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.

It didn’t take long as in the day after the lecture our enthusiastic teammate, Linda, started to talk about and browse different tools what we could use for online brainstorming. We had discussed different patforms and idea collection tools in the past (including UserVoice) but it didn’t really went anywhere as all the products out there where costing too much. But now we had a mission and after few hours after Linda started to talk about it we had integrated the service under aaltoes.com.

Soon after the launch ideas and votes started to arrive and now a week after we ended up with total of 25 new ideas and 174 votes! This really helped us and I’m sure there will be similar projects in the future where we’re needing your help. The idea site is now closed but we will investigate what would be the best solution to take advantage of similar solutions in the future projects and operations.

Thanks for everybody who helped us and it’s still possible to send ideas via comments or personally in the events!

Outsourcing an Internet cafeteria, getting old exhibition furniture and modifying it, pitching to get in to the Park? Our Jury of students and other stakeholders made some great remarks during the Sunday event for Aalto Ventures Park. However, we feel like our over 2300 Facebook members could contribute even more. Hence we’ve created a feedback system,where you can share your wildest ideas and vote for the best ones others have created. We’re thinking of implementing this system for further projects, for instance helping startups out in their problems and really harvesting the skills we have in our community. So help out!

Here are some of the ideas from teams of Sunday to get you going:

Team 1

- Open all the time: suited for people outside the 8-16 world. If you’re targeting the Asian markets, you can have the same working hours.
- Dynamic space distribution: everyone starts form a small space, progress gives you more space (and even more progress get’s you kicked out
- Inviting more mentors, people who have already achieved something. Mentoring can however start already quite early, after the first steps, transferring knowledge quickly.

Team 2

- Aalto Ventures parks should be 3^rd place: home – work – Aaltovp
- Should be inviting and open. Interface with each other, emphasis on culture and getting to know each other.
- Should be inclusive, also people from outside the three universities.

Team 3

-  Sleeping bags, mattresses, 24/7 eating facilities. A place to mingle and network outside the Aaltoes events. Brainstorming areas as well as more permanent places.
-  20 flat screens, a two-way connection to the rest of the Aalto campuses. Aim is that the startups can see people and the people can see what’s happening with the startups.
-  Video studios and editing facilities

Team 4

-  FC, meaning Fun Club and Fuck the Containers. No boxes, open space. Startups can rent their space by square meter. Total transparency: community that supports each other, no competition against each other, only one that makes you run faster.
-  Mandatory twitter feeds for startups, companies need to have two-way communications.
-  Big space could function as an exhibition hall for things that have been designed here. Catered lunches, coffee.

Team 5
-  The physical space could follow the form of a startup lifecycle: starts from an idea and ends with the exit. Companies could put their names to the phase they are on. Visualization.
-  Team-building wall, meeting new people.
-  Google-like space, sea of plastic balls.

Team 6
-  Modifiable cubicles, easy to move around.
-  Team-building/problem-solving screens: ask help, be helped.
-  Kitchen, smaller conference rooms. Test-servers.
-  Sofas and fatboys

Team 7
-  A two-way virtual window to other societies in different Universities of the world.
-  Centralized Business Administartion, providing accounting and secretary services for all startups.
-  Pitching events for ordinary people (meaning non-students, non-entrepreneurs)

Team 8

- People would need to pitch to get inside the building. The existing startups get to choose, so the community has like-minded people.  Kitchen and showers facilities.
- Mix of open and private, startups need both. Lockers for IPRs, assets etc.
- Short duration stay, only for the companies in the very beginning of their existence. Also non-startups, i.e

UPDATE: After yesterday’s brainstorming we decided to put out a idea sourcing page. Use the widget on the right to submit ideas or go to specific page located at feedback.aaltoes.com to submit your ideas!

It’s exciting times here on Betonimiehenkuja. Aaltoes just got the keys to its new 1000 square meter space last Tuesday and we’ve been working hard to get things running. Our objective is to put together a plan for the new Aalto Ventures Park by the end of the year.

Imagine a space where startups can work together and benefit from shared services, close proximity to the Design Factory and Otaniemi campus, an incoming flow of students, professors, international visitors, alumni and experienced entrepreneurs, and a positive and encouraging environment.

The plan is not to build an incubator – there are plenty of those in Finland already. We aim to support startups in their early exploratory stages – while they’re learning about the market, pitching for funding, developing their product, finding first customers and looking for team members. We’re still working on what Aalto Ventures Park will
be in practice, but we have a space, an energetic team and a vision of making something big that serves the needs of Aalto University’s entrepreneurial community.

We’re kicking off with a bang; our inaugural event will have some of the world’s best speakers on entrepreneurship – Ken Morse and Bill Aulet.

The founder and former Managing Director of MIT Entrepreneurship Center Ken Morse and acting Managing Director Bill Aulet are holding an interactive lecture for us next Sunday night the 11th of October at 17.00. The session is themed around what is hot and what is not in entrepreneurship – what entrepreneurship is, what traits successful entrepreneurs share and how to go about becoming an entrepreneur and building a startup.

It’s been great to show people the Ventures Park space, see their reactions and listen to their first thoughts on how to use the space to build a new venture accelerator. Join us Sunday night for the MIT Entrepreneurship Session, followed by refreshments and a brainstorming on what the new Aalto Ventures Park could be. We want your feedback!