Pitching events for this fall are a wrap. All together 23 ambitious startups presented their ideas – some of them get to join us in Stanford, others in Slush. Tonight’s winners, UniMerchandise aims at making the affiliate products for Finnish Universities a lot more appealing.
The winning pitch got praised by the judges, Moaffak Ahmed, Kalle Airo and Teemu Seppälä, for its hands-on approach and can-do attitude. Sometimes the simple ideas are the best ones.
- Our business idea started with one question: why aren’t there any high-quality merchandises for universities in Finland, say for instance sweatshirts? We came up with the idea already last spring and tried to sell it to the student union of HSE with little luck, describes Jens Sørensen.
– Two weeks back we called the people responsible for Aalto University communications, but they didn’t have the time to think about the branded merchandises. This is where our company comes in. The Stanford trip is going to be very beneficial for us, we’ll get to see the whole merchandise business model of both Stanford and Berkley University, continues Joonatan Lintala.
The roll-out plan for the boys is straight-forward.
- Next year you’ll probably find us selling some great Aalto merchandise in the HSE, TKK and TaiK lobbies, the winning team concludes.
Stay tuned for the next Pitching Event in February. We’ll also be doing a follow-up on the so far presented ideas: how are the some 30 Aaltoes Pitching ideas we’ve heard about doing after the event? What, if anything, has happened since? Many of the pitching ideas are looking for feedback, team-members or mentors, so keep your mind open when attending the events!
RESULTS AND PITCHERS
The winner is UniMerchandise followed by World Health Hub, Futuuns and VirtualReception, which will all get to attend Slush Helsinki.
All pitchers (thanks @LisaGri for the recaps!)
NextDesire (Sivakumar K.) – Device for in-store use for making it easier to make choices.
UniMerchandise (Joonatan Lintala and Jens Sørensen – Branding the merchandise for unis using high quality and well-known brands.
BreezeTags (Igor Burattini) – Easy way of sharing internet links. Saving info & contacts from online directly on mobile phone.
SoftFlash (Olga Kuznetsova) – Digitally matching the retailers’ database to shoppers’ sizes.
VirtualReception (Aleksander Asatiani) – better booking online service for hotels in native language.
Futuuns (Teemu Yli-Hollo) – Web service for professional audio producers
StoreReview (Jori Lallo) – Online stores review by customers for customers.
SocialMediaShaman (Tuukka Takala) – Group dynamics of social networks members.
WorldHealthHub (Sami Paju) – Professional network for sharing scientific research in medicine
QualitySeer (Antti Hätinen) – AI program for determining best working practices for sotware development companies.
"
"
Honestly speaking, I like the humble, yet ambitious style of UniMerchandise. They want to become a CafePress of Finland, starting a trend in their home country, yet realistically stated that they won’t need much funding in the beginning to opperate.
For most of the other participants, asking for hundred thousands of Euros without talking about business model is really dangerous. To investors, it would sounds like “Give me this large amount of money. However, I cannot guarantee it will turn profit, because I haven’t figured out a business model yet”.
Even if the goal of the pitcher is to find partners and mentors, talking about big bucks funding is just plain irrelevant. Save the time for something more important, the product, the market opportunity…etc.
Just my 2 cents