For the full program visit http://foundersweek.fi/program, but here are some highlights:

Monday, June 4th “Welcome to Founders’ Week”, 10 am @ Aalto Venture Garage.

We’ll be kicking the week off at the Garage, with a welcoming speech from Mr. Alexander Stubb, Finland’s Minister for European Affairs and Foreign Trade. The morning continues with a Q&A with our four stars of the week – Russel Simmons, Sami Inkinen, Paul Bragiel and Aaron Patzer. Themes of the day focus on the importance of entrepreneurship, startup culture and appreciating entrepreneurs as the drivers of innovation, growth and welfare.

Sign up here!

Wednesday, June 6th “Founder Stories – visions and ventures”, 4pm @ Aalto School of Economics.

On Wednesday we will be privy to “stories of the start” via a keynote from Mint.com founder Aaron Patzer, followed by a panel and Q&A with our entire cast of allstars. The evening will be focused on early stage stories of starting up – the difficulties, the sweat – and on nurturing a culture that supports entrepreneurship.

Sign up here!

Thursday, June 7th, “Startup Sauna Demo Day”, 6pm @ Tapahtumakeskus Telakka.

Startup Sauna Demo Day will showcase the leanest (pun intended) and meanest startups from the program’s Spring Batch 2012. The rockstar teams pitching will be joined on stage by Russel, Aaron and Paul, who will relay their own experiences in all things startup. Join us for an evening of celebrating entrepreneurship and startups!

Sign up here!

More events and information at http://foundersweek.fi

In addition to these, the guys will be sparring local startups and taking in the summer in Helsinki.

Also join the week at http://www.facebook.com/events/292137444213121/ and follow us on twitter @aaltoes & #foundersweek.

If you’re interested in helping out, contact nippe (a) aaltoes.com. We can always use an extra hand ; )

Tesla Roadsters

Even though having been several times to the Bay Area, it (once again) definitely had something new to offer. Tesla, making electric cars without compromising any design or convenience related issues, let us in to see their production line. They’re constantly looking for interns, so Lauri & Mikko stay tuned for a Startup Life intro! Photographing inside the premises was absolutely forbidden, even though sometimes the rules are made to be broken.

A tiny swimming pool at Google Campus

Google was pretty crazy. Instead of getting thrown out for “just using the free wifi”™ we got inside! The 30.000-employee company has indeed a pretty nice HQ. The engineers have literally built their own working spaces and we saw desks varying from a jungle to an inflatable tent. And the food.. We knew how much people hype on Google’s gastronomic offerings to its employees but seriously – the food scene in the campus is more than impressive. The cantina we ate in had everything from Japanese to Mexican cuisine and from the best pizza ever to delicious indian chicken.

Yahoo‘s data center was another stunning place. A huge room filled with noise, hot air cut with cool air breezes and a respectful amount of server racks consuming a ridiculous amount of electricity makes you think a bunch of things – e.g. which of these hard drives do contain my flickr photos. To access any room a four-fingerprint-scanning is required. The co-founder of Yahoo, David Filo, was in the house, showing us his servers wearing an old cosy looking stanford sweater. Roger that.

Intel was a bit of an anti-climax of the day since instead of seeing the actual company we visited the Intel Museum. A bit of Heureka-liked tour into the early years of Intel and the development process of the processors revealed us still some curious nice-to-know info.

After Palo Alto it was time to go downtown San Francisco. Kiva provided interesting insights on social entrepreneurship as a non-profit startup. Kiva offers anyone the  possibility to give micro loans to people from developing countries eager to start to build their own idea. It’s actually a more fair and respectful deal compared to charity.

Our lovely 1/2 group of internationals!

At Twitter we had a nice session with six employees specialized in localization. Most of the discussion focused on the integration of the service into different cultures as well as on how the company has grown during its six-year existence. Twitter is definitely one of the biggest players revolutionizing the way societies communicate within as well as between each other.

Dropbox was the cherry on top. An exclusive tour at their brand new office right next to the AT&T Park with a sea view, a 400-employee-capacity and a music room (with a really decent band equipment and a grand piano) was simply great. Even though the office was nice, the most important thing at Dropbox was the laid-back open culture. While we had lunch, one of the head engineers just sat down with us to chat, Drew Houston (the CEO) drove by on a little electric scooter and  all the time someone was playing ping pong. Still you could be sure that everyone was professional in their own field and shared the same passion (to make Dropbox the greatest service on Earth). Chris Barton, the founder of Shazam, was also present and had a short Q&A with us. Dropbox HR people definitely approved Startup Life and what could be a better giveaway than 5GB of free dropbox space? ; )

Other startups visited during the tours were: Foursquare, RockHealth (accelerator), Zynga, AirBnB, EA and Palantir.

Claudio likes Intel. A lot.

The two-day startup touring ended up with the actual E-Bootcamp kick-off dinner where Douglas M. Leone, partner of Sequoia Capital, gave an insightful keynote (and a Q&A) about thinking differently, the first approach to a specific market and the entrepreneur’s four risks: market, people, product and money – underlining the market as the most crucial factor. Douglas now knows about Startup Sauna and is more than willing to see the best teams from the spring batch in the Valley!

So far it’s been great to help BASES people out with the arrangements and we’re really looking forward to the rest of the days!

100+ great individuals with the right mindset to create new things in the same place. Simply Wow.

- Juho & DH

We started the day off with a “pilgrimage” to Google and Facebook. It was lame. Neither one let us in (perhaps because it was Saturday and they had no idea we were coming) but at least Google had some smooth little bikes to ride and Facebook offered us some free soda.

Next we headed to Stanford Stadium which was closed, but entrepreneurially we found a way in. The place was jaw-droppingly huge. Imagining the place packed to the rafters with students cheering on their own brought some insight into the type of togetherness and sense of community that Stanford students experience. We need to figure out a way to instill this sense of belonging at Aalto.

Co-working

Last stop in Palo Alto was Hacker Dojo. It is, quite possibly, the most “hackery” space we’d ever visited. Totally ‘bootstrappy’, totally techie, with a pure focus on working and a love for all things technical. Very cosy if you like that sort of thing.

Making our way back to San Francisco, our next visit was with Dogpatch Labs. The place was unique. An old pier remade into a mellow and very open co-working space, with a harbour view and an awesome decor. It was by far the coolest “office” we’ve ever seen. Sadly, the place has been condemned and will be gone in two weeks. Hopefully the atmosphere can be preserved at their new spaces.

Rocket Space was the largest co-working space we visited. Divided over 3 floors, with a mix of private and open offices, the space houses around 500 people. Original brick walls and timber elements gave it a unique feel. I/O Ventures was a mix of wifi-café and office space with a capacity for 200-ish people. It was located in the ‘hipster‘ area of San Francisco, which gave it a very trendy yet laid-back vibe. On the bar you can see a guy working on CAD, someone else coding away and another designing fashion, i.e. a diverse mix of people.

Seeing a variety of spaces over here gave us perspective into what we are trying to establish with the Garage. Creating a welcoming sense of openness is of the utmost importance and in this sense we need to cater to a really diverse bunch of people.

California dreaming

This week has been a series of realisations, new perspectives, new comfort zones, and intensive learning; a week of draining long days, hard work, little sleep and re-calibrating our thinking. The week has left a mark on us all and we strongly recommend it to everyone. “Get out of the country, not just the building“, is what Steve advised during his visit. Not only does this give you perspective but it is also a great, great source of inspiration.

Standing on a cliff, looking over the Golden Gate, the San Francisco skyline and the incredible sunset over the Pacific Ocean, made us all very philosophical. The simple beauty of this world was humbling and mixed with this week’s experiences, somehow made us all look inward. It had been an amazing, awe-inspiring week and on the drive down we came to thinking about how most things you achieve in life depend on yourself. Perhaps this is really the most valuable take-away this week’s had to offer: it made us dream like never before.

- J, N, R & J

After meeting with Forrest we headed to Plug and Play Tech Center where we met up with Dom who was actually the first guy we met on Monday at TCDisrupt. Plug&Play wasn’t that nice of a space but their depiction as “Silicon Valley in a box” was very interesting. Basically the same building housed over 200 startups, tens of Angels and VCs, coaches and mentors. Finnpro and Finnode had booths there but they were empty. Collaboration here could be useful for some of our startups.

Highlight of the day

At Disrupt we met Hermione Way, a cool British girl, who does video coverage for The Next Web. We wanted to do a piece on Startup Sauna with her so she told us we need to have an interesting setting for the interview, sort of like you would on a date. Consequently, we agreed to do the interview in a sauna. This was certainly the most bizarre interview any of us had done, but we felt it was a great idea and it was very interesting. We discussed important points and hopefully it will turn out great. So stay tuned. In addition we were able to provide the sauna experience to the next web crew and we’re certain it left a lasting mark. (Thanks to everyone who helped us make this happen and thanks Hermione!)

In the evening we headed out to Santa Cruz where the videographer we worked with today lived and had a nice seafood dinner. Also saw some seals at the wharf!

Lessons of the day

Being different is really important in what we do. It’s a core reason behind the success of Aaltoes and Startup Sauna and should be so in the future as well. It is why we got the interview and it’s why our Startup Sauna t-shirts attracted so much attention at the Disrupt conference.

Being open-minded and receptive to ideas and people leads to serendipitous connections and opportunities – another key lesson that today’s events epitomise.

Doing is learning. Even though we weren’t on sure footing today in the sauna, taking charge and going for it taught us way more than not doing it.

Tomorrow is our last day here and the schedule will be tight. Now a couple of beers and then bed.

Looking forward to another Super8 brekkie,

J, N, R & J

We met up with Rebecca from the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP). She was hired recently to take care of STVP’s external partnerships and told us of the future ambitions of the program, Stanford and Aalto cooperation. An interesting point she made is that Stanford is very intent on learning from everything that’s going on with Aalto, as they would like to see students engage in the same way. Stanford wants to cultivate its partnerships to be more than just business relationships and Rebecca is truly great with people.

One of the STVP’s programs is called “Mayfield Fellows”. It starts with classes in the spring, continues with internships in startups over the summer and concludes in the fall when students teach case studies to each other based on what they’ve learned during the summer. This idea made us instantly think that Startup Life could have an important role in the new Aalto entrepreneurship curriculum.

One of today’s highlights was definitely the d.school, Institute of Design at Stanford. The variety of spaces, people from multiple disciplines, the cross-pollination of ideas, a true sense of openness and ambitious projects create a unique vibe with a “change-the-world” mentality. The enthusiasm and joy that exuded from open-minded people creating with an aim to have an impact was purely inspiring.

In the evening we met up with Nruthya from Bases (Business Association for Stanford’s Entrepreneurial Students). She was awesome. They have a great energy going and collaboration with them looks promising. She also provided us with some insight into the student world at Stanford.

Today’s valuable insights

Today was truly an enriching experience for many reasons. Firstly, it was amazing to see what one of the world’s top universities looks and feels like. Secondly, it really broadened visions of what education can be. Particularly the integration of design thinking into education across disciplines, left a lasting mark. The ME310 course is taking a breather at Aalto this year, which feels incomprehensible based on what we saw today. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, today’s visit gave us invaluable insight into what Aalto is striving for, what Aalto can become and, to some extent, what we need to do in order to get there. It made us think, more than ever, about what we really want to get out of our education and what we can do to make great things happen for ourselves and our community.

Big day tomorrow, spirits high, feeling motivated,

J, N, R & J

What is a super angel?

Among the panelists was Ron Conway, quite possibly the most well respected angel investor in Silicon Valley. While discussion during the panel itself was not that interesting, there was something about his person that stood out. A certain altruistic mindset about startups, sprinkled with a passion for great businesses and innovation, shone through everything he said and the way he carried himself. For instance: a huge number of people wanted the mic during Q&A to ask the panelists questions, but there was only time for 4. This didn’t sit well with Conway who, as the others walked backstage, stepped off and spent half an hour talking to everyone he had time for. Maya Angelou says: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.“, a saying that certainly hit home today. The true passion these guys have for helping the little guy  and the value they potentially add is something perhaps overlooked and under-appreciated in Finland. Our angel investors aren’t viewed as heroes in the mainstream, and it seems current regulatory conditions even discourage angel investing. Room for improvement.

Victory on the  Battlefield

The 7 finalists pitching in the Battlefield were all in a league of their own in terms of presentation and flare. Vocre a startup doing a voice translation app received the Audience Choice and Best Mobile App awards. Prism Sky Labs a startup bringing physical spaces online was runner up and Shaker, an Israeli startup disrupting the way people interact socially online won first prize. Their demo was quite impressive. They called it “first life” as it is sort of like Second Life, except that you are yourself as Shaker integrates your Facebook profile. You interact, as yourself, just as you would with people in an actual bar or park etc. This approach enables you to e.g. talk to friends’ friends who you otherwise could not interact with.

Great stuff going on, way more than fits into this blog post. These days are long. Though we’ve only been here for 3 days it feels like 3 weeks. We’re all feeling tired, but the rate at which exciting things keep coming up keeps us going on. But more on that later in the week (seriously stay tuned).

Time for some shut eye.

J, N, R & J

P.S. Khosla Ventures just pinged they are eager to meet Startup Sauna teams in January. Vinod Khosla is one of the most successful Venture Capitalists, or by his terms “Venture Assistants”, ever.