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We live in extraordinary times.
Our generation is open, compassionate, and connected with more information and resources
at our fingertips than ever before.
We are not mere observers, we are creators.
Every great organization started as just an idea in someone's mind.
If you don't like something about the world, you can change it.
You can do anything, even more than what you think.
If you wait until you are ready, you'll be waiting for the rest of your life.
This is our time.
We made every mistake that is possible to make in a startup.
Entrepreneurship is like jumping off of a cliff and assembling the plane on the way down.
***'s going to happen. It's not going to be an easy ride. It's not all going to magically
be, build a great product, get some great press, raise a million dollars and then you
know IPO four years later for ten billion. And you can't give up and you've got to keep
trying.
Have idea, write business plan, raise money, exit. Guess what? Doesn't work. Doesn't work that way.
At the beginning, I did not realize that I would be an entrepreneur. For me, I had an
idea and I wanted to make it exist, then I realized that this was called being an entrepreneur.
One of the first challenge was to, you know, get out of the dark.
Me and my co-founder David, we were in Amsterdam working for a beer brand, and we were sitting
at a kebab shop, a Thursday evening I think and we were asking ourselves what can we do
tonight. We started to look at all of the existing platforms out there - Yelp, Lonely
Planet, I remember A Small World at the time and for recommendations and figured out all
of the existing options and recommendations out there are based on locations. Go to this
bar, really nice drinks, really nice venue, but none of them was giving us information
on what was going on there today. So we went to one of them, really random night as it
usually happens when you are abroad and there was no event going on that specific day so
kind of an average evening and the first seed was born, which was called The Event Compass,
an easy way to find all of the events around me, located on a map basically.
The 3D printer idea actually started with printing cakes and sweets, so it was more
of a chocolate and cake machine if you will. But after a while, we started looking at the
underlying 3D technologies and just the marketplace in general. So there is health issues in the
world these days in terms of obesity and problems in many countries with that, so we wanted
to look at that and see if we could help out in that area as well. So rather than just
making chocolates and sweets, which is not necessarily the best solution for obesity,
we thought we'd still do that as a special treat, but take the underlying 3D printing
technology and evolve it to print both sweet and savory items.
It was at Christmas time and I needed to get to my home place in Volnay, which is about
300 miles from Paris. At this period of the year, all the trains were full and all the
cars were empty. So there was an opportunity here to offer the available seats
to passengers looking for this type of trips.
This is how it begin. I didn't sleep for 72 hours when I had the idea.
Can you actually teach people to be an entrepreneur. No. Can they experience what it might be like
to be an entrepreneur, yes.
We are first time entrepreneurs in the sense that we started something from scratch for
software based. Now when you do that for the first time, of course, you are going through
a canyon of pain as we call it. You start with all of the excitement in the beginning
and then when the honeymoon ends, you are really facing reality when it comes to that
you need to gain traction, you need to make sure that you reach certain KPIs in order
to be able to make a business out of it. End of the day, a startup is like the beginning
of becoming a real company, which is making money, growing and being successful.
We see 140 business plans a day, we take one of them on.
When you start something, when you make something, you can sit there and sketch something on
your notepad, or you can make a wireframe in Keynote or you can talk to someone in your
possible market, you can do stuff and it builds up its own momentum. So you've just got to
keep doing stuff.
We are building a small factory which is capable of cutting, milling, 3D printing, scanning
object, replicating objects. As students of architecture, we usually do many models by
hand and we work till late night and so we started looking into technologies to make
those objects with computer numerical control. We started improving the technology to a point
we say hey this is something we should offer to other people so that they can you know
empower themselves with more tools and being able to build many other things.
I met my co-founder Francis at the pizza party at my neighbor's
place. Just by discussing together, we realize that we were interested in the same things.
He was really into the technical way of developing mobile and web applications. It's very important
to find people you get along with very easily. You don't have to force yourself into having
the discussions with them. So once you find people who are convinced by the idea, who
are enthusiastic about the idea and who bring some more skills into the project, then it
works, but the really difficult part is to find the right person at the beginning. If
they are motivated and they are clever, then you should hire them. You should find every
possible solution to hire them.
We were looking for developers around Europe. I was going to pitch competitions, I was attending
hackathons and I remember I was in London and then in Berlin, Twitter was having a developers
conference and next to me was this guy and so I just went for it and presented Vamos
and he got really excited about the idea and now it turns out that he's our CTO and also
co-founder of the company.
I'm founder of three startups plus Aaltoes Entrepreneurship Society and Startup Sauna.
There is a lot of things I enjoy a lot being an entrepreneur. I think two most important
things is that I get to work with the best people on the planet. And that's our culture
also that we hire all the best team members, we have all the best investors, we work only
with the best customers on the globe. We select them and I work with so amazing people on
a daily basis and I learn so much that I feel very very honored and I think that's one of
the best things about building a startup.
Make as many mistakes as you possibly can. Learn that making mistakes is a vital part
of the ecosystem and that how you deal with those mistakes is everything because the very
essence of being an entrepreneur for me is how you handle mistakes, how you handle errors,
how you get it wrong.
I would always recommend to start. You know that's the first thing. If you have something
in mind, try it. Doesn't mean you have to dedicate 100% to it in the beginning, but
don't stand there and just have this idea in your mind. There are luckily a lot of events
out there today that you can just go for validation. Go there, pitch your idea, do people understand
it, if not, refine and if they do, try to see who can help you to take this initial
seed into something as a small prototype and take it from there. It's an incremental step
by step approach and I think doesn't require any sacrifice besides your time and your ambitions.
We started in a basement and literally speaking we were in a closed environment with our own
ideas, without ever being able to show everything we wanted to other people and have our feedback.
When you work too much on a project because you love it, you end up not being able to
really look at it from a distance and have an objective view. So you basically become
too much obsessed with your work that you are not able to really make a judgement.
Your business model will change. So the product you come up with from day one may not be the
actual product you are going to launch with. And we actually changed our business and our
product a few times. We've had a few major pivots if you will.
My job is actually to deal with uncertainty. So I'm okay with it. I'm okay with things
that evolve and I always evolve with things as well. It's just like if you were to cross
the Atlantic from France to the U.S. You know you have to go to New York for example and
then there is some wind one some wind another way, but you don't lose your focus. You know
you are going there. Sometimes you have to go on the left. Sometimes you go on the right
but you know that in the end you'll be going in this direction. So dealing with uncertainty
is like every day.
We grow up and we never face any risk in our lives. We never be allowed to fail. And this
is very sad. With failing we progress.
You know, we were perpetually short on cash so we lived from one month to the other. I
think we were close to going bankrupt at least twice. That's a story that few people tell
about the successful startups but almost anyone that I know has gone through that period at some point.
When we started in 07, at our stage of seed and pre-seed investing, it really was a desert
so for the next kind of two, three years, we were at it alone with a lot of support
from some great VCs and some great angels.
So I'm very passionate about this company. It's almost a if not a perfect fit for me
just in terms of I love tech, I love cooking and food, I love healthy things. So for me,
it's fun. I don't mind getting up for work. As a matter of fact, I probably don't sleep
enough because I get up in the morning to start doing things.
There's not enough hours in the day.
If you can't stop thinking about something, that's a good sign. If it's in your head swirling,
that's a very good sign. If people tell you your eyes light up when you talk about this,
that's a good sign. If time passes very easily, it's a good sign. So these are all things
you should be looking for. And trust your own intuition. If this makes your heart flutter,
it's a good sign. That's the first and most important step.
If you can find a product or service that you would use yourself and you are convinced
that if this existed, you would use it, then go for it and don't listen to people who tell
you it would never exist. If you really know if this service or product existed, you would
be using it, it means millions of people who do the same so just go for it and don't to
people it will not happen. Seeing that we offer a good environment for learning and
innovating and seeing that at the same time we are building a useful service, it's probably
the best satisfaction that you can ever dream of.
I think in venture, you always have to be kind of counter-cyclical and so 2007 kind
of those years, we were getting into the financial crisis and I think that's the best times to
actually go startup companies and the best time to invest in them. So understanding those
challenges, we set forth with Seedcamp and we made it a mission to really invest in startup
in Europe and make sure European founders got heard in the global chamber as such.
We went with a few friends to Stanford and MIT and we realized that oh god all the smartest
guys are building startups, they are making tons of money, they are learning a lot and
also all the alumni, the serial entrepreneurs, and the most successful people are coming
to the school and helping them out. So we came back and we started Altoes, very small,
early 2009. We started to gather the people together and the few friends that we knew
in the School of Technology, in the School of Art and Design and the Business School
interested in startups, and the few alumni that we had made great companies like Marten
Mickos from mySQL or Peter Vesterbacka from Rovio and a few others that were helping out
a lot in the early days. And boom, it just took off. Within the first year, we had 5,000
members that we organized more than 100 events and there was 200 people at every event so
it was just booming. Somehow there was a hidden potential, people were not able to talk about
it, people were not interested about it, but when you started to gather people together
and talk about it and bringing role models, it just took off. And I think the key takeaway
to learn from building the ecosystem also is that it's all done by the students. We
all Startup Sauna, Aaltoes, Slush it's organized by the students. They are volunteering and
tear, they are the smartest people in Finland. They are the future of Finland. What they
get by doing it, they get to nurture the culture, they get to learn about startups, they get
huge amount of great contacts, they get huge amounts of work opportunities in a startup.
Nobody ever told you you can challenge the status quo and do stuff rather than being
a banker or a consultant. And that's what we really try to put within the heart of the
people who come to us. It's like you have the power, you have the intelligence, you
have the possibility to do things and we can help you.
When I arrived in Berlin and I was trying to set up my bank account for the first time,
not knowing German, they refused to talk to me since they were not feeling comfortable speaking
English so my solution as an entrepreneur would have done was I asked them for the computer
and the first thing that I opened up was Google Translate. 15 minutes later, I left with a
bank account and with a smile on my face. So I think this is the thing, when you move
to a city and you have the spirit of "Okay, I will make it happen no matter what challenges
are in front of me", you'll figure out how to get there. So there are no rulebooks, it's
just about how far you are willing to take it to make it happen.
We've backed over 100 businesses from nearly 40 different countries. They've raised $130 million
of funding which is pretty much at the same level of what you see in the top top programs
in the U.S. You know we were very surprised by the prominence of the Baltics, Central
Eastern Europe and the Balkans because they are smaller economies and you never really
think of innovation popping out of those.
Those role models are encouraging a lot of the young engineers
and young business people to want to start their own companies.
I'm born in Sweden so I'm coming with this small city mentality that I want to go big,
I want to move up from my small town. And when you are born in Sweden for example, the
market, Sweden is not enough so the first thing you start to think about when you think
about big ideas is how can we do this globally. Now Vamos started for us as a global product
from Day 1. We are giving access to events in over 50 countries already.
We have to be able to continually show what we have and show that we are adding value
and show that we are creating value for our investors and for our next round of investors.
And the final challenge has been making sure people understand a small company of 80 people
can compete with big companies like Apple and Android.
When we first started looking into creating a startup, people said you will be able to
sell one or two machines every month. The first month we started, we sold over 300.
Just in the last three years, it's just mushroomed amazingly. I think what's also happened is
that there's greater depth so it's not just founders and just investors, there is actually
a lot more talent now in product building, business development, sales, marketing, growth
hacking, all of that. Innovation is just coming from literally all over. We used to see that
it was much older, so ideas came two to three years after we would see them in Western Europe
or in the U.S. and that's not true anymore, it happens in real time.
What I do think for Europe is that you are going
to have people who have much more experience. Whether that's because they do go start things up
or join a startup which would be really amazing for Europe so I do think in 10, 20
years here we will have the same couple of decades that the Valley has had.
I think there is a very strong gut feeling from a lot of people that we need to change
something in order to continue to thrive to continue to accumulate wealth. I think entrepreneurship
fill that void and fills that necessity and that desire from people to reignite our growth
and reignite all the things that have made us successful. We've become very complacent
and very lazy over the years and I think entrepreneurship is exactly that scrappy answer
to rebuilding, or continue to build what we have.
I have to say Ive been here since '98 and it was pretty hard slogging until that moment
in time when the market kind of turned, Nokia stumbled a bit. And people said why not.
The secure environment suddenly didn't seem so secure and when that risk profile changes,
suddenly the students say "well there is no risk actually, there is much less risk than
I originally thought" so a lot more people wanted to explore this.
The market is changing so fast that the big companies can't keep up the pace, it's all the
young agile startups and all the young people who understand the new markets and the new
needs that can change the world. I think that's the only way to do it, to build a great company.
I mean every company started from two founders in a grad school dormitory so I think it's
natural, it's the only way.
The revolution is in the will of young people to build their own projects and to don't believe
in frontiers. For them there is no difference between the countries and they want to play
because entrepreneurship is playing. It's playing and having an impact, concrete on society.
If you involve passion and really want to do something great together then people will
follow you then you will create something even larger than you are and larger than what
you thought your idea was.
Students around the world, they empower themselves to drive their own entrepreneurship education.
How about it? What are you guys going to do?
You have every year better and higher quality students coming to run the show and it's unstoppable.