The Duke's Discoverage

Many things have changed during the month we have taken part in the Summer of Startups program at Aalto Venture Garage in Otaniemi.

We applied for the program with about 60 other contestants and were selected to the second round with 20 applications. 16 showed to pitch their ideas to a jury made of Tekes and Aalto people. To our disappointment, we did not get selected to be a part of the 10 teams to get 750€/mo/person for developing their startups.

Still, from the start it was obvious that we would join the program as volunteers, because we would have gone forward with our startup anyway. Even back then we had some working code – though pretty rough – and a strong conviction, so we knew there was no turning back.

Venture Garage as our new office and community

First we, or least I, felt like outsiders with the ten teams doing their stuff together. With every next day spent at the Garage – or VG as we like to call it – we grew more into the community.

At the very latest, joining the trip to Estonia made us feel a part of the official teams. The other teams and organizers, among which my personal Starcraft II coach marine-Ramine, welcomed us and so we experienced Tallinn in a very special way.

Picture: Tallinn is a confusing city of both old and new with its traditional old town, horrific decaying soviet buildings and the new rich with their SUVs and big office buildings.

Our trip consisted of excursions to startup and IT companies around the capital of Estonia, including Skype (http://www.skype.com) and Webmedia (http://www.webmedia.ee/), and a pitching competition with our Estonian colleagues to a jury consisting of Estonian startup people, like Kristjan Laanemaa from Ambient Sound Investments. And of course some recreational activities including enjoying the local food.

Pitching makes you a better entrepreneur

A thought about pitching: for the whole duration of the SoS program I have wondered, what’s up with the frenzy about pitching all the time. I doesn’t feel natural to me. But at night, when I couldn’t sleep in a overheated hotelroom, it appeared to me. Pitching is like a keyhole to the company. It is a way startups can be effectively coached, because it forces to crystallize their idea and business model into something very concrete. This way it can be also developed with the aid of constructive criticism. Just like Ramine & co have been helping us to do.

So at the end of the day, being third (as the second Finnish team after IncSpark) in the pitching competition is actually very revealing of our progress during this one month. When we entered the program, we had a product which had no unique value proposition. During the program we have pretty much built it from scratch, also using parts from “guest lecturers’” talks. We were especially influenced by Jussi Laakkonen’s talk on game mechanics. Game mechanics have since become a heavy buzzword at the VG, not just in our team.

Shout-outs

I would like to thank everyone involved in the SoS program including guest speakers, judges, coaches and colleagues/other teams. Although we are only half-way, I still feel I’ve progressed a hundred miles as an entrepreneur. A special shout-out to Ramine for harassing us all the time, making us rethink and rework constantly.

DealMachine in private beta this week

Our startup’s product, DealMachine (http://dealmachine.net) will be going to private beta this week and is actually in “private alpha” meaning a couple of teams are using it already. August will be interesting both in terms of learning and launching our first commercial web app.

That’s all for now, folks! Time to get back to Starcr… work!

—Timo

Picture: That’s me with my newly bought shades in one of Estonia’s great inventions, the Vapiano restaurant concept.