The two co-working spaces were I/O Ventures and Opinno. It was interesting to see two very different approaches to the same high-level problem: the lack of suitable office-space and the need for startups to interact with each other.

Actually, I/O Ventures doesn’t label itself as a co-working space, but a super early stage fund and they put a lot of emphasis in the selecton process (only five teams per 6-month batch), take equity and strive to be very hands-on. To do that, they have a pool of 25 mentors including Kevin Rose (the founder of Digg) and try to leverage the founders’ experience by focusing on gaming- and mobile-industries.

On the other hand Opinno was focused on building a well functioning co-working space and instead of equity, they charge a flat fee per desk per month. To be honest, after I/O Ventures Opinno didn’t seem that impressive, even though for example having a P/O box in the City might end up being really useful.

After the very-early-stage-startup -spaces, we got to visit Eventbrite’s offices, where we were hosted (along with few other people) by one of the co-founders! In addition to the tour at their office, we had a brief introduction to the company’s history and then on how they nowadays handle their recruiting.

For the impressive growth the co-founder identified two key reasons. First was the initial decision to focus on building a complete platform for ticketing for various kinds of events, insted of focusing on a single specific niche. The second one was the ability to tap in to the growth of Facebook and being able to drive traffic from there to Eventbrite.

The recruiting part was an interesting one and understandably presents a huge challenge for a company growing from 20 to 200 employees in just 12 months. Their recruiting manager emphasized the importance of the No Asshole Rule, which they cover by asking from every interviewer if they’d actually want to have lunch with the potential recruit besides of “just work”.

Written By LauriH (@laurihy), Juho (from Garage) and Lauri (@LaruiL)

From I/O Ventures

From 8th Founders Showcase

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 the feeling that now I actually understand some of the realities of this conference. With the help of Ramine, we created a hit list of 15 speakers to (attempt to) have a chat with, including e.g. Vinod Khosla, Tom Conrad, Richard Wong (coming to Slush!), Chris Sacca and Roelof Botha.

The schedule for the week will be really tight. At Disrupt we will promote Startup Sauna and Startup Life and hopefully generate interest and maybe even leads. In addition to promoting these two products and gathering contacts, a valuable lesson will likely be learned in seeing what it actually takes to be a startup here. The bar is set at a level none of us has personally witnessed before.

In addition to TC Disrupt there will be a huge amount of events in the Bay Area during the week (Plancast actually seems quite handy, thanks Ramine!) so we’ll have plenty of events and hopefully follow-up meetings to attend as well. During Thursday and Friday we’ll head to Stanford to meet BASES people and faculty at STVP.

Our journey started today at 8a.m., at Aalto Design Factory preparing cheat sheets on speakers, bloggers, organizers and startups, printing quite of a pile of paper to read on the flight, gathering Startup Sauna gear and training the pitch that goes straight to the point without being arrogant.

Here we are, 25 hours later, sitting in Nelli‘s living room (Nelli is a StartupLife intern extending her stay at Eucalyptus Systems, thanks for hosting us!) exhausted, going out for pizza and grateful to be here. The week ahead of us seems daunting. As none of us have really been here before, the feelings now can be likened to being thrown into cold water and told to learn how to swim. And swim we shall!

Stay tuned!

J, N, R and J

by Miikka Peltola

October, 2010

Miika Peltola is an entrepreneur & student at Aalto University School of Art and Design

I decided not to go to the Aalto Entrepreneurship Society’s trip to Silicon Valley.

I’m afraid of flying, I didn’t know any other person except one from the Finnish

people going, aviation pollutes and I can’t miss school.

But week before the trip, I decided again. This time I decided to go. So I went.

The flying was horrible, eleven hours straight from London in a tin can filled with

sardines and bad movies.

The welcoming committee of the US border was very unpleasant. The officers were

harassing everyone with tough questions.

After that everything went smoothly. And here are some of the lessons learned:

Saturday lessons:

BizTechDay 23.10.2010, 8:30 AM–6:00 PM, San Francisco, The Metreon

Don’t speak so much. Listen more when you are introducing your ideas to the big

boys. (The Big Boys are the likes of Google, Yahoo and Facebook.)

Don’t namedrop. It’s irritating.

Have patience, said both Bob from Google and Bob from Yahoo.

Go step by step.

Align your ideas to the big company’s strategies.

Send them e-mail. The Big Boys use it too you know.

Stories are pretty damn important, said Jessica Jackley, the Founder of Kiva.org.

Decide that you make tomorrow better than today.

(LOVE + MONEY) > MONEY, Jessica concluded.

“Trust Allah, but tie your camel”, said venture capitalist Naval Ravikant.

It’s extremely easy to use, said some dude many times about his web service of which

I don’t remember anything anymore.

Uniqueness is important when pitching to media. They don’t want sloppy seconds,

said Ben of Mashable.

They listen you for: two sentence pitch, five seconds per email. Because inbox

overload is terrible.

If it says “Press release” in the subject field, it is junk.

And PR firms are shit, Ben concluded.

Joan Barnes of Gymboree told a real “elämänmakuinen” story about her company. It

included billions of dollars, eating disorder, pregnancy, drug use, nervous breakdown,

People Magazine and at the end yoga.

Give, said Women 2.0 founder Shaherose Charania.

Chris McCann said that email is the biggest untapped social media.

Ben of Mashable came to the stage second time to say:

Remarkable brands are remarkable. If you give lipstick to a pig, it is still a pig.

It’s all about people, do great things to them.

If you think that social media is a tool then you are a tool.

Just sell something, said Dave McClure and then the first seminar was over.

On Sunday we ate fish together with our Aaltoes group.

Monday lessons:

FailCon ’10. 25.10.2010, 9:00 AM–5:30 PM, San Francisco, Hotel Kabuki

Don’t fail your search engine optimizing, told Vanessa Fox and Tony Adams.

And if you just want one time hits and rank, write “porn” in your tag words.

Put unique title tags on every page.

Jay Adelson, one of the founders of Digg, said that you shouldn’s put your cell phone

on a night shelf.

And if you enjoy working for your company you don’t have to sell it. It is a lifestyle

question.

Then Leah Buley told that marker pens are important when sketching. (And sketching

is pretty important too.)

At lunch my tablemate Jean Walsh from San Francisco Department of Environment

said: “Design is like an air conditioner. Everyone needs it.” Weird!

After lunch David Pogue of New York Times said that fingers don’t shrink but gadget

keyboards does.

Simplicity sells, not complex functions.

iPhone is like an elevator. You just push a button.

Google has only 20 words in its frontpage.

When engineer asks you: “Add a feature?”. You answer: “No!”

Don’t let the engineers write the user manuals.

And that’s it from FailCon. See you next year.

Tuesday lessons:

Café del Doce, 26.10.2010, Standford University campus. With Peter Vesterbacka of

Rovio.

Peter Vesterbacka, the mighty eagle of Rovio, told that Angry Birds is now “bigger”

than Nokia in States.

Everyone is doing start-ups, so differentiation is everything. Be quick and tell you

story – just talk to people.

Coming to Silicon Valley is like moving from SM-liiga to NHL.

It’s easy to tell a story if it’s true.

You should always have questions ready to people.

You can actually join in a conversation here.

Substance + Story = Success.

Why Angry Birds is a success: A great game, the name, color red in logo, everything

is carefully designed, there is always a part of luck, story, branding and make people

talk about it.

Be here a lot. (Peter has been every other week in Finland and every other in the

Valley for the last ten years.)

“I don’t do jetlag.”

Café del Doce, 26.10.2010, Standford University campus. With Chris McCann of

StartupDigest.

People are here approachable and friendly. Just say “hi!” and smile.

Everybody is here. Co-incidental bumpings to right people may happen. Go to quality

events. Be happy. Say hi. Everybody is a person, even Mark Zuckerberg.

You can do it in Finland also, but you need some kind of presence here is

recommended.

To get funding is not that easy, that everybody says, but it is possible.

It’s good to have focus. And it is nice if you are cash flow positive, so you don’t need

funding.

Stanford D.School, Stanford University campus. With John Feland.

It’s easier to beg for forgiveness than it is to get permission.

Reality is the best teacher, but also a cruel mistress.

Flexibility is important in teaching and in teaching environments.

Let things happen and keep everything on wheels (literally).

Ideas are in your head for seven seconds. So you must write them down or test

quickly.

Create stories to remember better.

Pen & paper is good, but tangible and real examples are better. (Legos, clay etc.)

Fail or succeed – You learn from both.

STVP, Entrepreneurial teaching, Stanford University campus.

You need to have a broad knowledge of everything and deep knowledge in one

specific field of interest.

Mix disciplines. There is no right or wrong answers. Storytelling, pitching and

networking are important in entrepreneurial mindset.

Google Campus. With no host.

We got kicked out by a security guard.

Wednesday lessons

Churchill Club: James Cameron in Conversation with Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

San Jose, 27.10.2010, Fairmont Hotel.

Arnold Schwarzenegger will play an iceberg in Avatar 3.

The US education system is in the toilet.

Everything is in phones. Real time GPS info is just the beginning. We are heading for

mobile first world.

Genius = 99 % perspiration.

You really have to love what you do. And when everything is going wrong, remember

that you like to do this.

“I made Titanic, so I really don’t NEED to work anymore, so I must really like it”,

James thought once when everything was going wrong.

Enormous invasion of social media tools are pressuring the governments. And

companies.

We are all like-minded people here, but we need to go tell these things outside!

Leaders’ principles should be higher than numbers.

Cleantech innovation is huge, if it doesn’t get voted down by the government.

Global warming is the toughest problem human race has ever faced.

If we don’t act before symptoms, we die. We really have to start doing.

If you want to change the world, you go after the mothers.

What is good for environment is good for business in the long run.

Action is needed to fight to safe the environment.

And James is making a submarine to search the deep oceans.

Thursday lessons

Kicklabs, San Francisco 28.10.2010.

Networking is critical to your success.

Don’t do business plans. Just do.

Manu Kumar, K9 Venture Capital, Stanford Campus 28.10.2010.

3–5 years business projections are bullshit. But it is important that you have thought

about monetizing your business. The thinking is the important part, not that are those

thoughts correct or not.

Investors want to be a head of the curve. No hot topics.

Friday lessons

Orrick (law firm), Menlo Park, 29.10.2010. With Jason D. Crain.

Contact the law firm before you incorporate.

Intellectual property rights are important.

Contracts are pretty damn important.

Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (law firm), Palo Alto, 29.10.2010. With Mark and

George.

We are here to help and build companies. And help them grow.

People with ideas are more important to us than the people writing the checks. (About

tech people compared to business people.)

We are also practical business advisor.

When you do something once, it costs once. When you do it twice, it costs twice.

Conclusion

If you want to do something, just do it.

The schedule is pretty loose and there’s room to explore solo the campus. While on campus, try running around the Dish (dish.stanford.edu), visit the Hoover Tower, Treehouse and the Rodarte Museum. Or why not take a peak at 165 University Avenue and it’s tiny office space that has produced a stream of blockbuster companies including Google and PayPal.

Programme

8:00 How Angry Birds became the hot topic of Valley, Peter Vesterbacka, the Mighty Eagle of Rovio
Kicking off the day at Stanford Tresidder CoHo with a fellow finn. 

9:00 How to network the Valley, Chris McCann, the founder of StartupDigest, Tresidder

Chris McCann is the CEO and Co-Founder of StartupDigest, the fastest growing media company for startup and technology events and conferences worldwide. StartupDigest publishes a weekly email newsletter of the best events now in 45 cities around the world (SF Bay Area, NYC, Paris, London, Shanghai, etc) and 3 Universities (Stanford, NYU, and Columbia) with 56,000 subscribers.

10:30 d.school tour with John Feland
The d.school has become a hub for Stanford students and faculty in engineering, medicine, business, the humanities, and education to learn design thinking and work together to solve big problems in a human centered way.

- Exploring Campus -

Three lunch tracks

12:00 Lunch with SSE Labs
SSE Labs is a one-of-a-kind program, provides the most passionate and innovative Stanford students with the opportunity to develop as entrepreneurs by starting companies. With financial support and the guidance of experienced entrepreneurs, engineers, venture capitalists, lawyers, and corporations, student entrepreneurs work together to execute their ideas.

11:30 Lunch with STVP
The Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP) is the entrepreneurship center at Stanford University’s School of Engineering. STVP is dedicated to accelerating high-technology entrepreneurship education and creating scholarly research on technology-based firms that, in turn, provides new insights for students, scholars, and business leaders. We’ll get a chance to eat with them & fellow Mayfield students on their weekly mixing & mingling time. 

12:oo Lunch with Yahoo
The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine (Yahoo! Search), Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, advertising, online mapping (Yahoo! Maps), video sharing (Yahoo! Video), and social media websites and services.
Get to hear about Yahoo from an employee perspective & visit their headquarters. Reserve at least 6 dollars as cash. 

Stanford researchers generate hundreds of new inventions every year. Come to hear how these inventions are commercialized and licenced.  Scientific insights and academic breakthroughs draw interest and enthusiasm from the research community when they are presented at a scientific meeting or published in a journal. However, without a company willing to invest in bringing the invention to marketplace, many potential benefits of these breakthroughs are likely to end on the page. This is where Stanford Technology Licencing Office steps in.

15:30 HackerDojo visit

Hacker Dojo is a community center for hackers and thinkers to meet, discuss, learn, create, build and play. It’s sitatued in Mountain View so reserve some time for the transfer!

Other events of the day:

17:00 Distinguished Innovator Lecture Series: Udi Manbu, VP Engineering Google in Berkley

17:30 Lead Gen – the New Business Model for Startups
http://leadup.eventbrite.com/

18:30 San Francisco WIGI:WAM social mixer event, external
http://plancast.com/p/2k84

Whole day: Social Tech 2010, PayPal X Innovate

Stanford resources

Facts and figures on Stanford (pdf)
Download your own virtual walking tour to your phone.
You can download maps etc. from here
It’s easy to get around the campus with the free Marguerita shuttles. Cool way to get an overall picture of the area as well!

Map & addresses
Näytä Aaltoes goes Silicon Valley 2010 suuremmalla kartalla

Programme for Monday

9:00 Failcon 2010
The full speaker list can be found from here, but we especially look forward to Steve Blank, David Pogue, and hanging out with the amazing audience. For the brave ones, there’s afterdrinks in San Francisco. Full-coverage on the event on Monday evening.

18:00 Dinner with Gagan Biyani: How to raise funding as a first time entrepreneur?
Our series of having dinners or breakfasts with founders and makers starts with Gagan. Gagan is the founder of Udemy, a webservice for online classes. Gagan will be telling the story of how someone with no initial background in tech can build opportunities and knock out obstacles. Writing for blogs, connecting to investors in events, finding good co-founders takes you far. Sneak preview at Mixergy.com podcast: http://mixergy.com/udemy-gagan-biyani-interview/

19:00 BASES 150K kick-off
BASES , Stanford’s Aaltoes equivalent, is introducing an exciting and brand new program lineup, and they’ll be kicking it off with guest speakers MC Hammer, Meebo founder Seth Sternberg, and legendary venture capitalist Dick Kramlich. Space is limited, so RSVP here.

20:00 ASES weekly meeting
ASES, Asia-Pacific Student Entrepreneurship Society of Stanford, has their weekly meeting. ASES organises one of the biggest student entrepreneurship events of the year with the Stanford Summit.

A month back Aaltoes hosted a recap session on the legendary Silicon Valley Tour. We heard some of the entrepreneurs traveling with us share their key insights from the trip. Now the videos are uploaded, so if you want to hear the ideas that arose from visiting the number one entrepreneurial hotspot of the world, visit the links below:

Aaltoes Lessons Learned in Silicon Valley: MySites & Ramine Darabiha
Aaltoes Lessons Learned from Silicon Valley: Widsen & Markus Nuotto
Aaltoes Lessons Learned in Silicon Valley: Qvik & Elias Pietilä
Aaltoes Lessons Learned in Silicon Valley: Futuuns & Kimmo Nurmisto
Aaltoes Lessons Learned in Silicon Valley: Nodeta & Mikael Roos and Otto Hilska

If you want to read more about the journey, revisit the blogposts from Aaltoes, Arctic Startup and Futuuns. We also made some ad hoc interviews which you can see here (including names such as Mårten Mickos, Zynga-founder Mark Pincus, Paul Graham etc.)

Next year is right around the corner and we have some initial plans of heading to Israel, China and maybe revisiting Silicon Valley. If you have suggestions where to go and what to see, don’t hesitate to contact the new board!