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!

HeiMoi – engaging local activities at the neighborhood of your city

One of the Aaltoes catalyzed startups is the project formerly called Cityard, nowadays known as HeiMoi. Shanfan Huang, a TaiK  graduate, presented the original idea of Cityard in Media Lab Demo Day December 2008.

-  The whole project was incubated inside Media Lab and many Media Labbers  gave me great advices to conceptualize it, Shanfan tells.

HeiMoi is a location based web service that engages local activities in the neighborhoods of the city.

- Since last year Demo Day, I further developed the idea in Dynamic Visual Design seminar and also got support from many workshops arranged in Media Lab. After the Media Lab round I went to Aaltoes Pitch in March 2009, followed  by the first Aaltoes Talkoot in April. I also participated in many training and workshops organized by Aaltoes.

Shanfan has been one of our favourite stories to share as the support she gained from the Aaltoes community has been so tangible. With Tuli-funding  and  a partner found from Aaltoes Talkoot she could further develop the idea during last summer. Shanfan also demonstrates the determination needed from an aspiring entrepreneur: for the first pitching round she practiced in front of the webcam for 40+ times.  Future plans for HeiMoi?

- Now I have a partner, and will continue the product development towards a possibly “incorporated future”.

Futuuns got chosen to the top 12 from a total number of 227 participants. Five ideas will be rewarded on 16.12. after the teams have had a chance to pitch their ideas to the referees. The judges concentrate on innovativeness, growth potential and realistic implementation.

Read more about Venture Cup and Futuuns.

STREAM Tampere

STREAM Tampere is a new learning and innovation community for entrepreneurial and growth minded people. It is a student initiative aimed at connecting ideas and know-how across traditional academic boundaries.

The key concepts behind STREAM are innovative solutions, unexpected connections, getting things done and learning from each other. We also believe in openness to new ideas, light structures and a global mindset. Right now we are finding cool people and building concrete structures to make this all a reality.
Register to the Pitch Event at Facebook
Visit the Stream facebook page

BOOST Turku
Student-run community for entrepreneurial people from Turku University, Åbo Akademi and Turku School of Economics.

FORUM. Boost Turku is a student-based network for young entrepreneurs sharing knowledge among the universities of Turku. Our aim is to create more startups!

SCIENCE OF DOING. We believe in doing. Doing in an open and laid back cross-faculty environment. We believe that in this way we can expand the networks and horizons of young like-minded people.

MENTORS AND CONNECTIONS. We also want to introduce mentoring to young entrepreneurs. We’d like to see Boost in the frontline of creating more value by providing connections of mentors, funding and team members.

Register to the Pitch Event at Facebook.
Visit also the Boost page.

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

Pitching events for this fall are a wrap. All together 23 ambitious startups presented their ideas – some of them get to join us in Stanford, others in Slush. Tonight’s winners, UniMerchandise aims at making the affiliate products for Finnish Universities a lot more appealing.

The winning pitch got praised by the judges, Moaffak Ahmed, Kalle Airo and Teemu Seppälä, for its hands-on approach and can-do attitude. Sometimes the simple ideas are the best ones.

- Our business idea started with one question: why aren’t there any high-quality merchandises for universities in Finland, say for instance sweatshirts? We came up with the idea already last spring and tried to sell it to the student union of HSE with little luck, describes Jens Sørensen.

– Two weeks back we called the people responsible for Aalto University communications, but they didn’t have the time to think about the branded merchandises. This is where our company comes in. The Stanford trip is going to be very beneficial for us, we’ll get to see the whole merchandise business model of both Stanford and Berkley University, continues Joonatan Lintala.

The roll-out plan for the boys is straight-forward.

- Next year you’ll probably find us selling some great Aalto merchandise in the HSE, TKK and TaiK lobbies, the winning team concludes.

Stay tuned for the next Pitching Event in February. We’ll also be doing a follow-up on the so far presented ideas: how are the some 30 Aaltoes Pitching ideas we’ve heard about doing after the event? What, if anything, has happened since? Many of the pitching ideas are looking for feedback, team-members or mentors, so keep your mind open when attending the events!

RESULTS AND PITCHERS

The winner is UniMerchandise followed by World Health Hub, Futuuns and VirtualReception, which will all get to attend Slush Helsinki.

All pitchers (thanks @LisaGri for the recaps!)

NextDesire (Sivakumar K.) – Device for in-store use for making it easier to make choices.

UniMerchandise (Joonatan Lintala and Jens Sørensen – Branding the merchandise for unis using high quality and well-known brands.

BreezeTags (Igor Burattini) – Easy way of sharing internet links. Saving info & contacts from online directly on mobile phone.

SoftFlash (Olga Kuznetsova) – Digitally matching the retailers’ database to shoppers’ sizes.

VirtualReception (Aleksander Asatiani) – better booking online service for hotels in native language.

Futuuns (Teemu Yli-Hollo) – Web service for professional audio producers

StoreReview (Jori Lallo) – Online stores review by customers for customers.

SocialMediaShaman (Tuukka Takala) – Group dynamics of social networks members.

WorldHealthHub (Sami Paju) – Professional network for sharing scientific research in medicine

QualitySeer (Antti Hätinen) – AI program for determining best working practices for sotware development companies.

As the previous Pitching Evening was so successful, we decided to set up another one on 19th of October at Design Factory. Yep, that’s already on next Monday!

Like last time, pitchers will have four minutes and four slides to explain their idea, how it will be beneficial, why it will be successful and what resources do they need. The jury, consisting of respected business professionals, will evaluate the pitches, give feedback and then announce the winner.

Again the first prize will be the initial round of Tuli funding and the trip to Stanford, USA. Still, getting feedback is also very valuable and we think that everyone who feels that they’ve learned something during the evening, should consider themselves as a winners.

So besides of getting funding, this is also a great opportunity to get feedback, network with like-minded people and recruit new team members. For the audience, there’s going to be a lot of interesting and inspiring pitches to listen to.Some of the people who pitched last time, are also looking for team mates, so come with an open mindset.

For more information see the event at Facebook and if you want to pitch, sign up here before 16th of October.

See you all at Design Factory on 19th of October!

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

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!