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!

SLUSH 2009 from Popagenda/Vesa Salmi on Vimeo.

Some Bazaar and Aalto Entrepreneurship Society are proud to invite you to SLUSH 2009 on Nov 3rd and 4th at Kaapelitehdas in Helsinki. There are three ways to participate in this event:

1) Take part in the making of Slush – get an inside look into the event as well as some free refreshments. Participate in the building team on 2nd Nov and/or the backstage crew during the event by contacting Valeria at valeria.gryada (add at-mark) gmail.com. The building team and backstage crew have guaranteed access to both days of Slush.

2) The event is free of charge for all students, but we can admit only a limited number of applications, so act quickly and register at www.slushhelsinki.com/tickets. Registration is very important – we’ll have a badge for you at the door.

3) Apply for Slush Seven competition with your idea and get a chance to make your idea reality and win prize money to fund your busines development. Signup by 30.10. at http://slushhelsinki.com/index.php?article_id=1441&_subm_=1

So what is Slush? If you are a budding entrepreneur and would like to showcase your business idea, or simply thinking about making it big on your own, then come and join us. Nov 3rd is dedicated to Talkoot – a venue where experts of various fields are on hand to lend a hand. All without a charge as Talkoot should be. So if you are taking your first steps to become the next Finnish success story, but would need some (peer) support and help, come join us.

For those of you who already have a company with international ambitions, the Talkoot day on the 3rd will include an Internationalisation Clinic hosted by Culminatum oy. There are slots for 15 2-hour promising and ambitious companies. Signup today!

To learn more about Slush go to www.slushhelsinki.fi and get information by signing up to the Slush Facebook group.

See You at Talkoot! The Facebook event can be found at http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/event.php?eid=68214196217&ref=ts

Aaltoes Pitching attracted some 100 people to listen to the ideas and executions of future startups. We had a great array of ideas ranging from dictionaries to mobile reminder services. The winner, Language Café, captivated the audience with a strong social message: connecting elderly people and foreigners to actively learn languages and improve their social connections.

The Stage auditorium was full and packed as the thirteen contestants pitched their ideas. The Jury included names such as Marja-Reetta Paso from Veturi Growth Partners, Antti Kokkinen from Blue Run Ventures, Teemu Seppälä from Tuli funding and serial entrepreneur Taneli Tikka. One of the main take backs for the presenters was for sure the feedback from the judges: pertinent insights and suggestions to take the ideas forward.

Stefania Passera from the winning team Language Café pitched with enthusiasm and clarity their concept: introducing a new language learning method to connect elderly people with expats and exchange students.

- We are a team of students with different backgrounds who participated last summer in the Murjottelu–programme and developed concepts on the theme how to keep seniors active. Our coach Anssi Tuulenmäki suggested that we should take part in the pitching competition with this idea, Stefania explains.

The Jury saw a lot of opportunity in the idea of Maria Ullner, Stefania, Reetta Maila, Sami Norovuori and Riku Nagasaki and felt that development of the business idea in Talkoot would really take it further. The team has however been proactive about developing their idea.

- We actually did field-tests already last summer. We invited some exchange students to Ateneum Café to work with seniors – it worked like a charm! We had prepared some memory games, discussion topics etc. in case the conversation was about to end, but that was not a problem, Maria and Reetta smile.

Next AaltoesPitch is just around the corner, so if you’re still interested in coming to Stanford, please register your idea here http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dHJKam5rbERHeEEzUExxZzA5NDJIYWc6MA .  It’s worth joining also if you have a startup or an idea and need some team members.

Winning pitches: 1) Language Café – Stefania Passera P, 2) Late No More – Antti Virolainen, 3) OCR Based Dictionary – Haritash J. Tamvada, 4) Cur?ous – Sachin Gaur 5) Digital Receipts – Sivakumar Karuppusamy

Video was filmed and produced by CityVice.

It is again the time for all great minds to punch their pitch on the 8th of October! Aaltoes is organizing the first pitching evening of the  semester @ Design Factory, the mecca of creative ideas. We strongly encourage you all who have a good idea to enroll and give your best shot or just show up and enjoy the show with like-minded people and Aaltoes sponsored refreshments.

The Aaltoes hosted pitching night last spring was a great success and it gave launch to several new businesses.  Also for the audience, the event was a great chance for many to find out that making a pich is not exactly rocket science. Come and see it yourselves! Before that here’s a taste of last spring’s winning pitch.

Incentives for the competitors couldn’t be much better: the winner gets 1^st round Tuli funding up to 5k and wins a trip to Stanford, USA with all the like-minded people from Aaltoes.  Teams qualifying 2^nd and 3^rd will also be awarded. Additionally, to all teams, there’s a possibility to form contacts that will push your future business further. Furthermore, the top-three teams will get the chance to take part in Slush 2009.

Pitching rules are pretty simple: every participant has 4 minutes and 4 slides at tops. Wouldn’t do harm if the slides are structured as follows: the problem, the solution, the profitability of your idea and your needs regarding the possible funding.

Due to our funding program one must remember that at least one of the team members ought to be a student or a researcher of Aalto University. Also, existing companies cannot be funded.

For more information go our Facebook event and if you want to pitch, sign up here before 7th of October.

Wish to see all you guys there!

Taik, the university of art and design, has been a hard biscuit for Aaltoes. As a Taik student myself, I had my hesitations: we value freedom of expression and independent mind. Thus chats about business and industry seem a bit off tone.

Indeed, we met lots of doubt in Taik when we tried to convince people to support and participate in entrepreneurial activities. However, where there is a problem there is often a solution: designers are taught in school to have the attitude to change the world. As a major innovation force, designers just can’t stay in the comfortable zone of beautiful concept without execution. That’s why we pushed hard to overcome the resistance and organized the startup evening in Taik.

Maija Itkonen from PowerKiss (industrial design), John Evans from MultiTouch (industrial and new media design), Hanna Kurkela from Selki Fabrik (fashion design), Mirjami Malleus from Remake EkoDesign (textile design) and Richard von Kaufmann from Zipipop  (social network and web service research), gave talks to Taik students.

Though from totally different domains, we are proud to have them all tonight – because they are all designers, and four out of five are Taik alumni. They openly shared their own story of swinging between the role of a designer and of an entrepreneur: there are moments of reward and moments frustration, but most of all, they made their great ideas come true. They set up role models for design students who are determined to create things of their own. As givewaways they all mentioned the following: build the team, find the right people, collaborate, and last but not the least, never give up.

We were happy to see people enjoying the evening. A lot of talk, sparks of inspirations, surprise of connections. We are more than happy to see new students joining in and maybe this event has made a slight difference in Taik’s mind.

Big changes are made up of small ones.

Aaltoes made the first kick in Taik. That’s what entrepreneurship is about, isn’t it?

It’s been a while since we had our last startup visit but we hope that this is worth the wait: on 5.10. we have a possibility to visit Sulake‘s offices! If you’re not familiar with Sulake it’s one of the best known Finnish media companies. They are targeting mainly children and teens with their main products Habbo Hotel and IRC-Galleria. The company is well beyond startup phase but I have heard they have still have the spirit with much loved candy days.

In the spirit of startup visit we’re keeping the event small and this time limiting participants to Aalto students. There’s 20 seats available so remember to be quick and tell your friends!

Registration for the event

Facebook page

Keep yourself posted on the events by joining our Facebook group or subscribing to the RSS-feed.

In addition to the Aaltoes Events, there’s a lot happening in Helsinki during the fall. This is only a small selection, if you have a great event in mind, please comment! Most of the events are free and many of them are held in English.

23.9 Venture Cup Pitch-työpaja IdeaForumia varten
Mahdollisuus työtää oma pitch kuntoon ennen seuraavan viikon IdeaForum-kilpailua.

24.9 Open Coffee
Open Coffee is Helsinki’s only regular networking event for those interested in entrepreneurship. Be you an entrepreneur, technologist, lawyer, angel, VC, accountant, salesman….

29.9 Mobile Monday Helsinki-Marseille
MobileMonday is a community of mobile professionals. The open community promotes the mobile industry and fosters cooperation and networking among industry people and their companies by providing opportunities for personal and virtual contacts.

30.9 Venture Cup IdeaForum-pitchkilpailu
Idea Forum on pitch-kilpailu ja cocktail-tilaisuus. Paras esitetty myynti- tai rahoittajapuhe voittaa 1000 euroa. Tuomaristo arvioi esiintymisen lisäksi liiketoiminallisuutta, uskottavuutta ja toteuttamiskelpoisuutta.

1-2.10 Mindtrek Launchpad
MindTrek is the leading Nordic digital media and business conference, focusing on social media & Web 2.0. At MindTrek you will see the newest trends, innovations, revolutionary business phenomena and hear insights from the most high-spirited visionaries.

5-6.10 Software Sales Camp
Haluatko vauhdittaa ohjelmistoyrityksesi myyntiä ja markkinointia? Tervetuloa Tekesin Verso- ja VAMOS-ohjelmien järjestämään Software Sales Campiin! Tapahtuma järjestetään yhteistyössä Ohjelmistoyrittäjät ry:n kanssa.

8.10 MoneyTalks
MoneyTalks™, the highly successful event in Otaniemi brings again together the rising stars of the Finnish knowledge-based industries – the growth-seeking high-tech start-ups – and the equity financiers from the business angels to the well-known venture capital investors.

31.10 BarCamp Helsinki
BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees.

22.10 TEDx Helsinki
TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience.

3-4.11 Slush Helsinki
An event for startups by startups. At Slush Helsinki we will provide you with a perfectly safe, guided tour to this amazing, cold and dark habitat of cool new startups.

14-15.11 Be A Change
AIESEC and Feelovation organize Be a Change, because we want to encourage people to use their entrepreneurial skills to make the world a better place.

26.11 Cleantech Venture Day 2009
Cleantech Venture Day 2009 – An excellent opportunity to learn and discuss on Clean Energy investment opportunities in the rapidly changing global market.

As you can see there’s events for everyone and more can be found here.  If you happen to know other upcoming remember to mention them in the comments.

The theme was “how to get started” and we heard some very interesting speeches by Aalto entrepreneurs about their ramp-up phase and what they had experienced as being key to their success in starting up. The names of the companies and the people presenting have been presented in the last blog post, check it out! To wrap up, Moaffak Ahmed and Jussi Harvela from Veturi Venture Accelerator discussed entrepreneurship in general and their experiences about the key issues to take into account when starting up.

I want to thank the presenters and everyone present for making another great night and getting us closer to the dream of an entrepreneurial Aalto!

We will shortly be posting videos from the event, so you can make up your own mind of what the key issues were, but I’ll try to summarize what I caught from the speeches. What I think really bounced up is that Execution is key. There are different ways to actually execute, some might want to study at the same time, someone dive head-first when the opportunity arises. However, in the end, doing it in a smart way, and understanding what you’re doing is key. Something to remember of execution: Don’t take money before you are ready for it, and don’t take too much. Execution can be like sailing, you have to now where you’re going, but you can’t always choose the straightest route or the route you first envisioned.
Further, the key to execution is the team. As Mr Harvela commented, execution equals the team. There are thousands of ideas, but teams that can turn good ideas into businesses are few. Ideas aren’t worth much, but what you need to do is to get out there and speak about your idea and get input from various people. The ideas that are not put up for other people’s scrutiny rarely survive. You need the input. Ideas aren’t brilliant. Unless you have something you need to patent, you need to get the feedback right away. The same probably holds true after you have the patent as well. And before you think you have a unique idea, learn how to Google. I know it’s easy to forget that part.

I saw some entrepreneurs get the chance to pitch their ideas to investors at the event as well, and many people were exchanging ideas. If we’re able to offer these opportunities to Aalto students, I think AES is realizing its mission. We’ll keep on organizing events like this one, pitching evenings are coming up, a tech workshop and a legislation workshop. In addition, we’ll gather groups of students to develop their ideas further with professionals at the Idea Acceleration Camp. Mark the dates down from the calendar, join and start realizing your entrepreneurial potential!

You can give feedback about the event by commenting to the post.

Thanks,
Riku

Come to listen young start-ups and some really experienced entrepreneurs telling their views about how you can create your own successful business

After the speeches, there will be drinks, snacks and the possibility to enjoy the company of like-minded people

Program:

5:30pm: Doors open

-2 min pitches from ambitious Aalto start-ups about how they turned from an idea to successful business

-Moaffak Ahmed and Jussi Harvela from Veturi Venture Accelerator: How to get the winning idea and how to create successful start-up out of it?

7:30pm: Drinks, snacks and like-minded people

Please register to event at Face Book:http: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=72231795420

For more info and to be updated about us in future please join our Face Book group: http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=37295947284

Hope to meet you there,

AES team