Tag Archives: Summer of Startups

Summer of Startups keeps bringing in fantastic news! Buffee, a feedback platform for social gamers across cultures, has been chosen as a finalist in the China (Shenzhen) Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition. The second annual China Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition attracted over 1,000 applicants, and after two rounds of pitching, the 30 finalists have been selected. The overall winner will get … Continue reading

Aaltoes and Summer of Startups went to Estonia From the beginning of the Summer of Startups, it was clear that the program would include a field trip abroad. So on the Monday 2nd of August the teams + few Aaltoes people boarded a ferry to Tallin, Estonia and went to see local startup scene there. For Monday we had booked … Continue reading

Monday morning guest speaker Ari Backholm hails from Smartner, the turn-of-the-century Finnish startup for mobile email solutions, later sold to Seven in the US. The path, however, was not as straightforward as that: The story meanders from three tech students forming a company, financing the day-to-day with consulting and random projects to bringing in a hired gun CEO, closing domestic … Continue reading

Lean startups are currently all the rage in the Finnish community. Marko Taipale, CTO of Huitale opens the third week of Summer of Startups lecturing the teams about agile development. He profiles the most important contemporary thinkers, such as Steve Blank and Eric Ries, and shares some of his company’s favourite learnings from the movement. First up, what is a … Continue reading

Pekka Pärnänen from FinNode visited the Garage on Friday morning and offered his insights on doing expat business in Silicon Valley. FinNode, community of Finnish public and non-profit organizations, is a match maker between entrepreneurs in Finland and North America and aims to boost R&D cooperation and business between the continents. Even in the time of the digital, Pekka stresses the importance … Continue reading

As the second week of Summer of Startups is nearing its end, we started with our weekly summer evening event, Startup BBQ. The theme for these Wednesday gatherings is simple and summer-y: Enjoy some BBQ and refreshments, meet and mingle with the SoS teams and conspire on ways to make Helsinki the next startup city together with likeminded people. The … Continue reading

Last Friday, Summer of Startups welcomed researcher, mind trainer Lauri Järvilehto from Filosofian Akatemia to boost up the teams’ productivity during the summer program to ensure we make the most out of it. Summer of Startups is essentially a program by and for us students so a lot of initiative, self-starting attitude and discipline is required from the teams -thus, … Continue reading

Fantastic first day at the Venture Garage! First thing in the morning, coaches Ramine Darabiha and Ville Simola welcomed a bunch of eager entrepreneurs to the Summer of Startups HQ in Otaniemi and spent the day getting to know the teams and setting milestones for the first-of-its-kind program. In the afternoon, SoS teams were already put to face the fire … Continue reading

Summer of Startups Chosen Teams Congratulation to all the teams chosen to this summer program.  We were honestly impress with many of the applications, it was difficult to choose!  The judges were Ramine Darabiha;MySites, Kristo Ovaska; Aalto Venture Garage, Antti Aarnio; Otaniemi International Innovation Center, Will Cardwell, Aalto Center for Entrepreneurship  and Sami Heikkiniemi; Tekes. We would like to point … Continue reading

We heard a lot of good pitched today. Peter Kelly, professor at Aalto University had a few comments to make at the end of day.

There was soo many good applications that we have decided that we need to see the teams in person. Here is the deal, We have picked the 20 best teams to come to the Aalto Venture Garage and pitch their company to the panel of judges.  The final selections will take place after the pitches. Here is the Program: On … Continue reading

An entrepreneur program built by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs Here’s how it happens, after being selected by the Board, the program is all about getting to the next round.  There are 3 rounds in total and you get paid a salary for working on your startup. Pretty sweet deal! It doesn’t matter which school you are from either, all you need … Continue reading