This past weekend the first Startup Weekend in Finland was held at the App Campus on the Aalto University campus just outside Helsinki. I had the pleasure of attending the Weekend as a judge to see if the next Rovio or MySQL would be coming out of this weekend’s event.
But before all the entrepreneurs made their way to the space I took some time to meet with some of the players in the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Helsinki. I first made my way to meet with U.S. Ambassador to Finland Bruce Oreck and a couple members of his economic team, Rodney Hunter and Patrick Martino. Ambassador Oreck has been one of the Ambassadors leading the charge in making the U.S. State Department’s emphasis on economic statecraft one of the important diplomatic issues in the country he is residing.
The U.S. Embassy in Finland is making the final touches on the new Innovation Center. Built with some of the most technologically advanced systems, the Center is green throughout with LED lights and heat insulating windows. It serves as a place where business and innovation is not only encouraged but it is made easier through the technology in the building. When the Center is 100% complete it will serve as a hub for American business to the greater Baltic region and be a place where entrepreneurship and innovation is encouraged in Finland. The Embassy has already started using the space hosting a Startup Sauna event earlier in the month.
While in Finland I also took the opportunity to sit down with the new GEW/Finland team at Aalto Entrepreneurship Society (AaltoES). The team is at the heart of the entrepreneurial ecosystem at Aalto University which is leading the charge for all of the country. The AaltoES team has already brought some of the big players in the ecosystem to the table including Startup Sauna, AppCampusand the now annual event SLUSH. As the ecosystem grows so will GEW in Finland.
The Startup Weekend event was an amazing first go for Finland. Over 100 developers, designers and business people came together for the first time. After some hilarious initial ice-breakers and over an hour of initial pitch ideas the real work began as 17 ideas were picked to move forward with and teams were formed. The next couple days ideas were hacked apart and built back up again. The organizers brought in coaches from all startup backgrounds with experience in venture capital, serial startups, Nokia and Microsoft. The coaches gave valuable advice and suggestions that led the 17 teams to their final prototyping and pitches.
After 54 hours of work the final pitches showed the evolution of the ideas. The number of ideas shrank to 14. And ideas that started out as team building tools turned into quick photo-manipulation software. Startups were pitched ranging from gamified running apps to a P2P accelerator for health and wellness companies. In the end the winning team was a startup providing a marketplace for local city tours – Local Guides.
The team with the idea was one that could embody what the current porous borders of the startup space looks like. The team of six had never met prior to Startup Weekend Helsinki; all came from different countries; the team included individuals with “non-entrepreneurship” backgrounds like environmental engineering; and the idea came from one individual that had been working as a local Helsinki tour guide and just felt the system could be better. One couldn’t dream up a better story. The Local Guides team will have the opportunity to fly to Boulder, meet with players in the Boulder and Helsinki entrepreneurship space and they all received a small monetary prize.
After experiencing the first Startup Weekend in Finland, seeing first-hand the organizations that are building the ecosystem in the country and talking to the players that have been in the space for collectively uncountable years I could not be more excited to see how the GEW/Finland campaign comes together. Nokia, Rovio and MySQL are soon going to be just a few of the many Finnish examples of dominating entrepreneurial companies.