Tag Archives: Summer of Startups

A wrap up on tonights Pitch it.

Full house, as always! This time Pitch it. revolved around three key areas; travel, learning / education and healthcare and was themed strongly around very early stage teams. Around 100 people arrived to Aalto Venture Garage to hear nine teams pitch their ideas in front of the experienced jury. We heard pitches from: Citizen – A social marketplace with small … Continue reading

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Summer as a Turning Point

This is a guest post by Hanna Toivonen & Kiki Ylimutka, both Summer of Startups alumni from last year. The original post can be read here. Summer of Startups, the Y-Combinator -like Start-up accelerator program of Finland, selected us and 10 other teams from 74 Finnish and international teams. For 10 weeks our idea and us were kicked, crunched and … Continue reading

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Lessons Learned from SoS

This is a guest post by Alexey Solomatin (August 6, 2011), a Summer of Startups alumni from last year. You can read the original post here in English and here in Russian. Your idea isn’t that unique and there are competitors. No matter how genius you are, it isn’t exactly true. Even the most innovative idea, had been attempted to … Continue reading

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The Summer that Changed My Life

This is a guest post by Claudio Camacho, a Summer of Startups alumni from last year. Melting snow, +5 degrees, sunny mornings and lots, lots of fresh ideas. It has been exactly one year since I applied to the Summer of Startups program, and it will be difficult to explain, in words, how much my life has changed ever since. … Continue reading

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One Year of Grace

Text by: Claudio Camacho Have you ever had the feeling of achieving so much in so little time? So much, that hours are counted in seconds, days in minutes and years in hours? That is exactly what has happened to me during the last year: almost 9,000 hours of continuous self-beating and achievement. It was a year of grace since I crossed the … Continue reading

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Once More With Feeling: Summer of Startups Demo Day 2011

We’ve had a few days to recover from last week’s Summer of Startups Demo Day extravaganza but we take one more opportunity to say it out loud: ALL THE TEAMS THOROUGHLY ROCKED AND WE HAD ONE BLAST OF A SUMMER!!! The spectacular demo day was the icing on the cake celebrating the 10 weeks of super hard work from the teams … Continue reading

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Summer of Startups 2011 Demo Day: It Takes a Community to Raise a Startup

Summer of Startups, the 10-week entrepreneurial program for the most ambitious students and researchers from not only Finland but all over the world (this year’s edition included teams from India and Russia and even more nationalities!) came to an end today at a spectacular Demo Day! The event featured Playfish’ Kristian Segerstråle (whose lecture is gonna be online soon enough, but as … Continue reading

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Live Blog Post: Alex Osterwalder

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Sami Inkinen: Go Big or Go Home

Returning to his alma mater, Sami Inkinen, founder of Trulia addressed the Summer of Startups and a 150+ audience on last Friday morning. His talk structures around the ten lessons learned in his schooling and career that has spanned from technical physics to corporates like Nokia and McKinsey and a quick stint in Stanford MBA program to launching Trulia, the US’ … Continue reading

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Summer of Startups: You don’t have to achieve everything in 10 weeks but you can do a whole lot!

Summer of Startups was seen off to a great start this morning when both Peter Vesterbacka of Rovio and Risto Siilasmaa of F-Secure showed up to the dolled-up Garage to hear some amazing pitches! Dare to be different Angry Birds was by no means an overnight success. Since 2003 Rovio made 52 games before hitting the jackpot with Angry Birds. Some learning also … Continue reading

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Announcing the Summer of Startups 2011 Participants

Aalto Entrepreneurship Society is organizing Summer of Startups for the second year in a row. This year, 74 teams applied to participate in the program, including participants from India, China and Russia. Out of these, 11 were selected to participate. The teams will receive funding for the summer, mentoring from 30 entrepreneurs from the Baltic region, as well as working … Continue reading

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Working at a startup: Bring on the ruckus!

Aspiring to help and support students and researchers as much as we can, Aaltoes is taking on three different summer programs. On Thursday evening, we held an information session about Summer of Startups, Enternship and Startuplife that quickly turned into a philosophical discussion of what working at a startup is really like. Ville and Karri from Grey Area, Oona from … Continue reading

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Summer of Startups’ Winner Arada Services Take Off To Ethiopia

The winner of last week’s Summer of Startups Demo Day, Arada Services, is ready for the fall and the new adventures it brings. The co-founder Dilu Kefale of the team developing SMS-based ticketing system for intercity transport, is now heading to Ethiopia to do market research and contact potential customers and partners. In Ethiopia, the current ticket system in place … Continue reading

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Summer of Startups: 10 Startups to Graduate from Finland’s First Ever Incubator Internship

Summer of Startups, a first-of-its-kind hands-on entrepreneurship program arranged by and for students with university and government support, is approaching its end. One more week to go, the teams are finishing up their summer task lists and getting ready for this Friday’s Demo Day. During the summer, Summer of Startups has given 10 selected student startup teams an honest snapshot … Continue reading

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U.S. Ambassador visits Venture Garage

We received a real treat today! The US Ambassador Bruce Oreck visited the Aalto Venture Garage and heard the elevator  pitch of each Summer of Startups team. Lawyer by trade and an entrepreneur in a large family business, the Ambassador had good input on several of the teams’s companies. Mr Oreck has a background in clean tech and was especially … Continue reading

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