On Wednesday, 22.05.2013, Aalto University Professional Development – Aalto PRO is organizing a free of charge workshop aimed at the development of SME competences. The workshop will be held in the Innoclub of Innopoli 1, in Otaniemi, Espoo from 9.30 to 13.00.The topic of the workshop is Management Challenges of SMEs – success factors, defining and identifying employee capabilities. The event is arranged as part of the TOP Leader-project that is concerned with the development of leadership and recruitment skills of SMEs.

Registration is required to participate in the workshop, which is possible through the following link. Register! There are only 30 places available in the workshop so act quickly.

Doctoral student Jari Laine of the Business, Innovation, Technology (BIT) research unit of the Aalto Universty School of Science will be hosting and moderating the event. For more information and the program of the event visit www.aaltopro.fi/top (in Finnish) or contact Anne Kallio.

The autumn edition of the Bi-Annual MoneyTalks® Forum networking and matchmaking event was held on the 11th of October, 2012 in Innopoli 2 in Otaniemi, Espoo. The event had a special focus that featured spin-off companies from Innovation Mill, a program run by Tekes and Technopolis Plc to develop spin-offs from the leading technological enterprises in Finland: Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks, Kemira, Metso, Ruukki, and Wärtsilä.

The forum gathered a rich attendance of enthusiastic entrepreneurs and Venture Capitalists from Finland and abroad to create and find the next Finnish success story. As the main event, companies where given the opportunity to pitch their business concept in time slots of 2 and 7-minutes. Two-minute power pitches were given non-Innovation Mill participants, Scarlet Motors Ltd and Earth House Ltd. The 7-minute company presentations featured novel spin-offs, which are presented below and also accessible on www.slideshare.net/TechnopolisOnline, with the exception FilmMe Group Ltd.

Presentation of Retrail Ltd

Presentation of Simplofon Ltd

Presentation of Trelab Ltd

Presentation of Cloudstreet Ltd

Presentation of Booxmedia Ltd

Presentation of Finembe Ltd

Presentation of Lausumo Speech Technologies Ltd

Presentation of Exaget Ltd

For pictures of this event and others visit the Facebook page of Technopolis Plc.

Technopolis also invites you to the next MoneyTalks® event, the second edition of MoneyTalks® Tallinn. The event will be held on the 29th of November, 2012, and registration is open until November 22nd at www.technopolisevents.fi. Pitching applications and instructions are found in the event calendar. See you there!

The following blog post is written byTallinn School of Economics and Business Administration, which collaborates with Technopolis to offer Bachelor’s studies in the Helsinki City centre starting in September 2012.

Starting from September 2012 the School of Economics and Business Administration of Tallinn University of Technology (TUT) will provide you with the opportunity to obtain a degree in International Business Administration without leaving Finland. Tallinn School of Economics and Business Administration (TSEBA) welcomes all qualified candidates, who have already acquired secondary education and would like to combine family and work commitments and university studies, to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in the field of business administration at weekends in Helsinki. It is also possible to study in parallel with obtaining another higher education.

Study sessions are held five times a semester at weekends, on Friday evenings, Saturdays and Sundays in Technopolis( Technopolis Ruoholahti, Hiilikatu 3, 00180 Helsinki, Finland), which is located in the region of Helsinki city centre. The language of instruction is English and courses are delivered by the leading teaching staff members of TSEBA. Students are free to determine their own course load.  Nominal period of study is 4 years.

A student who has completed the full program will be awarded a diploma of Tallinn University of Technology, one of Estonian leading public universities.

International Business Administration programme will provide you with:

-    an opportunity to earn a degree while working
-    an opportunity to study without leaving Finland
-    a diploma which is awarded by a public university and recognised inside and outside  European Union
-    a good price-quality ratio
-    a good balance between academic knowledge and practical skills
-    study sessions only on weekends once a month

TSEBA is a faculty of Tallinn University of Technology which has been providing a high quality education in economics and business administration for more than 70 years; teaching experience in English nearly 20 years.

TSEBA is the most international faculty at TUT with more than 300 international students studying in English; the majority of them come from Finland. Graduates of TSEBA are working as leading specialists in Estonian enterprises as well as abroad, in the European Union and elsewhere. Many of today's leaders in Estonia and this region are graduates from TSEBA. Their knowledge, skills, and experience are recognized in various sectors: from the central bank to ministries and from IT and telecommunication companies to finance and manufacturing industries.

Comparability, practicability and extensiveness, which all can be summed up in one concept – quality - have been the key words in program design. Comparability of programmes provides an opportunity to successfully participate in student exchange programmes, and to continue further studies at Master’s or Doctoral level in any world renowned university. TSEBA has entered into partnership with about 70 universities from all over the world (including Stanford, Berkeley and Fudan). TUT has also a permanent representation in Silicon Valley.

For additional information please visit: tseba.ttu.ee

Admission requirements are available at: http://www.ttu.ee/admissions

Contact: Monika Nevalainen, Consultant for International studies, e-mail:  monika.nevalainen@tseba.ttu.ee, phone: +372 6 20 39 40; Admissions: study@ttu.ee

In the wake of the recent financing round of € 1,25 million raised by Hammerkit Ltd, Technopolisonline interviewed the CEO of Hammerkit, Mark Sorsa-Leslie on matters pertaining to the investment and Hammerkit in general.

TPO: Tell us about the financing process: “the road that you travelled”

Hammerkit: It started with a presentation at Software City in Liverpool in November 2010. I met Richard Young from EV and we discussed the potential of North West Fund as an investor. The fund was just starting, so we had to wait a little to get things moving. It was quite a complex deal, as we have both UK and Finnish investors, but we managed to create a deal that worked for everybody. Clearly, the investment approach in the UK is different from Finland, and this was visible in the amount of deal documentation, but the result was good. A long process, but worth it in the end.

TPO: Can you disclose the details of this financing round?

Hammerkit: The North West Fund represented by EV Group (Will Clark) and AXM Venture Capital (David Smith) invested € 500.000, Veraventure invested € 500.000 and Tekes NIY € 250.000.

TPO: Care to elaborate on your feelings following this investment?

Hammerkit: Delighted. I think this now provides us with the gas in the tank to really drive our business forward globally. We have a clear vision; target customers that have a clear requirement and the passion to change this. I think this will allow us to create a Finnish success story to rival the big ones.

TPO: Tell us about the past work by Hammerkit that you’re extremely proud of?

Hammerkit: I am extremely proud of my team. They have worked tirelessly to build the platform and our business. We have been through extremely difficult situations, but when you have great people they rise to the challenge. I am also proud of the work we have completed, not least for Technopolis with Technopolisonline. This is a real example of a complex service that can be create more easier and more quickly that with traditional coding. I am also really happy that we have helped clients like Hill+Knowlton and Edelman to do digital in a more intelligent way. We like to refer to it as “lean digital production” and I think that going forward we are going to benefit from the need of the industry to turn to repeatable solutions rather than trying to hand-craft every web project from scratch.

TPO: What are the innovative functionalities of the new product?

Hammerkit: Hammerkit is the only end-to-end digital production network that includes everything from front end retail to back end development in a single cloud-based solution. We call it the CloudStore. We developed the Cloudstore to enable PR agencies to generate new revenue by allowing them agency to undertake digital projects more easily. We deliver a private appstore, a bit like the Apple AppStore, to their business globally and enable them to produce services once then resell them throughout their network of offices. This means they will be able to reduce the costs of production, improve the quality of deliveries and extend the range of digital services they can offer without having to worry about technology, talent or timetables. The key features are:

1.    GATHER ALL YOUR WEB PROJECTS GLOBALLY INTO A SINGLE DIGITAL LIBRARY
2.    HIGHLIGHT BEST SELLERS
3.    ORDER REPEATABLE SOLUTIONS WITH ONE CLICK
4.    AUTOMATICALLY CREATE CLIENT DIGITAL PORTFOLIOS
5.    TRACK ORDER PROGRESS AND REVIEW PRODUCTION IN REAL-TIME

TPO: What’s next for Hammerkit?

Hammerkit: We will implement Lean Digital Production for our clients and then share the methodology with agencies and developers that want to learn how to produce repeatable solutions.

TPO: Will Hammerkit become the next Rovio and will you become the new “Mighty Eagle”?

Hammerkit: In our field, I hope we will. We aim to become the market leader for repeatable solution delivery to the global PR and marketing industry.

TPO: Are you looking for new talent?

Hammerkit: You betcha! We are hiring right now and are looking for sales, production and development people that have the track-record, talent and tenacity to join a team that is heading to the top. All the roles are available at www.hammerkit.com/careers.

TPO: What advice would you give to a young start-up entrepreneur that is looking for financing?

Hammerkit: Be careful not to take your eye of the ball when going through the financing process. It is so time consuming that you need to be sure that: a) you really need to raise the capital, b) you have a clear vision for your business, and c) you are happy to accept 100 “NOs” to get a yes. Choose your financier based on their ability to allow you to leverage their business assets and acumen, not on the amount they are prepared to invest.

TPO: What is the one most important thing?

Hammerkit: Patience…all good things come to he who waits!

TPO: Anything else that you would like to tell to Technopolisonline followers?

Hammerkit: The startup scene in Helsinki is super hot right now. I hope that we are amongst the winners when we look back, but at least I will be able to say I was one of the ones that tried. That’s the key. We all need to gives things a try, stretch ourselves and create businesses that are successful and fun to be in. Finland is the best place in the world to create a startup, as it teaches you to be disciplined, deliver on promises and make things work with limited resources. Those are the keys to success.

Technopolis MoneyTalks Forum turned round numbers as it was arranged for the 10^th time on November 10^th  2011. Once again the event attracted many interesting companies and during the day we truly saw some innovative and impressive ideas from pitching companies. We were also pleased to see many active investors at present who motivated the pitchers to really give their best.

We also heard an enlightening keynote by Iain Jawad about the rise of smart cities and M2M markets. The afternoon one-to-one meetings between pitchers and investors were fruitful and the evening was finished with a relaxed mood at Innoklubi where Kimmo Lahdensivu  from Varaani Works Ltd, was nominated as the best 7-minute pitch. The best 1-minute pitch awared went to Teemu Arina from Meetin.Gs. Congratulations!

What a great MoneyTalks Forum once again! Technopolis would like to thank the sponsors and partners: Docomo Europe, Lexia Ltd, Hermia Ltd, Otaniemi Marketing and also participating companies, investors, Iain Jawad and other participants! MoneyTalks Forum returns next time in May 2012. Stay tuned also for the monthly Technopolis MoneyTalks events. More at www.technopolisonline.com/events

A glance back at the presentations and pitches we saw at MoneyTalks Forum:

During the day we heard 8 company presentations, 7 minutes each:

• Geniem Ltd

CEO Tuomas Kumpula put up a solid presentation for Geniem, a mobile app development platform developer. Their product AppEver provides a cross-platform framework for building apps fast, cost efficiently and with quality. Geniem AppEver enables advertisers, publishers, agencies and online communities to deploy faster and better mobile applications cross-platform. Kumpula highlighted Geniem’s strong position in the mobile app development market and thus the growth prospects for the firm seem bright.

• Lizard Technology Ltd

Lizard Technology brought us a little closer to the year 3000 as CEO Karsten Vandrup presented their technology with a ToyStory-like robot that recognised voice location. The robot’s key feature was its sound based location technology that made the robot to obey commands and walk towards the voice. The company’s sound localization technologies ASL and VSS are based on patented audio signal processing methods which are originally implemented after extended studies on the hearing of lizards. Their technology and product seemed ready and the company is ready to commercialize them for robotics and automation business.

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• Fambit Ltd

CEO Pertti Kasanen introduced their social media service that offers improved communication within families. Fambit provides services such as group messaging, shared photo frames and family finder. Fambit already has 6000 family users and is looking for funding to initiate their fierce international growth. This could be a pioneer for parents who want to connect with their internet and mobile devices addicted children.

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• Fastrax Ltd

Chairman of Fastrax, Pekka Ruusunen, showed an enthusiastic presentation about the company’s navigation products. The company manufactures Global Navigation Satellite Systems receivers and develops software for enhanced satellite navigation and for cost efficient end application development. The product portfolio consists of multiple GNSS receiver modules and GPS antenna modules, novel pure Software GNSS solutions for minimized cost and optimized GNSS functionality in consumer devices.

• Existor Russia Ltd

Imagine practising foreign language by having a conversation with a robot without any fear of embarrassment. CEO Ilia Zaitsev gave a compelling presentation of how a human could actually do this with an intelligent machine using Existor’s technology. Technopolis Online experimented this and ended up spending a long time interviewing artificial intelligence avatar on Existor’s website. The AI technology is already completed and it can be used in education, entertainment and enterprises. All they need is funding to launch on the market.

• Varaani Works Ltd

CEO Kimmo Lahdensivu introduced us a carefree personal cloud storage solution Varaani Cloud Hub. It provides an easy way to store, share and access content anywhere with any device. Varaani’s product will provide a more comprehensive solution than the competitors and target to a wide range of devices while offering up to 1 terabyte of recording space. Lahdensivu’s presentation about the company was convicting enough to receive the best rating from the 7-minute pitchers in the event!

• Flirtic Ltd

Flirtic, an Estonian new generation online dating service invited us to look into the dating zone with a fresh view. CEO Andres Susi gave a vivid presentation about how their service makes it easy to meet, have fun and flirt with new people online. Flirtic incorporates the most popular and addictive features of social networks,  including messaging, wall posting, ‘likes’ and entertaining games and quizzes. The service already has strong market shares in Serbia, Estonia and Russia and aims to expand to US and other western countries.

Technopolis Online tried the service and found that the quizzes actually made the site very compelling. Our sphere of matchmaking just leaped a notch farther.

• Hookie Technologies Ltd

Hookie’s goal is to connect physical activity recorded by mobile phones to social media. CEO  Hannu Puolitaival presented the audience a technology that captivates the users physical activity without battery consuming gps connection. The solution is extremely scalable and can be utilized by game developers, marketers and insurance companies. Hookie immediately found potential synergy opportunities with Flirtic at the event. Excellent!

In addition to 7 minute company presentations above, we also heard 6 interesting one-minute power pitches.

Petri Hiissa from Intoloop presented their child journal which is accessible online or through mobile applications that parents can securely share with friends and family.

Teemu Arina from Meetin.gs put up a memorable one minute juggler show to pitch their cloud-based internet service. It is aimed for busy business people and the service makes online and face-to-face meetings more efficient and measurable. Arina’s exceptional presentation impressed the audience and it was rated as the best 1-minute pitch.

Juha Väisänen from Fantastec introduced Polar Heroes, a children’s educative 3D online game world with mobile games and branded extensions.

Thomas Grönholm from Skyhood presented their modern web technology based service for the recruitment market.

Jouni Salonen from Tuotantoyhtiö Tuokio enlightened us about their tablet PC games for socializing.

And finally Timo Pietilä from Zonear pitched their strategy of creation of adaptive and customizable HTML5 maps, used in a wide range of application from location-based games to geosocial marketing campaigns.

That’s about it, see you next time!

MTV3, a Finnish main stream television channel and internet entertainment hub, has announced that it has acquired Eat.fi, a leading restaurant recommendation portal in Finland. Eat.fi was founded in 2008 to provide easy and rich experience in discovering restaurants in major Finnish cities. Currently the service attracts 50,000 weekly visitors.

MTV3 is planning to merge Eat.fi with its own Makuja website, which focuses on providing cooking recipes. The service has collected over 8,000 recipes to-date and it’s one of the leading cooking focused websites in Finland with over 150,000 weekly users.

With the acquisition, MTV3 plans to combine these two services, striving to make one all-encompassing food portal. MTV3’s head of web services, Henrik Laine, comments: “Our goal is to build a leading site in Finland, which provides everything food and restaurant related information to end users.”

Furrther details about the acquisition size was not disclosed. The founder of Eat.fi, Tina Aspiala, will transfer to MTV3 as a Development Manager of Eat.fi. 

In November 2011 Finnode Russia and Lappeenranta Innovation Oy organizes educational and matchmaking tour for talented young entrepreneurs - finalists of Russia’s biggest innovation contest BIT (Business of Innovative Technologies) from various regions of Russian Federation with possibility to meet private and governmental investors presented in Finnish market. The entrepreneurs will take part in MoneyTalks Forum, well known in Europe, which will be held in Otaniemi Espoo.

Finnode Russia and Lappeenranta Innovation Oy are running the project “Finnish-Russian Innovation Cooperation – Commercialization of Innovations”. The project receives funding from the Finnish Foreign Ministry neighborhood cooperation resources.

The project aims to create an identification – and commercialization mechanism for Russian innovations. The goal for the project is to support Russian entrepreneurs and companies, wishing to bring their innovative ideas to European markets and at the same time to create new business opportunities for Finnish companies by exploiting Russian innovations.

During the first year of project’s operation a number of high-tech cases has been identified and introduced to potential Finnish partners with excellent results – 5 companies from Russia has established their entities in Finland with the aim to enter European market.

What is happening inside the Finnish Venture Capital markets while the economies around the world tremble?

Well, Tecnhopolis Online went out to find out. We interviewed a true hard core Finnish Venture Capitalist Juha Mikkola from Norvestia, a recognised Finnish stock-listed investment company with a dynamic investment strategy.

During the past 18 years Mikkola has gathered a respectable and colourful professional history starting from 1993 when he started his first venture fund. He made six small investments from the first fund which all were exited successfully.  That put Mikkola’s career into a bullish glide. To date, he has managed 16 positive exits out of 19 and collected over 100 million Euros of international capital. Three months ago a new page was turned in his life when he joined a Finnish investment company Norvestia Plc as Senior Investment Director. Along with Mikkola’s presence in the company it is evident that Norvestia’s private equity side will pick up.

Norvestia’s investment strategy in the Venture Capital zone focuses mainly on Finnish and Swedish markets where they are looking for growth orientated companies already in the revenue growth stage. Particularly interesting are companies in various service fields with novel solutions and in technology sphere. Currently Norvestia has stakes in such Finnish firms as a health care service provider Coronaria and a marketing communications company Miltton. The uniting factor in both companies is strong growth orientation.

During his long career, Mikkola has gained broad insight about the venture capital industry. He sees the present situation in the market alarming: “The private equity market is in a crisis and has been for the past few years. During 2010, 30% of the European private equity investors terminated their operations and it has been forecasted that by the end of this year another 30% will also do so. This is a so called European crisis, which derives from the lack of proper listing markets and outdated, cost inefficient procedures in managing investment funds”. This obviously has its effects on Finnish VC market. In order to overcome these flaws, Mikkola highlighted that we need new, more cost effective structures, to attract private investors and increase international syndication activity.

When looking at Technopolis Online’s data on VC investments, we however see some light at the end of the tunnel. During 2011 the trend has turned positive. Finnish companies have gathered 231% more capital than the previous year. Mikkola sees this as a very positive sign, especially as the value of international investments have grown substantially. He however remarks: “Small  numbers are easy to double. Hence it is vital for the Finnish private equity industry that the international capital activity elevates.”

In Venture Capital investments Norvestia aims to provide, not only capital, but also mentoring and guidance for firms. Norvestia’s investment managers have strong technologic competence and experience from growth entrepreneurship. So far, Mikkola has a decent amount of deal flow but he is still actively going round the field to meet fresh, innovative and growth potential companies. So for all firms out there searching for financing, here is your chance!

Monthly MoneyTalks event was held last week in Espoo, which features new companies that are raising funding. Out of three companies, two were gracious enough to allow to publish their presentations online  (Xemet and Jenkatehdas). You'll find them below. Enjoy!

Are you going to conquer the world with your innovative and scalable new product, application or service? Are you a high-tech and innovation-based start-up and growth company seeking financing and partnerships?

Then you shouldn´t miss the opportunity to meet venture capitalists and business angels who are looking for such a high tech, high growth and high ambitious business.

The upcoming MoneyTalks^® Forum in November 10th -11th  is an efficient business fundraising and matchmaking event linking high-tech and innovation-based companies, corporations and international and Finnish investors. The event provides a possibility to book one-to-one-meetings between participants.

MoneyTalks® Forum attracts top VCs, don´t miss the chance to grab their attention!

There will be 6-8 pre-selected investor-targeted seven-minute company presentations and several one-minute power pitches. This time, the focus of the company-to-financier pitches will be on mobility. If you want to stand out of the crowd – apply! Please fill in the pitching application from the event web page and send it to janina.salo (at) technopolis.fi by Thursday, October 20th, 2011.

MoneyTalks® Forum event concept won the Best Practice Award in the category of Access to Finance in the Enterprise Europe Network Annual Conference 2011 in Warsaw. Come and see what the winning concept is all about!

The event is being organized by Technopolis for the tenth time. The event will be held in English.

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