Aaltoes was privileged to host Hannu Verkasalo, serial entrepreneur and founder at Zokem Ltd., this Thursday at the Aalto Ventures Park in Otaniemi. This was the first of the Aaltoes Tuli Talk series, a monthly event dedicated to hearing the stories of entrepreneurs with a research background.

Antti Aarnio from the Tuli program was on hand to open the event and tell the audience of the funding that they make available (check out www.tuli.info). The new Aaltoes chairman, Jens Sørensen, also talked to the crowd briefly about Aaltoes and where we are currently going in our event series, and what’s coming up.

Speaking in front of an audience of 50 young students and researchers, Verkasalo spoke about his experiences as an entrepreneur, his companies, research background, and current company – Zokem, which aims to bring mobile analytics to a new level. It was refreshing to hear how Verkasalo has utilised his past as a researcher, both through knowledge and contacts, to monetize and develop his ideas.

The idea behind Zokem and its product interested the audience, who were keen to learn more, launching the Ventures Park stage into a 20 minute question-and-answer session in mid-event! Verkasalo ended his hour on stage with a list of useful tips and truths-based-on-experience for the audience. The lessons we learned today:

1. Be bold and take risks – believe in your idea
2. Forget technology – collect facts! Does it make business sense?
3. Patents do not guarantee anything – execute on go-to-market and sales
4. Team is everything! Do not take the pain alone – be open!
5. Go out and talk – do not hide your stuff! Put yourself and the product into the fire.
6. Don’t run for Tekes and VC money – raise money from customers!
7. Be willing to sacrifice (time, money, leisure, sleep) in order to get rewards

With similar messages coming in from so many directions, it seems quite wise to listen to the ones with existing experience. Especially concerning getting out there and discussing your ideas – that is a very central part of everything we do at Aaltoes. We want you to come out and talk about your ideas, and that’s exactly what happened in the informal mingling after this event. People stayed for a good while to talk, discuss, and exchange ideas.

Check out Zokem at zokem.com, let’s wish them all the best – thanks Hannu!

The first Aaltoes event for this decade will be a casual networking evening and an opportunity for sharing ideas: Aaltoes Open Mic. We’ll bring the same set to every campus, starting from the Aalto University School of Economics.

The idea is to have short 2 minute speeches and then have open discussions about them. The goal is to form teams and develop ideas further or even generate entirely new ones for our Aaltoes Pitching Evenings. The topics can be almost anything from problems you discovered in the event to well-prepared business plans.

The event takes place at KY Yläkertsi (Pohjoinen Rautatiekatu 21 B) on the 19th of January from 18pm to 21pm.

If you want to speak, contact ville.simola@aaltoes.com. It’s also possible to sign up at the event, but first come first served. Food and drinks on the house. This is a good opportunity to practise your presentation techniques and/or get feedback + team members for your business idea.

See you there!

Register at http://www.facebook.com/#/event.php?eid=250956901189&ref=nf

Come listen to one of the most succesful entrepreneurs from TKK. We had a chance to meet him during the Aaltoes Silicon Valley Talkoot trip. There we invited him to come speak for us on his next visit back to Finland. Luckily we didn’t have to wait long.

Mårten Mickos was a CEO of MySQL AB, which made a major exit to Sun Microsystems on February 2008. He has also founded several start-ups, graduated from Helsinki University of Technology and is currently working at Benchmark Capital.

The event is at the new Aalto Venture Park (Betonimiehenkuja 3, Espoo) on the 15th of December. Come be inspired. Register at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=190207501444&ref=ts#/event.php?eid=190207501444&ref=ts

The day’s schedule:
12.00 Lunch

12.30 Mårten’s presentation

Fireside chat with Mårten hosted by Christina Forsgård of the top technology PR company in Finland, Netprofile

~13.30 Unveiling of photography exhibition

Time for conversation and coffee

The event will also be the launch of a photography exhibition called “Uuden Vaurauden Vaikuttajat”. The exhibition features portraits of succesful Finnish entrepreneurs shot by photographer Peter Forsgård. The project to profile top Finnish entrepreneurs is still on-going and will eventually feature 40-50 portraits, complimented by a wiki that will document the impact these trailblazers have had.

Welcome!

More info about Mårten Mickos can be found from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mårten_Mickos

More on MySQL: http://www.mysql.com/

More info on Netprofile: http://www.netprofile.fi/en/index

More about photographer Peter Forsgård http://www.peterforsgard.com/

Picture Credit: James Duncan Davidson/O’Reilly Media, Inc.
Source: http://flickr.com/photos/x180/10167058/in/set-232935/

Do you want to change the world towards the better? Welcome to Be A Change 2009 in Helsinki, 14-15 of November 2009 in Design Factory! All Aaltoes startups with a social agenda should attend, since the core idea is to realize social enterprise ideas into real sustainable businesses.

Be A Change is a two-day conference organized by AIESECers that will help you start a social enterprise! The main idea of the conference is that it gives people who are interested in saving the world, in a way or another, a chance to be innovative and get an opportunity to collaborate with others who share the same passion. There will be a Grand Jury assessing your business idea and Be A Change facilitators to develop and help you. Other delegates will also help you because you will collaborate and innovate together and you will also build a network of people, that you can make use of.

It doesn’t matter from where you come, everybody is welcome! If you need a place to stay AIESEC is organazing free accommodation in Helsinki for you. And you don’t even need to have your own idea to participate. If you are interested in social matters and making business with it, you are warmly welcome! We want everybody to join the collaboration and be creative!

For registration, send your contact information to beachange2009@gmail.com. When this mail is received we will send you instructions for how to pay the delegate fee of 15 euro. When you have paid the fee you are signed up. Voluntary: If you already have an business idea and want to prepare yourself and us for the event you can fill in the attached Delegate Application and send it to the same address as above. This is NOT compulsory for signing up!

For further information, contact beachange2009@gmail.com or call Julia at +358 (0) 44 567 96 44. Remember to check out our homepage at www.beachange.org

Miss us while we’re gone? No worries – there are two great events taking place next week on Tuesday 27th October in both Turku and Tampere. Aaltoes actives, collect a bunch of friends together for a roadtrip and check out what’s happening in the pitching events of Aaltoes sister organization Boost Turku and Stream Tampere.

STREAM Tampere

STREAM Tampere is a new learning and innovation community for entrepreneurial and growth minded people. It is a student initiative aimed at connecting ideas and know-how across traditional academic boundaries.

The key concepts behind STREAM are innovative solutions, unexpected connections, getting things done and learning from each other. We also believe in openness to new ideas, light structures and a global mindset. Right now we are finding cool people and building concrete structures to make this all a reality.
Register to the Pitch Event at Facebook
Visit the Stream facebook page

BOOST Turku
Student-run community for entrepreneurial people from Turku University, Åbo Akademi and Turku School of Economics.

FORUM. Boost Turku is a student-based network for young entrepreneurs sharing knowledge among the universities of Turku. Our aim is to create more startups!

SCIENCE OF DOING. We believe in doing. Doing in an open and laid back cross-faculty environment. We believe that in this way we can expand the networks and horizons of young like-minded people.

MENTORS AND CONNECTIONS. We also want to introduce mentoring to young entrepreneurs. We’d like to see Boost in the frontline of creating more value by providing connections of mentors, funding and team members.

Register to the Pitch Event at Facebook.
Visit also the Boost page.

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.

Want to innovate and create a new business, but haven’t found a technology to do it with? No problem! AES is organizing a Safari together with the Technical Research Center of Finland (VTT – www.vtt.fi) and Aalto University. It’s an event where you can get in touch with research teams and their latest inventions.

Interested in fibre-based barrier materials or holographic effects for consumer goods? The theme for this year’s Safari is clean technology, so all the patents will be related to the rising cleantech industry. Come think about ways to commercialise these patents to make the world a cleaner place. Each idea is first presented individually to the audience. After the presentations Safari begins and all participants get access to the presenters.

What can you do?

1. Think of existing problems and challenges in the world related to waste, pollution, energy efficiency, etc.
2. Get familiar with the ideas in the Cleantech Safari presentation list:
- Fibre-based barrier materials for (consumer goods) packages
- Sustainable holographic effects for consumer goods
- Navigational information to electronic chart systems for visualization
- Lightweight context recognition platform for mobile devices
- Production and application of graphene and graphene-based hybrid materials for electronics
- Selecting an access network in a seamless and intelligent way
- Printed energy harvesting system for consumer appliances
- Reduction of CO2 emmissions from steel plants by using steelmaking slags
- Biological treatment of metal containing wastes

Don’t think too much of the technological details, you will be able to talk with the researchers at the Safari. Try to think about general concepts. Be innovative!

3. Get help and form a team with your friends. Search for information together.
4. Come to the Cleantech Safari and talk with the idea presenters. If you have good business ideas for the technology, try to arrange meetings with the presenter and develop the idea.
5. Create a good business concept for the idea. If the concept is good enough, you can get funding to get started. Come to pitch the idea at the next Aaltoes Pitch event.
6. Make the world a cleaner place with your new technology, team and business idea!

Schedule for the evening

17:00 Event Starts, open networking
17:30 Opening speech
- Welcome, Aaltoes
- VTT and VTT Ventures
- TULI-programme
18:00 Presentations of ideas: 5 min 5 slides
19:00 Safari starts – Networking
20:30 Results of the surve
21:00 End of the event

Aaltoes Pitching attracted some 100 people to listen to the ideas and executions of future startups. We had a great array of ideas ranging from dictionaries to mobile reminder services. The winner, Language Café, captivated the audience with a strong social message: connecting elderly people and foreigners to actively learn languages and improve their social connections.

The Stage auditorium was full and packed as the thirteen contestants pitched their ideas. The Jury included names such as Marja-Reetta Paso from Veturi Growth Partners, Antti Kokkinen from Blue Run Ventures, Teemu Seppälä from Tuli funding and serial entrepreneur Taneli Tikka. One of the main take backs for the presenters was for sure the feedback from the judges: pertinent insights and suggestions to take the ideas forward.

Stefania Passera from the winning team Language Café pitched with enthusiasm and clarity their concept: introducing a new language learning method to connect elderly people with expats and exchange students.

- We are a team of students with different backgrounds who participated last summer in the Murjottelu–programme and developed concepts on the theme how to keep seniors active. Our coach Anssi Tuulenmäki suggested that we should take part in the pitching competition with this idea, Stefania explains.

The Jury saw a lot of opportunity in the idea of Maria Ullner, Stefania, Reetta Maila, Sami Norovuori and Riku Nagasaki and felt that development of the business idea in Talkoot would really take it further. The team has however been proactive about developing their idea.

- We actually did field-tests already last summer. We invited some exchange students to Ateneum Café to work with seniors – it worked like a charm! We had prepared some memory games, discussion topics etc. in case the conversation was about to end, but that was not a problem, Maria and Reetta smile.

Next AaltoesPitch is just around the corner, so if you’re still interested in coming to Stanford, please register your idea here http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dHJKam5rbERHeEEzUExxZzA5NDJIYWc6MA .  It’s worth joining also if you have a startup or an idea and need some team members.

Winning pitches: 1) Language Café – Stefania Passera P, 2) Late No More – Antti Virolainen, 3) OCR Based Dictionary – Haritash J. Tamvada, 4) Cur?ous – Sachin Gaur 5) Digital Receipts – Sivakumar Karuppusamy

The MIR-day programme ended with the duo Sarasvuo and Siilasmaa sharing the passionate message of entrepreneurship. Hundreds of people gathered to the Central Railway Station Square to hear how entrepreneurship creates wealth for society. – You can’t find an idea for a startup by endlessly planning: you need to have the courage to start doing, Jari Sarasvuo advised the students.

CEO, founder and main owner of Trainers House Ltd Jari Sarasvuo had an uplifting message for Aalto students.

- The growth can be found precisely at the intersection of fields, disciplines and cultures: this is called the Medici effect and this is what Aalto is all about.

- Demand a world-class education from Aalto. Work in companies that have the energy to grow, concluded Sarasvuo.

Risto Siilasmaa, the founder and ex-CEO of F-Secure, happily confirmed that working as an entrepreneur is the most entertaining job he has ever done. Siilasmaa underlined the need to build a culture that respects entrepreneurship and makes people understand the quintessential role of entrepreneurs in the society. He advised Aalto students to embrace change, iterate ideas constantly on high frequencies and keep a positive attitude.

- Pessimist may be right, but an optimist changes the world.

The Mahtavaa, Ihanaa, Räjähtää /MIR– event was organized by the student unions TKY, KY and TOKYO in order to celebrate Aalto University.  Among the bands, choirs and divisions Aalto Entrepreneurship Society gathered students all across faculties to hear how Aaltoes can help them build up the next big thing. Our friends at CityVice made a video out of the event; it will be published shortly in Aaltoes website.

Interested in what Aaltoes is doing?

-          The next event, Aaltoes Pitching, is held in Design Factory on Thursday 8^th October. It’s an event where you truly can see ideas come to life, so join us there. For more information, visit the event facebook page
-          You can meet us every Thursday at five in Nolla, where we are holding an Open Office.
-          Get updates on Aaltoes via Twitter

-          Join our Facebook group