Our Story
Ideology
Aaltoes encourages high-tech, high-growth, scalable entrepreneurship and builds a leading startup ecosystem in Finland and Northern Europe. New innovations, great companies and success stories are born because of talented people get together and exchange ideas. Community is a key to serendipity.
Finland has talent and knowledge to create successful entrepreneurship. Our attitude should grow to match our resources, since lack of ambition is the only thing preventing our startup ecosystem to flourish. Aaltoes' goal is that Finland will be the startup hub of Europe and Russia by 2017.
A very few of us have truly gone through the whole process of being a startup entrepreneur, and that is why we bring experienced serial entrepreneurs to tell their insights to anyone who's interested in the topic. One might learn best by doing - but an inspiring example helps to set aims, widen the horizon and avoid a few missteps here and there.
Culture
Aaltoes lives like it preaches - we want to make an impact and change the entrepreneurial culture around us to be bolder and more active. Our culture is based on an open community anyone can join and work with projects they feel passionate about. One crucial element in our community is doing rather than planning - asking for forgiveness rather than asking for permission.
Giving back to community -culture is something we want to embrace. In the words of Charles F. Brannan: "If you have an apple and I have an apple, and we swap apples — we each end up with only one apple. But if you and I have an idea and we swap ideas — we each end up with two ideas.".
History
Aaltoes was founded in 2009 by Aalto University students to pull seams. The idea was to inspire entrepreneurs(-to-be) and help people to work for their own ideas and dreams. Founders of Aaltoes wanted talented people to admire entrepreneurship and see it as a way to create something new and radical. And definitely it should be seen as an option for working in a stable corporation.
Aaltoes started with grassroot events, which are still the most valuable part of our activity. Aaltoes gave people opportunities to build their very own team, pitch their ideas and get feedback from experienced entrepreneurs and build professional network. In Twitter, #aaltoes became quickly the most popular hashtag in Finland.
In just a few years we've achieved a lot, and it's fair to say that Aaltoes has made a difference when it comes to Finland's startup scene and entrepreneurial culture. Success has only driven us to work harder and aim higher.
Startup Sauna Seed Accelerator Program and Startup Life Internship Program were created by Aaltoes. Three years ago Aaltoes started to take care of startup conference Slush - which is nowadays part of Startup Sauna - and it has grown to be one of the largest startup conferences in Europe.
