Two weeks ago in the basement of Helsinki’s historic Kulttuuritalo (designed by Alvar Aalto and opened in 1958) a packed crowd took part in the Ultrahack MyData Hackathon kickoff, marking the start of the 48 hour intensive effort. Around eighty selected hackers from more than twenty teams gathered. A handful had traveled to Helsinki from …
The first ever Helsinki Blockchain Conference 2016 will take place at Microsoft Flux open space, and will be the first high-profile, dedicated Blockchain event in Nordic Region. Blockchain is hailed as one of the most revolutionary technologies of the past few decades. Right now the industry is experiencing an intense influx of investment – the …
The Startup Passion training and mentoring programme run in partnership with Cursor OY, Finland, has just had their third successful major event. A five-day training course on lean startup, customer development and storytelling, amongst other key topics. Participants drawn from a range countries had the opportunity to strengthen the basic foundations of their startup ideas …
A competition for the Internet of Things has been launched by three of Northern Europe’s largest companies: Tetra Pak, Scania and Nobia. The goal is to develop game-changing solutions for everything from kitchens to trucks to packaging, through the creation of a technical prototype with a business focus. Participants in the competition will receive free …
Impact Iceland 2016 is crowdfunding Iceland’s first conference on social entrepreneurship on Karolina Fund. It will be the first in a series of conferences in Iceland focusing on social innovation as a profitable, sustainable, and impactful response to today’s challenges. Tanja Wohlrab-Ryan writes at Startup Iceland about making Iceland not only a vibrant startup community, …
It started as a university project to ensure that the creators could get a ticket to the Roskilde Festival. But after four yeas of development on a hobby basis at the festival, the project has now become a living. Meet Peefence, the startup that makes mobile urinals. The Roskilde Festival is a large annual music …
Sustainability is more than an environmental concept – it’s big business too. At the Impact Investor Ball last week, several startups pitched their products for a more sustainable future. Lean Green was one of them. The company has developed a festival chair in biodegradable and recyclable cardboard. The chair has been a hit at Roskilde …
Last Thursday, the Microsoft Flux space in Helsinki played host to a panel and workshop by the FACE Entrepreneurship group. FACE stands for Failure Aversion Change in Europe, and they have been making their way around select European cities to promote beyond the traditionally media-sexy aspects of business and technology in the start-up ecosystem by …
Helsinki in the beginning of June was quite literally the hot-bed of start-up and investment activity in the Nordics. The beautiful 25°C weather complemented the hot new innovative solutions on display. Several events created the perfect melting-pot with which to showcase Finnish and Nordic talent to a wider audience of international visitors. Several key events …
At Infoshare 2016, Rachel Milgram of InnovIL shared an investor’s perspective on startup funding. Rachel’s expertise comes from years of working closely with VC’s and business angels to evaluate companies seeking investment and help match them with the right opportunities. “The fundamentals are never going to change”, says Rachel. “When an investor looks at an …