The story meanders from three tech students forming a company, financing the day-to-day with consulting and random projects to bringing in a hired gun CEO, closing domestic VC funds, stepping up the international game with the acquisition of the Cambridge-based Comtag and the following Amadeus Capital investments and finally an exit to the California-based Seven, where Ari is currently working.

Quite a journey, huh? We recommend to watch the talk in full below to get in on the details of this one. Taking part in the discussion is also Will Cardwell, currently of Aalto Centre for Entrepreneurship, who saw the development of Smartner from the point of view of the emerging Finnish VC market, being at the time an investor at Smartner-partnered Eqvitec.

In the case of Smartner, the business idea took a while to develop: The thought process followed the line of “what’s universal across enterprises?” The founders had a vision of being in the business of repeatable software services, something that one can figuratively speaking gift-wrap and sell to the customers.

The early days were filled with intense market research and combining studies and own ventures in a practical manner: Ari wrote a business plan for Smartner as it was a required element for a course he was taking on venture development given by the then-HUT Professor Erkko Autio.

In Smartner’s industry, the field is dominated by the big operators and device manufacturers, and newcomers must have a lot of credentials to get in on the game. That was one of the reasons why an external CEO was brought along, with more experience and an industry background. Once the idea of and decision was made to focus on mobile email, the following growth was quick: As Ari remarks, Smartner won the footprint war of singing up as many new customers as possible.

With a new CEO, business model and an angel investor on board, the VC side developed quite nicely as well and Smartner found themselves a VC partner in Eqvitec. Eqvitec’s involvement was to a great extent based on personal confidence in the team -seeing how committed and hard-working the guys were and their ability to re-engineer on the fly made Eqvitec hang around despite Smartner’s incapability to meet original plans and a continuous capital intake.

Customers are the key for measuring success. Nicer products, better technology or more captivating story are all secondary to winning that first deal, getting a first reference. As Ari says, you can’t wait until you have something to sell to start selling. One can only hope that customers will solve your problems. Furthermore, Ari emphasises selling inside the organization as well -first and foremost, each employee, investor and advisor needs to be excited! Otherwise, they will disappear at the first sign of something going wrong.

Ari points out that, contrary to the at times dominant perception, selling companies abroad is in fact a good thing. Most likely it’ll enable to continue employ the people and to continue the innovation activities domestically. In the case of Smartner, the company has in fact grown its operations domestically after being sold. While it is not an end goal in itself to exit, Ari remarks that becoming an IPO candidate is one of the primary reasons of existence of a startup.

Although a bootstrap entrepreneur no more, Ari’s business life shows no sign of calming down. Says Ari of his recent experiences of cooperating with Samsung: “If you thought working at a startup is long hours, that’s nothing compared to working with Koreans!”

Finally, Ari advices the teams that personal networks are the most important asset you have -utilize them accordingly. Remember that beg-borrow-steal always starts off with your friends! Thanks Ari for the visit and we hope to see you again -either in Otaniemi or the Valley.

AudioDraft is essentially a win-win game for all parties:

This web service brings audio sourcing available for everyone; Any company or individual can order custom-made audio from a community consisting of artists and audio designers.

At the other end of the spectrum, for the creative community, AudioDraft offers free tools to collaborate and manage audio productions. Furthermore, sourcing contests in AudioDraft can create opportunities for artists by gaining visibility and potentially earning money.

AudioDraft’s team and product have already managed to convince the upper echelons of Aalto as well; “Finland has a long tradition of collaborative teamwork starting from the Talkoot spirit leading to the creation of well-known open source projects like Linux and MySQL. AudioDraft is applying same collaborative principles to the business of audio production” remarks Will Cardwell, the Head of Aalto Centre for Entrepreneurship.

Interestingly, the origins of AudioDraft date back to an Aalto University course on multimedia production and the idea was further developed during another course on concept building and script development. AudioDraft is thus an excellent example of the new entrepreneurial spirit waltzing thru the University. We here at Aaltoes for one are immensely proud of our resident audio geeks!

For more info visit www.audiodraft.com, become a fan on Facebook, follow them on Twitter or come and say “hi” to the boys at their Garage office.

AudioDraft's Kimmo and Teemu smiling away last week at the Garage

Marko Taipale, CTO of Huitale opens the third week of Summer of Startups lecturing the teams about agile development. He profiles the most important contemporary thinkers, such as Steve Blank and Eric Ries, and shares some of his company’s favourite learnings from the movement.

First up, what is a startup? According to Eric Ries, a startup is a human institution creating a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty. Note that size does not matter -a startup is a state of mind, therefore it can be any new service or product development in any firm. By this definition, projects such as Microsoft Bing could be considered a startup -despite the not-so-uncertain cash reserves, their operations do face many other uncertainties.

What do you think? Do actors like Bing qualify as a startup?

Marko reccomends making the iteration cycle as short as possible. The lean startup movement is foremost about learning. Success should not only be measured in revenues or amount of features but how fast one is capable of learning. And as he remarks, no plan survives first contact with the customers.

Minimun Viable Product, MVP, as Marko points out, should make you feel embarrassed. Keep cutting features until that happens. As Joe Ive, Senior VP of Design at Apple once remarked, “it’s the things that are not here that we are most proud of”.

Watch Marko’s talk in full here.

Last week, we also had a big name in the house, when Osma Ahvenlampi from Sulake came by to talk about agile development. Watch his equally great and informative talk on the topic of today below.

UPDATE

Take a look at Marko’s slides below. Thanks for the presentation, Marko!

Even in the time of the digital, Pekka stresses the importance of being physically present in the ecosystem, not just passing “innoturism”. The only way to know what’s happening in a culture is to be present there. It might be a brutal deal -you sleep a little, work a lot and live in a constant non-time zone. But judging from the spark in his eye, Pekka seems to think it worth it.

Silicon Valley is a paradise of networking and you never know who you can run into, be it at a PTA meeting or the grocery store. One needs to therefore be prepared for the unexpected meetings and perfect their elevator pitch.

Pekka points out to the SoS teams that the only thing you want out of a 2 min pitch is the next meeting -you are not selling anything, just raising interest. Furthermore, initial meetings don’t automatically lead to better things, one needs to find out who else in the organization is important to talk to, to identify the decision makers, the business developers etc.

Besides networking in the States, Pekka has a few comments about Finland as well; We should not pine after new Nokias, we need to build new Skypes! Furthermore, we need more smart money -people who can help, advice, network, open doors.

A final message Pekka wants to send to the SoS teams is that the world is fast-paced. Business can change in a day; case in point, Facebook opening up its API or the introduction of iPhone or Android changed the game overnight. Be prepared and adapt to the unforeseen.

Take a look at FinNode USA’s recent publication, Silicon Valley Journey -Experiences of Finnish IT Startups from the Dot-Com Boom to 2010 Excellent account of Finnish superstars as well as untold stories from the California coastline.

On behalf of the SoS community, we want to thank Pekka for taking time off from his holiday to talk to us. To the Aaltoes community, we remind you that the SoS program is open for everyone, the daily agenda can be found from the Garage -we hope you drop by during the rest of the summer. Garage is open every day from 8 to 4 during the week and has an excellent AC system in place

Watch the Pekka Pärnänen talk in full from here: (Will be uploaded as soon as our trusty Vimeo account works

The guests for this Wednesday were our very own Aaltoes startup, Garage residents and overall lovable design boys, JaloHelsinki. JaloHelsinki’s Olli Nuutila and Miika Perä shared their experiences on being student entrepreneurs, dealing with supply chains and funding programs and plans to sweep the world with their designer smoke alarms.

Psst.. JaloHelsinki plans to launch their new Finnish design smoke alarm collection in early 2011, or possibly even earlier -so remember the name when planning your Christmas gift shopping

Next Wednesday’s guest for Startup BBQ is AudioDraft, another Garage rockstar startup.

Watch Olli and Miika talk about their company, followed by a lively Q&A.

Some Pictures from Wednesday

Summertime in Otaniemi

BBQ Action Shot

BBQ Hangarounds

Not Everyone Likes the Sun

Private Office

Check out Lauri’s recommended readings and watch the video of his talk on Friday, July 2nd at Aalto Venture Garage. Thanks for your visit and hope to see you again, Lauri!

• David Allen: Getting Things Done, Penguin, 2002
• Stephen R. Covey: 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Free Press, 1989

For taking and archiving notes

• Evernote www.evernote.com
• Remember the Milk http://www.rememberthemilk.com/
• Things (for Macists) http://culturedcode.com/

And a couple quick links in Finnish

• The Mind Management guide http://bit.ly/976YFK.
• Extended Mind guide http://bit.ly/boC4e5.
• Lauri’s blog at www.ajattelunammattilainen.fi

Remember to tweet your ideas, comments and feedback with #summerofstartups and let’s make this summer one for the books!

Watch below Andrea address the crowd on the life of a modern VC and the secrets of a good pitch.

Andrea Traversone from Aaltoes on Vimeo.

Congratulation to all the teams chosen to this summer program.  We were honestly impress with many of the applications, it was difficult to choose!  The judges were Ramine Darabiha;MySites, Kristo Ovaska; Aalto Venture Garage, Antti Aarnio; Otaniemi International Innovation Center, Will Cardwell, Aalto Center for Entrepreneurship  and Sami Heikkiniemi; Tekes.

We would like to point out that if your team was not chosen, it doesn’t not mean that you cannot come into the Garage and work.  The Garage has an open door policy which means everyone is welcome.

maintenance.

1.    INCSPARK – An activity and collaboration in the cloud so everybody is on the same page.

2.    Living Canvas: Ecologically sustainable interior design

3.    MDA- Mobile application to detect, read and collect info of diet in real-time

4.    SMS IT- Getting Facebook status update through SMS

5.    Alfa- A reminder service so you never forget a thing!

6.  Mookoo-Functional textile material that is therapeutic and activating

7.   Octarine- Travelling pictures, tweets, blogs all in one place

8.   Buffee-. The platform automatically collects, categorizes & analyzes feedback from various channels); then forward in a unified format. No more need for manual channel maintenance.

9.    MicroPolling- Increasing customer-company interaction to make the world a better place to be a customer

10. Pamoja Innvoation- Increasing welfare and fight climate change in East Africa by encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship in the renewable energy sector.

Here is the deal,
We have picked the 20 best teams to come to the Aalto Venture Garage and pitch their company to the panel of judges.  The final selections will take place after the pitches.

Here is the Program:
On Thursday June 24th,  20 best teams will pitch:  the program is as follows

10:00-11:30 First round of pitch
11:30- 13:00 Break for Lunch and Networking session
13:00- 14:30 Second round of pitch
14:30 15:00 Evaluation-Judge retreat and make their decision
15:00 We will announce the teams that will be working in the Summer of Startups

Here are the teams that will be pitching on Thursday July 24.

If you have any questions, contact Ville Simola, program coordinator of Summer of Startups