Harvesting the Joy of Entrepreneurship – The Best Bits of BootCamp Graduation

Last Friday the second intensive start-up training program Aalto Venture Garage BootCamp was brought into conclusion with its Graduation event. Really impressing about the event was the pure enthusiasm of Garage’s young ventures which came over the audience and created a nice energetic atmosphere lasting the whole occasion. Before the pitches we had the opportunity push our imagination to its limits and concentrate our thoughts 50 years ahead with mind-boggling theories of singularity presented by Jaan Tallinn, an Estonian programmer who has participated in the development of Skype and KaZaa. The speech was one of the most interesting ones I have listened lately. It’s refreshing the hear something different than just ‘How I made my moulah’ type of talk. Next are our impressions of the winning participants.

…and the winner is: Stagecraft. Worth of Kauppalehti sponsored 5000 € is a company dedicated make online roleplaying games for mature gamer audience. The idea is to compete with entertainment like going to movies or board games with games that would last roughly from the end of Half Past Eight’s News until midnight. Behind the startup is an experienced crew known from Digital Chocolate and Bugbear Enterntainment: Timo Kämäräinen, Timo Saarinen, Elina Arponen, Ville-Kalle Arponen, Heikki Vehmas and Jarkko Kainulainen. I hope in the near future I can play with my friends a virtual storytelling version of Cluedo or something even more thrilling! This startup definitely won the hearts of TPO crew.

Dentatube, a platform for dentist to distribute educational and other professional material, won the second prize.  The service tries to tackle the problem that odontologists are often isolated entrepreneurs and don’t have modern channel nor community to distribute their ideas and educate themselves. Dentatube has also designed a dedicated HD camera for dental surgeons to distribute point-of-view video material of their operations. The pitch was great and flavored with humor. The team consists of a dentist and two business professionals.

Third place belongs to a startup of young entrepreneurs boasting to have designed the only CRM software with true social game-like reward system. Deal Machine is intended to motivate sales personnel by giving points for every step they take toward closing the deal. Points are later converted to prices and salary bonuses, which creates good kind of rivalry in the workplace and works even when the employees are working in different sites. Timo Herttua handles the marketing, Tuomo Riekki is responsible for the software development and Valtteri Pihlajaniemi is in charge for the company sales. Deal Machine has at the moment 80 paying customers and estimates to break-even with 200.

In addition to this, the Latvian team focusing to measurement of brand value in Internet communities of Eastern Europe received a special mention of their efforts. According to rumors, Kaspars Kalniss, Martins Latkovskis and Ernests Stals came to Bootcamp even without knowing where they’re going to spend their nights. AaltoVG resolved the accommodation troubles with their prop travel trailer. Well, that’s proper ‘Camp(ing) spirit to me!

The winners are awarded a trip to Silicon Valley, office space from Aalto Venture Garage and more training and coaching. Stagecraft and Dentatube present a pitch at the next MoneyTalks event in Otaniemi on October 7^th, so we suggest all the investors interested in the aforementioned companies to come there. Congratulations on behalf of Technopolis Online Team for all the winners!

Here's the pitches of the four companies:

StageCraft Final Pitch at DemoDay from Aaltoes on Vimeo.

Dentatube Final Pitch at Demoday from Aaltoes on Vimeo.

Deal Machine Final Pitch Demo Day from Aaltoes on Vimeo.

Liisa Monitoring Final Pitch on DemoDay from Aaltoes on Vimeo.