Summer of Startups

Summer of Startups 2010: An entrepreneurship program by and for entrepreneurial students

Follow the latest news on our Facebook page and on Twitter #summerofstartups

The Teams

MiDA – a mobile service to scan and collect info of your diet in real-time
Incspark – “Internal Facebook for companies”
Arada Services – provides easy and affordable access to inter city transportation via mobile phone in East Africa
Living Canvas – creates “Rainforest in a box” for office spaces.
Refetch – location-based reminders (ex: “buy toothpaste” when in supermarket)
Octarine – Helps to organize information from your social networks around your
life experiences
Buffee – a platform for social games to collect feedback from users regardless of their mother tongue
eXperQ – increasing customer-company interaction to make the world a better place to be a customer
Pamoja Innovations – promotes development of greentech and renewable energy in East Africa
Dealmachine – Deal Machine is all about exciting sales. The web service rewards salespeople for every step they take towards a sale

News

Aug 28: SoS 2010 finished! The grand winners of the Demo Day are the amazing Arada boys, congrats to them and all the teams partaking! Read ArcticStartup on Demo Day impressions.

Aug 19: Ambassador Oreck telling about his visit to SOS

Aug 16: Dealmachine-Timo sharing his impressions on Summer of Startups: Take a look!

Aug 15: Facebook event is out for SoS Demo Day -wohoo!

Aug 12: Read ReadWriteWeb’s coverage on Summer of Startups!

Aug 5: Here’s a chance to practice your Finnish and read what Suomen Yrittäjät wrote about SoS. Dont forget to also read about our trip to Estonia on the Aaltoes blog.

Jul 30: Take a minute and educate yourself on how to get acquired: Aaltoes.com blog portrays two major exits of this decade, Smartner and Jaiku.

Jul 20: Watch the latest Vimeo videos and Marko Taipale’s slides added to Aaltoes blog: http://aaltoes.com/2010/07/summer-of-startups-validate-your-vision/

Jul 14: Follow SoS’ teams all over the Internet! IncSpark are updating news and stuff daily. Helt kiva!

Jul 9: YLE interviews SoS teamers on the program and creating startups in Finland. The story begins at 4.40: http://arenan.yle.fi/audio/1127559

Jul 8: Aaltoes recap of the first Startup BBQ with JaloHelsinki http://aaltoes.com/2010/07/summer-of-startups-startup-bbq-with-jalohelsinki/

Jul 5: Summer of Startups: Productivity Boost Watch the video at aaltoes.com: http://aaltoes.com/2010/07/summer-of-startups-productivity-boost/

Jul 1: Summer of Startups Starts Off with a Bang!
Check out a recap + video from the first day on the Aaltoes blog: http://aaltoes.com/2010/07/summer-of-startups-starts-off-with-a-bang/

Jun 28: Nothing to Do During the Long-Winding Nordic Summer?
ArcticStartup covers SoS yet again… do we have our very own fans in the media?

Jun 25: ArcticStartup covers Summer of Startups
Nordic media, take note. Finland is notorious for its lack of entrepreneurs. A collaboration between student-run associations from the top 3 schools in Helsinki (Aaltoes, Hankenes and Hues) has raised 50,000 euros in public funding, to encourage students to create startups during the Summer… read more

Jun 24: Summer of Startups Teams Chosen
Congratulation to all the teams chosen to this summer program! The judges to the highly competitive pitch competition 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.

Summer of Startups F.A.Q

How it works:
We have selected 10 most suitable teams to take part in the program. The program is an intensive 8-week (4+4 first round, second round) period where the schedule is divided into different themes for each week. Lot of responsibility and own initiative is given to the teams themselves.

We focus on:
Getting talented people to work on their start-up idea instead of getting a traditional lame summer job. We want to have great multidisciplinary teams to take part and prove their abilities with their start-up idea.

Who got in:
Out of 60 teams applying we chose 20 best to pitch and out of those 10 teams were chosen to start in the program.

Who’s behind it:
This program is offered by three University based entrepreneurship societies, namely Aaltoes, Hankenes and HUES. The program coordinator is Ville Simola from Aaltoes.

Details:
The program starts 1st of July and lasts until the end of August. Individuals taking part are offered 750 euro grant a month. In addition teams are getting an open office workspace and a personal mentor. Finance for this program offered by Aalto University and Tekes’ Tuli-program.

Ramine Darabiha – Main Coach

Ramine is an entrepreneur, who moved to Finland from France in 2004 to specialize in mobile and online business. Ramine is the founder and CEO of MySites.com. He also blogs for SiliconAngle and ArcticStartup.

Juha Ruohonen – Entrepreneur-in-residence

Juha has been in the business for a long time. He is currently the EIR at Aalto Venture Garage, VP Business Development at Supponor Systems and CEO at Value Chain Ltd.