Aaltoes Hosts a National ES Summit

On Tuesday, Aaltoes hosted the first-ever nation-wide ES Summit. Representatives from Hankenes, HUES, Metropolia, LaureaES/HMEA, STREAM Tampere, BoostTurku and Lithuania gathered to the Aalto Venture Garage to talk about the common challenges and how to move past the common mistakes.

In the spirit of the open discussion started yesterday, we share the presentations of the clubs below and hope that you also take part in the dialogue -what would you want your ES to do to you?

The morning kicked of with Will Cardwell of Aalto Centre for Entrepreneurship talking about what kind of startups does Finland need the core message being to keep your ambition level high.

Teemu Yli-Hollo from AudioDraft, whose seen the development of Aaltoes from a next-door perspective, orders the societies to concentrate on communications -when so much is happening around the ES community, one needs to be clear of what’s happening and when. If your customers don’t know and understand your message, they will not come to your events either.

For Teemu, the single biggest event has been last year’s trip to Silicon Valley that acted as an eye opener for the path he wants his own company to be on. For future startups, he sees that ESs could take a more active role in helping students combine studies with venturing. From a personal experience, Teemu knows how challenging it is to be a full time student and a full time entrepreneur.

After these two talks, the individual ESes stepped up for a brief overview of past accomplishments and missteps.

First up, it’s Hanken på bordet.

Olli Gunst from Hankenes shares this vital lesson learned: Free food attracts people. Amen. Other points Hankenes brought up included capitalizing on the existing community; Hanken alumni and students have many family companies, but there exist no communication channel for them within the school setting.

Therefore, Hankenes strives to serve a dual purpose; both cater for this segment as well as build the momentum and hype a la Aaltoes. The brave goal is to make Hanken the most entrepreneurial university in Finland, and build bridges between traditional family entrepreneurs and startups entrepreneurs.

Five points to concentrate on in the coming fall include more continuation, more experimentation, esp. in event formats, increased openness in decision making, build bridges between traditional family entrepreneurship and startup entrepreneurship, finding new people and new ways to build a community.

BoostTurku chairman Toni Perämäki: Startup or die tryin’

Best practices developed throughout Boost’s existence include staying organized; as the Boost Social takes place every 2nd Tuesday at the same place, people know where to come and when. Furthermore, less is more, -Boost tries to emphasize quality over quantity. Toni also remarks that while there are tons of information coming in from all doors and windows on the Internet, in the end, it’s all about personal connections, taking the time to go talk to people where they are. Boost has benefited from using advisors, as well as diligently documenting everything to ensure continuity and that the next board do not have to reinvent the wheel all over again.

Challenges to work on would include involving a more heterogeneous and non-tech oriented community of people, and overall involving more people in developing events.

HUES: Hot and Cold

Anna Bessonova from Helsinki University Entrepreneurship Society, HUES, talks about the difficulties of starting up; as her personal background as well as many of the other actives’ is in the social sciences, it has been challenging to find a common language with the 11 schools within Helsinki University. Furthermore, Anna wants to see HUES more focused and to find its own niche within the ES ecosystem of Helsinki. She sees that HUES could, for example, capitalize on its vast social sciences community and focus on social entrepreneurship.

On the other hand, things HUES has exceeded in during its short existence include connecting the community and raising enthusiasm, getting in cool name speakers and cooperating with other parties, etc.

Stream Tampere

Pauli from Stream Tampere opened up about the development of our Tampere counterpart. Stream also hails from three very different academic mother institutions and strive to create one community for startups. Pauli also thanked the support given from the school side, as well as teh Demola open invention environment.

And Wrapping Up: Aaltoes

Showcasing perhaps one of Aaltoes’ failures, lack of the long-term, chairman Jens Sörensen, briefed the crowd on some of Aaltoes’ failures -lack of consistency, trouble getting students to understand what we do exactly, lack of clear enough communication, and lack of focus from the current board. On the other hand, trying open-minded different things, especially event formats, has led to conclusions of what work, e.g. Open Mics, or the most recent Summer of Startups. Most importantly, as long as Aaltoes is visible, it exists, so the challenge is to constantly stay hyped, stay active, keep people in the loop -even if the previously tried 3-events-per-week rate might be a bit excessive.

Additional projects discussed included the Nordic Entrepreneurhsip Alliance NEA, Bolder Academy and Brightminds.

All feedback, reactions, advice are most welcome. Aaltoes wants transparency in its actions and most of all, we want to involve You: what do you expect your local ES to do this coming year?