From a one horse town to a world leader
aaltoes / lauri lehtovuori You can wonder at some of the Venture Garage’s most recent results at: http://startupsauna.com/en/contact/press/Three years ago, as far as start-ups were concerned, Finland looked very different from what it does today.
— The Aalto Venture Garage came about through an initiative of the Aalto Entrepreneurship Society, or Aaltoes. At that time Finland was very much a one horse town with regard to start-up businesses and particularly in the spheres of higher education, the importance of start-ups was not understood, explains Captain Ville Simola of the Startup Sauna.
Up until 2009, the atmosphere for creating start-up businesses was generally poor.
— Our vision was to create a common forum where students, researchers and serial entrepreneurs could meet and begin to create, with the help of this community, world-changing start-up companies.
An environment for a new age
The Aalto Venture Garage serves as a co-working space providing facilities for all start-up activities. The most important users of the space are Aalto University students, researchers and serial entrepreneurs. The Venture Garage also serves as a home for the start-up programmes Startup Sauna, Summer of Startups and Startup Life.
A lot has been achieved in three years:
— The environment has become more conducive to start-ups thanks to the Venture Garage and Aaltoes. Now many students are considering what sort of idea or team they’ll get together rather than just making a list of the best-paid consultancy firms at which to start their careers.
Simola and his team believe that the Finnish entrepreneurial culture can be tweaked to become even more growth hungry.
— We’ve now got some successful role models such as Rovio and Supercell. And if we can get more of these, anything is possible.
From start-ups to diamonds
The founder of the Venture Garage, Kristo Ovasko, has stated that Otaniemi ‘is today home to the most start-up friendly environment in the whole of the Nordic region and possibly the whole of Europe.’
Simola agrees.
— Aaltoes is the body that attracts the most ambitious and the hungriest students and researchers to the Venture Garage. For its part, the Startup Sauna is the body that processes the diamonds from those potential early stage start-ups.
The focus in the Startup Sauna is firmly on team coaching along the lines of the so-called customer development model whereby input is solicited throughout every development phase from investors who can facilitate early stage financing for the best companies.
The Venture Garage is also attracting young foreign start-up companies to Finland. The Startup Sauna programme has so far had applications from more than 500 teams in the Nordic countries, the Baltic states and Russia.
www.aaltovg.com
Comments (1)