Our first event of the year at TaiK was the second round of our Open Mic event concept, where the floor is open for everyone to come and share their ideas and toss them into open discussion. A lively group gathered in the eighth floor art gallery on Thursday to share their thoughts.

The variety of ideas presented were a refreshing reminder of the purely fantastic thought processes that fill the heads of our Arts and Design students. With five different ideas presented, no member of the audience left the event without having learned something new.

Very interesting was the Okinawa Social Network proposed by Sam, a concept that puts importance on the quality, not quantity, of friends. Can we really call all of those 700 Facebook friends “friends” in real life? Sam’s idea puts you into a social network with only a group of five or six people. Immediately the interested audience launched into discussion about how this could be deployed in a very simple and easy-to-use format for, example given, the elderly. Hope to see you at our pitching evening on the 17th, Sam!

Another cool idea, already a reality in development, was the Helsinki Public School – check it out at helsinki.thepublicschool.org.

Before the pitching evening, we still have one Open Mic session at the Aalto Ventures Park in Otaniemi on the 11th of February. Hope to see you there!

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!

Communications and objective

One of the problems we have identified is that our communications about what we do hasn’t been working. Many students and researchers now that we exist, but many don’t know exactly what we do. The problem has been that we haven’t had a unified message that we’re communicating.

We want to be able to get the same message through to everyone. We’ve created new objectives and pitches for Aaltoes. One description we’ve come up with is: ‘doing everything we can to help students and researchers create more companies’. We want to keep it simple and understandable. What do you think? It used to be ‘catalyzing high-growth startups at Aalto University’… We thought that was a bit too complex.

About the objective, it hasn’t changed much:

In 5 years we want that at least 1 international successful company has come from Aaltoes. We want to create some stories such as Spotify and Skype. This requires that we create a lot of startups from Aalto.

At the Development weekend

Attracting new students and researchers.

We also want to reach more students and researchers. We have been doing a quite good job with the students, but we want to develop our relations to researchers. We’re going to start a project where we will go meet all professors to identify opportunities for collaboration and discuss how the commercialization of research could be more efficient and what Aaltoes can do. We want to create a lot of events through which student teams can find research to commercialize.

Aalto Ventures Park

One very important topic here is Aalto Ventures Park (Aaltovp). Actually Aaltovp is already open for startups, so people can just come there and use it as their workspace. Now we of course need more startups and people to come there. We’re planning to organize a lot of events to get people to find Aaltovp. One problem is that it’s a bit difficult to get keys for the place at the moment. We’re also renovating the place all the time, and we’re planning to invite design students there to work to make the space work. Do you have any ideas for the space? How do we get entrepreneurial students and researchers to come and work there together?

So if you have an idea or startup you are working on, contact Tuomo Kuikka (firstname.lastname@aaltoes.com) for keys. Or just come there, probably someone will be there to open the door (Betonimiehenkuja 3)

We’ve also started working on other issues such as partnerships, international relations, financing etc.

We’re going to keep you up to date, remember to comment!

Riku

We have just wrapped up our first week back after the Winter Break. Drinks, pizza and pitching – the very first Aaltoes Open Mic gathered some 40 people to share their ideas and build upon others.

Jens Sorensen and Ville Simola opened the event with a brief introduction to Aaltoes and idea generation from Steve Sammartino.

The lively discussion in Aaltoes Open Mic was something that we were especially proud of.  Store reviews, task management, digital paintings and Shanghai train among others spurred some very interesting roadmaps for the ideas. Pick a target group, speak to the users early on, get the team and don’t worry about competition – these were some of the advice from the crowd. Thanks for all the presenters and participants. Hope to see many of the ideas in the future Aaltoes Pitch and Talkoot.

The next Aaltoes Open Mic is going to be organised in TaiK on February 4th, see you all there!

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

The new Aaltoes.com website has been up and running for some three months now. You know better than anyone else what you want from Aaltoes.com.  Give us a hand and tell  what  you’d like to see on the site in year 2010.  Let’s get started.

The team is trying to find the perfect mix of content for our audience – we’ve been experimenting with many things and now ask for your help  in deciding what the priorities should be for 2010. Would you like to  read more detailed reports from events? Are videos important to you?  Do you find the stuff you need from the site? What kind of guide material would you appreaciate? Do you prefer the Facebook group over the website? What about Twitter? All your opinions are helpful.

There are 5 questions below, which take most people some 5 minutes to complete. Please feel free to continue the discussion in the comments  section as well. Thank you!

>> Fill the survey

It’s been a busy year, and we’ve achieved a lot so far. Last week Aaltoes reached a new milestone as the new board was elected. With a good mix of skills and a lot of new energy, we’re sure you’ll be hearing from them soon!

-Aaltoes now has one-year under its belt and with a new team its important for us to start refining our existing concepts and make things happen. With an excellent base built in 2009, we can now truly begin to focus on directing our efforts towards the students of Aalto University and the aspiring entrepreneurs within them summarizes Jens Sørensen, the new chairman of the board.

What will Aaltoes then do in year 2010?

-There is no one most important thing we will be pursuing next year, since everything we do plays its own very important role. But that said, we must put as much effort as possible into our Ventures Track, and getting ideas turned into action from its participants. My personal goal is that in one year every student at Aalto University knows about Aaltoes, what we do, and why we do it, Jens promises.

It’s still a few days now until we return from Christmas holidays, but don’t forget that Aaltoes is on the look for the new team 2010 as well as new startups . Everyone from the new  board can be reached with e-mail firstname.lastname@aaltoes.com, so don’t be afraid to contact them.

-We’re always open, and we want to hear your ideas and see them happen. Whilst catalyzing start-ups to the best of our ability, next year is also all about culture change, Jens concludes.

Who’s who in the new board?

Jens Sørensen Jens is a currently completing his bachelor’s degree in Finance at the Aalto University School of Economics. Aside from aspiring to be involved with innovative start-ups, Jens loves music and skydiving.

Santeri Everi Santeri studies business technology at Aalto School of Economics. With a background in student union activities , Santeri is also a skydiving fan.

Olli Nuutila Olli studies naval engineerin at Aalto University School of Technology, but is also one of the founders of Arctic Alarms, an Aaltoes catalyzed company producing design smoke alarms.

Ville Simola Ville is an entrepreneurial minded chap studying management at Aalto School of Economics and working on several entrepreneurial projects. His vision is to widen people’s perspectives on entrepreneurship by adding entrepreneurial acts to part of everyday life. Villes motto: screw it – let’s just do it!

Mikko Ikola Mikko is easily inspired, very entrepreneurial and likes to strike to opportunities and crazy projects. Past few years he has been active in TKY student union, associations and Data guild at TKK.

Lauri Hynynen Lauri studies at Aalto University School of Business and he has been doing stuff related to the events and the website. He has also co-founded one startup and now working on a new one.

Tapani Alasaarela Tapani, PhD student from Aalto University School of Technology, is a young innovative scientist with very entrepreneurial attitude. Tapani is always yearning to learn more and trying to improve things for better.

The former MySQL CEO Mårten Mickos visited Aalto Ventures Park on Tuesday. Speaking to a crowd of hundreds Mårten underlined the role of failure and long-term perspective.

- Shoot for the stars! Even if you fail you land on the moon.

One of the things Mårten pinpointed was that everything in life is useful, whatever you do.

- The biggest problem is that people don’t aim high enough. Scaling doesn’t mean you expand from Lappeenranta to Helsinki. On the other hand people are easily too modest. Quoting Kawasaki, don’t worry, be crappy.

Mårten remembers fondly time spent in Otaniemi.

- Inexperience is a great aspect to have as a student entrepreneur. Only failure will produce success. If Aalto University fails for the first ten years, I’d still consider it an important thing. Here´s to a lot of failure!

Showcasing the successful entrepreneurs

The exhibition “Uuden Vaurauden Vaikuttajat” features portraits of succesful Finnish entrepreneurs shot by photographer Peter Forsgård.

- One common nominator for all the entrepreneurs photographed was that they all were great listeners.

The project to profile top Finnish entrepreneurs is still on-going and will eventually feature 40-50 portraits, complimented by a wiki. The exhibition will stay in Aalto Ventures Park, please feel free to pop by.

/L.

Aaltoes Talk with Mårten Mickos from Aaltoes on Vimeo.

Photo exhibition

Feedback Please!
Ladataan…

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/

Aalto Ventures Park is in principal like any other school: the ideal place to learn and grow. Learning has been at the very heart of the AaltoVP experiment early on, as we’ve listened to both our community and the experts. AaltoVP is going to be great.

Last week Aaltoes team visited start-up parks in Silicon Valley with a similar kind of mission. Y-Combinator and PlugandPlay offered some great hands-on advice on running an incubator. In addition to the savvy specialists, we’ve also kept in mind our community. After the housewarming party a month ago we opened an ideation tool for AaltoVP. Thanks for all your ideas! We’ll keep you posted on the next challenges.

Open and visual

Aalto Ventures Park is widely seen as an open space: it’s important to get the ideas out for others to see. You want weekly fixed meet-ups to exchange ideas and showcase progress. Aalto Ventures Park should provide whiteboard walls and methods of sharing problems with others. “The quality of the initial idea can be raised tremendously by talking about it“, one respondent sums up.

Soapbox style setting

Whether it’s containers, soapboxes, phone booths, bottles or orange boxes, You want start-ups to have their own space. “Start-ups need to meet mentors, possible investors, potential customers, partners, test users, etc. They must be able to meet in private”, states one respondent.

Aalto Ventures Park should be open all the time as start-up businesses are often global and things happen outside the 8-16 cycle. Cafeteria services are a must, but also centralized business administration, a secretary and a mailbox address were requested.

From a community to a company

One of the most often mentioned things was the community in Aalto Ventures Park. Leveraging the skills of the people is crucial for the early-stage start-ups. “Create a wall where people can advertise their skills and start-ups can find new talent or teammates to kick start their own idea “, suggested one of the respondents. Connecting students and start-ups by providing interesting school projects and versatile jobs was also a common theme. The final part of the equation, according to You, is introducing the mentors in order to transfer knowledge.