The conference being over, we rented a car and headed south towards Palo Alto and Stanford. First of all, the change of venue was more than welcome and we all felt alive again as we drove along the highway in the sunshine. None of us really knew what to expect from the Stanford campus, but as we pulled up to …

Today was the last day of the conference. Things were sort of winding down as it seemed there were fewer attendees, but the finals of Startup Battlefield attracted lots of attention. Prior to this, however, there was a panel with angel investors that left a lasting mark on all of us. What is a super angel? Among the panelists was …

As the sun set on our third day, the Startup Sauna pitch has been crunched to a 10 second package. What began as an elaborate explanation of “what we do” has been condensed into something compact, quickly explained in the toilet queue – true story. The lesson here is: pitching a ridiculous amount of times makes you realize what your …

After just a few hours sleep, ignoring the jet lag, we spent most of the day at the conference pitching Startup Life to about 80 startups and Startup Sauna to 10ish VC`s. Generally, the feedback was great and it seems our region is able to generate some traction at the moment. Startup Life was particularly well received generating lots of …

Micki Honkavaara begins our September lecture series What I wish I knew when I was a freshman that profiles entrepreneurial alumni from our Aalto Schools sharing their life lessons and discoveries. The following lectures’ schedule can be found on our Events page. Addressing the students of the School of Economics, below are a few points from Micki’s keynote Teamwork is about sharing …

A few days ago the Aaltoes team made a quick decision: Nippe, Juhana, Juho and Riku will attend TC Disrupt on Sep 12th-14th. We were lucky to have Ramine coach us “a bit“ yesterday. The four hour session included so much new information to remember, advice, tips and hints that I don’t actually remember the last time I’ve felt that overwhelmed. Still, I had …

Steve Blank was visiting Helsinki for a week, invited by Aalto University, Tekes and other parties, and organized by Aaltoes. During the 5-day program, we arranged for a packed schedule and indeed, thousands of students, faculty, politicians and entrepreneurs came from not only all over Finland, but neighboring countries as well to be a part of what came to be known as …

“Build a bold vision. Then make it bigger.” - Kristian Segerstråle. Steve Blanks visit to Finland is shaking up the ecosystem grounds up. The rascal of entrepreneurship education announced his visit in July – here’s a small update on what has happened since. First, some numbers. We have already over 2500 individuals signed up for the events. The biggest lectures (Monday and Friday) …

Steve Blank, serial entrepreneur-turned professor is visiting us the first week of September. The week is much-anticipated and filled with content. For the full schedule, you may visit steveblank.fi and we hope as many people as possible will participate either in person or via stream to the mega-production that is Steve Blank Week 2011. Steve Who? Steve Blank is a serial …

Congratulations Freshmen 2011 and welcome to Aalto University! As the academic year begins we will be present in all campuses meeting the new freshmen and telling about the stuff we do. The places where you can spot us in the next few days include TAIK Freshman stands on Mon, August 22nd & Tue, August 23rd Otasuunnistus, the traditional freshman challenge in Otaniemi, …

We’ve had a few days to recover from last week’s Summer of Startups Demo Day extravaganza but we take one more opportunity to say it out loud: ALL THE TEAMS THOROUGHLY ROCKED AND WE HAD ONE BLAST OF A SUMMER!!! The spectacular demo day was the icing on the cake celebrating the 10 weeks of super hard work from the teams …

Summer of Startups, the 10-week entrepreneurial program for the most ambitious students and researchers from not only Finland but all over the world (this year’s edition included teams from India and Russia and even more nationalities!) came to an end today at a spectacular Demo Day! The event featured Playfish’ Kristian Segerstråle (whose lecture is gonna be online soon enough, but as …

Returning to his alma mater, Sami Inkinen, founder of Trulia addressed the Summer of Startups and a 150+ audience on last Friday morning. His talk structures around the ten lessons learned in his schooling and career that has spanned from technical physics to corporates like Nokia and McKinsey and a quick stint in Stanford MBA program to launching Trulia, the US’ …

Cross-posted from Startup Life -blog. Vuokko Aro spent two weeks with Startup Life interns writing about their internships. Here she shares some of her own experiences in California.  San Francisco isn’t a city. Well, that too, but most of all it’s a mindset. If you haven’t been there, you’ll be like, Whatever, not that bs again… but if you’ve been, you’ll already be crying,Yes! There’s …