Good News from Thu, 05 August, 2010:

Aalto University Sparks Entrepreneurial Culture

Finland clearly needs new rapidly growing businesses and at the Aalto University, we are taking the bull by its horns; the newly established Aalto Centre for Entrepreneurship is linking different actors within Aalto, as well as major international partners, on a quest to make Finland the next start-up nation.  Hopefully boosting the national economy and contributing solutions to major global problems along the way.

We believe that the key to a successful venture is getting young people from various backgrounds and expertise areas to interact with each other, and overlaying an experienced team of coaches to offer advice, referrals, connections, you name it. That’s where the Aalto Venture Garage, a 700 square meter ex-warehouse in Otaniemi, Espoo, comes to play.

The concept is simple really: for aspiring student entrepreneurs, Aalto Venture Garage offers workspace, meeting rooms, weekly events, coffee, wireless internet, and a community of like-minded enthusiasts. The culture in this old industrial hall is multidisciplinary, multicultural and collaborative -taking a cue from the iconic Finnish innovations, like Linux and MySQL, the Garage promotes its own open source entrepreneurship movement.

Our ongoing Summer of Startups program is a good example of the diversity we have here: across the 10 teams, made up of 35 students, we have 8 nationalities, 10 universities and 4 continents participating. About 50% of the participants are Finns. As a fellow expat, I can’t help but be proud!

The residents of the Garage consist of teams preparing their start-up ideas, a couple serial entrepreneurs donating their time and energy, Aalto-based researchers and the Aalto Entrepreneurship Society, a student-run association leading the Aalto community in creating university-based, world-changing ventures.

Aalto Venture Garage is the central meeting point of the Helsinki student startup scene and is quickly gaining international recognition as well, as teams from all over Northern Europe apply for the Garage’s Bootcamp.

We are now focused on wrapping up the Summer of Startups program, and promoting our Fall Bootcamp, which is an intensive two-week training program run four times a year. During the Bootcamp, very early-stage startups get coaching from leading Nordic serial entrepreneurs, investors and other experts. The next Bootcamp kicks off in late September.  Please keep your eyes on us in the following social medias: we are totally dedicated to producing something special!


Aalto Venture Garage www.aaltovg.com
http://facebook.com/aaltogarage
http://twitter.com/aaltogarage
Will Cardwell
Aalto Centre for Entrepreneurship

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Comments (6)

Joni Wed 20 July 2011 at 14:24
I relaly couldn't ask for more from this article.
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GEORGETTETRUJILLO Sat 30 July 2011 at 21:26
Some time before, I did need to buy a car for my firm but I did not earn enough money and couldn't buy something. Thank goodness my mate proposed to try to take the credit loans from banks. So, I acted that and used to be happy with my secured loan.