush is a new Helsinki originated event for startups by startups. The whole process started when I along with a few others passionate about the subject were trying to brainstorm on how to give a boost to the Finnish startup scene, home and abroad. We had an idea that a bigger annual event might be the answer for the lack of visibility among Finnish startups in the global arena. If nothing else, we saw that such an event was missing from the Finnish startup fabric.

After throwing ideas back and forth for while I, Peter Vesterbacka (of Mobile Monday fame) and Kai Lemmetty (of Floobs) came up with an event that would show the best Finland has to offer, once a year every year. Later on Helene Auramo from Zipipop jumped along to bring her positive energy to the team and give it an even stronger startup perspective. Peter came up with the name Slush and so it started.

Finnish summer can be an amazing experience with its nightless nights, but there’s also the dark winter we live with the other six months. Thus, any startup born in Finland have equal number of slushy and dark Novembers in their DNA as they have those warm sunny Julys. Many say the one quality a startup needs above all is perseverance against adversity and out of all the languages Finnish is the one that has its own word for describing just that. The word is Sisu and I believe that it has much to do with Finns pushing through those dark slushy winter months. Thus, an apt name especially for a startup event. Having said that, I believe this is the case with startup DNA all over the Nordic and Baltic countries.

After finding the right people to take on the challenge we were ready to start working. What we really aim to do is light up the startup scene, namely by showing students what entrepreneurship can be at its best, and show the international crowd that there is much more to Finnish startups than the tip of the iceberg they’ve seen so far. Naturally big part of the whole event is to enable the Finnish entrepreneurs meet not only each other but also investors and other businesses from home and abroad.

We know there’s a plethora of events that are not working as well as they could for the entrepreneurs themselves, and thus we decided that everything we do should be done in the interest of the startup scene in mind. If something is in conflict with that focus, it will be scrapped from the agenda. For startups by startups or nothing.

Now we are at a point where the website is up and running so we can tell people about the event, invite them along and spread the word. Even the fact that the website leaked out half ready turned out to be only beneficial, since many people wanted to help out. For example the nice guys at Valve volunteered to help out right away. I’ve also heard that the Bolder guys are ready to do their part and Scred has promised to make the actual platform for selling tickets for the event.

The event itself will take place 24th November at Korjaamo Culture Factory in Helsinki and run through the whole day. The program will be a combination of four parts:

1. Success Stories - This is were we have the Finland’s finest web entrepreneurs lined up. Risto Siilasmaa from F-Secure, Petteri Koponen from First Hop/Jaiku, Ilkka Paananen from Sumea/Digital Chocolate, Asmo Halinen from Apaja only to name a few of the entrepreneurs that have started small and made it big.
2. Technology track - This is modeled on the Startup Developer Gathering (SDG), which was put together by Kai Lemmetty. For Slush Kai is putting together a tech presentation bar none. This track will go on all day and have many Finnish heavy weights like Teemu Kurppa (Jaiku/Google) presenting their insight for the Slush attendees.
3. Thirdly, a showcase where up to 40 local startups can show what they have, be it products, services, their team, philosophy behind the concept and what not.
4. Fourthly, probably the most important reason pulling the event together in the first place, we have seven pre-screened teams presenting their business ideas to the audience. These teams will be funded by the Slush Fund. The Slush Fund will be in effect just as big as the combined sponsorship revenue plus the proceeds from the sold tickets will allow it to be. In another words we will channel all the money from the event (minus cost e.g. rent for the venue etc.) to the seven teams. If you are a student with an idea for the next big thing you should apply. Instead of writing code and making coffee at one of the big corporations next summer, you could spend the summer of 2009 working on your own idea and have the expertise of most of the Finnish startup community to draw from.

In a nutshell this is Slush Helsinki. An event for startups by startups.

If the website seems that it does not give out all the details yet, it is by no means because we want to keep you in the dark but rather because we are working on the agenda as we go along to make it as good as resources and time allow. ArcticStartup will be naturally reporting what is happening at the event itself but also how the event is developing from now until the day itself in late November. Welcome to the Slush everybody!

Edit: There was a mistake saying October instead of November. The correct date for Slush is NOVEMBER 24th.

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).