AALTOES TEAM HANDBOOK 2010

Just what is Aaltoes and how do I get involved? In this handbook we’ve compiled a few simple things you need to know. Aaltoes is a work in progress, so we’ll be updating this document regularly.

v.1.0 12/2010

Go-getters and self-starters. Don’t lose perspective.

What they say about us? A selection of kudos from the community

No matter what, we are all about generating new compa-nies. This should be the focus of all our activities. The other guiding principle: we do things. Don’t spend too much time speaking, meeting and e-mailing. A brilliant idea not executed is literally worthless.

And most importantly. We do things together.

The Aaltoes team makes the magic happen: we have a very strong culture of doing things, of which we all are very proud and protective of. It’s up to you to make the year work for you.

The easiest way to participate is to come to an event half-an-hour early and just start helping out. Later, find your place in the spectrum of skills. Event-organising, training, blogging - there’s always something to be done. Check out the rest of the handbook and see what resonates best with you.

” Aaltoes has provided a platform for discussion, ideas to be shared and teams to be formed. I have used this platform twice to pitch my ideas, and it has helped me to connect to some really good people. I think this is just the beginning and we expect more exemplary moves from Aaltoes. I could very well use the phrase “You ain’t seen nothing yet” . - Sachin Gaur

“At Aaltoes Talkoot, we recruited one of our early employees, got a lot of invaluable contacts and had a chance to pitch and develop our business idea in a relaxed yet professional atmosphere.” - Markus Bergman

” Aaltoes has been very successful in encouraging people to become entrepreneurs and in raising interest towards entrepreneurship in general. As for myself, Aaltoes’s Startup Talkoot was the best thing to happen to me. It enabled me to find and join a startup team. Moreover, all the numerous people that I have met in the Aaltoes events have given me and my team some very valuable advice. I especially value the “talkoot” spirit in which people genuinely help and give feedback to each others.

In essence, Aaltoes doesn’t just bring you new contacts, it brings you friends.”

- Nico Hiort Af Örnäs

“Aaltoes is the only student organization that is serious about growth entrepreneurship in the country. I say this having worked with most of the student unions here (for our student promo). Aaltoes has managed to bring known international speakers to teach students about growth entrepreneurship, organizing pitching competi-tions with experienced entrepreneurs, and gather 40+ new ideas / projects together in less than a year.I would say their track record is vastly superior to any compa-rable endeavor from student organizations (or most incubators for that matter).

- Ramine Darabiha

Pitching Aaltoes

Recommended reading

Always be prepared to present Aaltoes in 15 seconds. No kidding. Practice. Here’s a small cheatlist of what you might want to say:

Aalto Entrepreneurship Society is a student-run group started in Janu-ary 2009. Our goal is to create a cultural change at Aalto University: bring resources together and gro entrepreneurial leaders. We currently have over 5000 members.

Aaltoes works as a catalyst – bringing together students, ideas, resources, mentors, alumni and startups. We organize different types of networking, training and social events, as well as trips abroad, start-up visits and pitching events.

Arctic Startup Reporting the Baltic Start-up Scene http://www.arcticstartup.com/ Y-Combinator Anything by Paul Graham, start with A Student’s Guide to Startup Entrepreneurship or the Y-Combinator Recom-mended reading list http://ycombinator.com/lib.html

STVP Ecorner Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders series, great podcasts from sea-soned entrepreneurs. See for instance Venture Capital Teaching Guide. http://ecorner.stanford.edu/

For other sources of information google: TechCrunch, VentureBeat, HackerNews, MIT 100K, Guy Kawasaki, Taneli Tikka

Hello Policy!

The new board decides the strategy for 2010. But there is always plenty of stuff to do for the team. Aaltoes is organised so, that there is always a named responsible person for projects from within the board. However, this does not mean this person personally organises everything or even necessarily heads the organising team. They act as a contact people and make sure that the organising team knows their goals, resources available and what needs to be taken care of for the project to suc-ceed. Some suggestions on projects that we’ve started in 2009:

» Aalto Ventures Park. Hands-on work as well as planning.

» International Trips: Moscow, India, China - where next?

» Talk Events. Invite the rockstar entrepre-

neurs to share their vision.

» Pitch Events. Discover the new Skype and help out in forming new teams.

» Something totally new. Pitch your idea to a board member and go make it happen.

» Funding. An ongoing project.

» Communications inside Aalto University. Guilds, clubs, researchers need to be evangelised.

» Website. Guide for entrepreneurs, feature stories on Aalto Startups, shar-ing industry knowledge. Blog posts or totally new sections- it’s up to you.

» Visual Identity and communications. Help make our mantra more memorable. Both inside and out.

» Keeping in touch with the Aaltoes startups. How can we help you today?

» Attending external events and writing about them.

» Communications with the sister organizations in Finland and abroad.

The board meets every Tuesday at 17.00 in Aaltoes Office, but also in TaiK and HSE. The board meetings are open to everyone. There is always a secretary for every meeting and the meeting minutes are sent by mail. If you don’t come to the weekly meetings, send an update to the team. Thursdays are more relaxed evenings in Nolla. This is were you should ask interested people, whether students or entrepre-neurs, to come and meet the team.

If you buy something, you should first declare it with someone from the board. Prescheduled events have preliminary budgets. Don’t go buying stuff on your own, but on the other hand be self-driven in your decisions. Some basic principles: Aaltoes spends money on net-working activities, conferences and books.

What to do in 2010?

Tips and Tricks for a team member

1) Watch the Aaltoes presentation at http://aaltoes.com/aes/about/

2) See the Press section for some coverage on Aaltoes. http://aaltoes.com/aes/press/

3) Read about our Aalto Startups, learn what they do. http://aaltoes.com/aalto-startups/

4) Read some recaps from the previous events. Videos are also available.

5) Browse through the Google Sites and Groups. There’s a lot of info - looking through the old board meet-ing minutes might give you some ideas of the things discussed.

6) Feedback forms in docs. What works and what doesn’t according to our community.

7) Get creative. We have videorecorders, speakers, even tents and grilling equipment. Almost anything is ar-rangable, whether it’s Redbull or Nokia phones.

Aalto Ventures Park / Aalto Design FactoryTwo premises that are the current home of Aalto Entre-preneurship Society. Keycards can be requested from Jussi Hannula (@tkk.fi). Betonimiehenkuja 5 http://aaltodesignfactory.fi

Other places we like: Nolla, Pohjoinen Rautatiekatu 21

There are several handy things that you should know in order to work efficiently on the Aaltoes team. All the information can’t be crammed here, so remember to check out Sites and Groups as well. Also, when hosting for instance a meeting or an event, remember to document the things you do in order to make life easier for the next years team members.

Small list of resources available.

Checklist for Web apps An @aaltoes.com e-mail address. Use the tagline, web-address and twitter feed at the end of every e-mail. Copy here: Google Groups for e-mail communications. You can order a daily wrap-up of the discussions. Google Sites for storing information. Remember to add your meeting minutes, contacts etc. Also ideas you’re working on etc. Google Docs shared Aaltoes folder for sharing docu-ments. These should be transfered/embedded to GSites after initial editing. Google Calender for coordinating dates and planned events. Dropbox for storing documents, big files etc.Wordpress id for posting stories on the blog

Other passwords (like Vimeo and Twitter) can be re-quested from the IT resposinble.

Personal channels you can and should use to promote Aaltoes: Twitter personal user id, use #aaltoes. Flickr personal user id, use #aaltoes. Facebook personal user id, use to share content from the blog. Linkedin, join the community and start topics.

Small glossary to the world of startups

What happened in 2009?

Angel. An angel investor is an affluent individual who provides capital for a business start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity. A-round. A Series A round is the name typically given to a company’s first significant round of venture funding in the Silicon Valley model. BASES. Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students.Burn rate. Negative cash flow. It is a measure for how fast a company will use up its share-holder capital. Business Incubator. Provides workspace, coaching, and support services to entrepreneurs and early-stage businesses. Bootstrapping. Bootstrapping in business is to start a business without external help/capital. Startups that bootstrap their business fund development of their company through internal cash flow and are cautious with their expenses. Elevator Pitch. A brief overview of an idea for a product, service, or project. The pitch is so called because it can be delivered in the time span of an elevator ride (say, thirty seconds or 100-150 words).

January February

March

April

Jan. 30th. The first Startup Evening Some 170 attendees. Speakers included Ville Vesterinen, Petri Vilen, Helene Auramo, Christof-fer Landtman and Maija Itkonen.

Feb 18th Startup Beer at Kipsari

March 13th Startup Evening How to get started? Speakers included Moaffak Ahmed and Jussi Harvela as well as Joonas Hjelt, Hannu Uotila, Mika Vatanen, Mikko Kärkkäinen, Joonas Pekkanen, Michael Falck and Tuomas Syrjänen

April 14th Power Networking with Sue Tonks

March 31st Aaltoes Idea Pitch Evening. Winner: CityYard.

April 25th Startup Talkoot. Working on business ideas. Arctic Alarms. Widsen. CityYard. Illtags. Social Mobile Gaming

April 27th. Startup Center Day

Start-up Center is a joint incuba-tor of Arabus (Taik) Technopolis Ventures and HSE Small business center.

May 19th TechStart. Speakers included Teemu Kurppa, Tuomas Syrjänen, Osma Ahvenlampi

May 25th Visit to Hoitonetti

May

May 28th visit to Sininen Meteoriitti

Exit. Ways of recouping the capital the entrepreneur has invested in a company. The most common strategy is simply to sell their equity position to someone else. Freemium. A business model that works by offering basic services for free, while charging a premium for ad-vanced or special features. Keksintösäätiö. The Foundation for Finnish Inventions supports and promotes the development and exploita-tion of Finnish inventions. NDA. A non-disclosure agreement is an agreement where a third-party agrees to protect your startup’s confiden-tial information idea from disclosure to other parties. An NDA can be one-way (only one party has a confidential-ity obligation) or two-way (both parties have confidentiality obligations). Sister organizations of Aaltoes. Boost Turku and Stream Tampere in 2009, more to come. Seed funding. A seed round is a securities offering whereby one or more parties that have some connection to a new enterprise invest the funds necessary to start the business. Seed money is typically used to pay for such preliminary operations as market research and product development. Stealth. Stealth mode is a company’s temporary state of secretiveness, usually undertaken in order to avoid alerting competitors to a pending product launch or other business initiative. Tekes. The Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation. Tekes is the main public funding organisation for research, development and innovation in Finland. Tuli funding. Tuli is a program funded by Tekes that helps researchers and research communities to evaluate the commercial potential of a research-based inventions.

June

July

August

September

October

November December

JuneJune

October 11th MIT Entrepreneur-ship Session at Aalto Ventures Park Bill Aulet and Ken Morse

December 15th Mårten Mickos. Opening of the pho-tography exhibition.

December 5th. Aaltoes Talk-oot, renovating

June 5th Arkadia 28Opening an Growth Entrepreneurshop Panel

June 9th Entrepre-neurial Ventures Fair

Bringing together Aalto Students, Startups, and HSE & TKK MBAs

June 10th Aalto University Symposium

July 15th Aaltoes Startup Beer in Fanny

July 28th Aaltoes Startup Visit to Dicole

June 30th Aaltoes Startup Visit to Floobs

September 4th – Aaltoes Startup Beer in Nolla

September 30th Aaltoes Talk with Jari Sarasvuo and Risto Siilasmaa. MIR-day.

October 5th Aaltoes Visit to Sulake

October 8th Aaltoes Pitching, winner IdeaCafe

October 13th Aaltoes Clean-tech Safari

September 24th Freshman Event.

October 30th Artic Shakeup. Richard Horning Marten Mickos Giacomo Marini Tanja Aitamurto Michel Wendell

October 25th Aaltoes Silicon Valley Talkoot with Arctic Startup

October 19th Aaltoes Pitch-ing winner University

November. SlushOtasuunnistus

Kauppalehti Optio Award

VC. Venture Capital/ist. A type of private equity capital typically provided for early-stage, high-potential, growth companies in the interest of generating a return through an eventual realization event such as an IPO or trade sale of the company. Venture capital typically comes from institutional investors and high net worth individuals and is pooled together by dedicated investment firms. Vigo. Vigo Programmes aim is to use public sector incentives to achieve the involvement of the best, internationally experienced top experts in enterprise development to transform startups into new growth enterprises. Currently includes Veturi Venture Accelerator, Cleantech Invest, Food Process Innovations, KoppiCatch, Lifeline Ventures and Lots. Y-Combinator. Combinator is an American seed-stage startup funding firm, started in 2005 by Paul Graham.

Betonimiehenkuja 3

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