Futuuns » Silicon Valley trip

Silicon Valley trip wrap up

Kimmo — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:23:34 +0000

Ten days in the Valley went past fast and the trip back home has already started. We had an intensive schedule during our stay and we got to see and learn a lot. I believe we got a little taste of the actual life of an entrepreneur in the Valley. During the day time you really had to run from a meeting to another and try to make as many new contacts as possible. Evenings you used writing follow up mails and working your project forward. The pace of life in the Valley is fast and the days are long.

We were really priviledged to travel as a part of the Aaltoes group. The group was full of bright and enthusiastic young entrepreneurs and we made a lot of new valuable contacts. Aaltoes had organized some great events and we got to see places and meet people you normally might have a hard time seeing and meeting. There is just so much going on in the Valley all the time that you really have to make choices on where to be and hope you’re in the right place with the right people. From this perspective our trip was a huge success. We got to meet just the right people for our project and really made some great new contacts for the future.

The culture in the Valley was really supportive to entrepreneurship. The attitude we faced everywhere was to just go for it and the success will follow. Failing was seen as a really valuable learning experience and most of the success stories had come from years of trying. One of the main messages we take home and start implementing straight away is simple: Be fast, be efficient and be flexible.

Our tight schedule will continue as we head out to Slush as soon as we arrive Helsinki. We’ll get you a report on that later. See you there!

Cocktails and networking

Arto — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 07:36:33 +0000

Wow! Two days of intensive networking! We started yesterday at former MySQL CEO Mårten Mickos place where we went for cocktails with the Aaltoes group. Good to see that there are such talented and inspired people in Aaltoes. Some successful enterpreneus from Finland also joined us for the cocktails. Wise words from experienced people. Great stuff!

Today we started the day with a brief tour at the Microsoft Campus. Then we ran off to San Francisco to meet with Jason Aiken from 99designs. We had a long talk about how they made it and got exellent tips for our service as well. The main message was that the service must be outstanding to get people using it. If the users love it, they’ll market it to their friends without asking.

In the evening we went to Musica Tecnomica which is an invite only monthly get together for the people in the audio industry. Thanks for Brian Zisk for hooking us up with the event organizer David Katznelson and thanks for David for inviting us to this great event! David himself is a former Vice President at Warner Bros Records. We got a change to talk to other great people in the audio industry as well. There were startup founders, label executives, entertainment lawyers, Emmy award winners, etc. What a honor to participate.

We made great new contacts and met a lot of interesting people!

FailCon report

Kimmo — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 03:31:06 +0000

We spent the whole Tuesday in a conference called Failcon in San Francisco. The conference focused on the trials and tribulations of successful entrepreneurs. The speakers included the founders of some of the leading social web and VC firms in the bay area such as for example Sandy Jen and Seth Sternberg; co-founders of Meebo and Mark Pincus; CEO of Zynga just to name a few. We heard different kinds of stories about failure and how to recover from it. One message got repeated over and over again: don’t be afraid of failing! For each of these succesfull entrepreneurs failure had worked as a catalyst for future success. They had learned their greatest lessons from their failures. We got to hear some truly inspirational speeches! Here are some other wise words we heard on some specific topics:

Team

- Have different set of skills in your team.
- Distribute areas of responsibility.
- Hire people with entrepreneurial mindset.
- Handle recruiting in-house.

Development

- Use iteration in development.
- Always assume that you’re wrong.
- Test everything.
- Lauch fast, launch imperfect.
- Do one thing at a time.

VCs

- Best deal might not be the one with the highest valuation.
- Negotiate for the control of the company.
- Control your roadmap.
- Have a flexible business plan.

Last but not least you need to know when to quit. When you start feeling like a walking zombie it’s time. Misery is the natures way of saying you are doing it wrong.

Just another Monday in the Valley

Kimmo — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 06:07:18 +0000

Our first Monday in the Valley was filled with interesting program organized by Aaltoes. We started the day with a tour around the Stanford University. The campus area itself was a real inspiration! We were priviledged to have Juha Mattson a visiting scholar at Stanford Graduate School of Business give us the tour. Juha gave us great insights to the university and the campus life.

After the tour we met with Linda Wells the head of the Center for Entreprenerial Studies. Wells introduced us to the MBA program and answered questions about the center. Especially interesting was the cooperation between the students and the alumni. The alumni help to build contact databases for the students and answer their questions through an active mailing list.

Later in the afternoon we sat down in a park with Marie Domingo and IdaRose Sylvester to discuss the use of social media and creating media precense in the USA. Marie has a long career in public relations and Ida runs a company called the SiliconValleyLink. We had a great discussion with them and got a lot of valuable information.

At this stage we parted the Aaltoes group to a meeting of our own. We got the priviledge to meet Brian Zisk a strategist specializing in music, tech & founder advising. Brian is the man behind projects such as the Future of Music Coalition and SanFran MusicTech Summit to name a few. Brian gave us valuable feedback and advice on what is important at this stage of our startup. Big thanks to Peter Vesterbacka for the introduction!

What a great day of events and interesting people! Tomorrow we will head out to Failcon a conference that focuses on the trials and tribulations of successful entrepreneurs. If the rest of the week will be anything like today we’re in for a great time!

PS. We spent the Sunday evening networking with the other Aaltoes trip participants. It’s just amazing what a group of people have come together on this trip! We have for example Jussi from Muxlim the world’s largest Muslim lifestyle media company, Maija and Mikael from Powerkiss a company providing integrated wireless charging system and Ramin from MySites an interesting content sharing platform just to name a few. Only the contacts and the knowledge this group can share together is valuable on it’s own! You can see the full list of the Startups participating the trip here:

Aaltoes Startups in Silicon Valley

The Stanford University campus area

Linda Wells talking about the Center for Entreprenerial Studies

Meeting with Maria Domingo and IdaRose Sylvester

Next stop Palo Alto!

Kimmo — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 01:49:39 +0000

After a weekend of preparation in San Francisco we are heading to Palo Alto where our journey really begins! Later today we will meet the other Aaltoes people and get a change to network with the Stanford University students. We have an intensive week ahead of us! You can find an overview of the week here:

Aaltoes Silicon Valley Talkoot

We did also get a change to see San Francisco a bit during the weekend. The city is awesome and we hope we get a change to spend some more time there.

A view of the city from the famous Alcatraz island

Weekend in San Francisco

Kimmo — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:09:53 +0000

After more than 24 hours of traveling, one nearly missed flight and multiple airplane meals later we finally arrived to San Francisco on Thursday late in the evening local time. We are now spending the weekend in San Francisco preparing for the upcoming week. We are working on our presentation material and contacting interesting people in the Bay area. We might even have some time to get to know the city a bit! On Sunday we head out to Palo Alto where we’re going to spend an intensive week of networking.

In Helsinki Airport we bumped already into one Aaltoes trip participant Elias Pietilä from Qvik. Elias had different flights than us but we’ll be sure to meet him the other travelers on Sunday in Palo Alto.

PS. If YOU happen to have good contacts in the SF Bay area – especially to people somehow connected to the audio industry - or would have ideas on who we should meet don’t hesitate to tip us! We appreciate all the help that we can get.

Futuuns team – Teemu, Arto and Kimmo (Tommi is keeping the scene alive in Helsinki)

Futuuns team heads to Silicon Valley!

Kimmo — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 20:49:19 +0000

Tomorrow the Futuuns team will join some other upcoming Finnish startups and enthusiastic Aalto University students on a trip to non other than Silicon Valley! The trip is organized by Aaltoes and consists of entrepreneurial events, startup visits and networking opportunities with for example students from the Stanford University. On top of that we will be trying to organize some meetings of our own with some interesting people from the audio industry.

We’ll keep you updated on what’s happening there through this blog! Also be sure to follow the Arctic Startup blog as they are also joining the trip and will be blogging throughout it:

Arctic Startup

California here we come!