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.