About Aaltoes
One of Aaltoes' core goals is to bring new growth companies to Finland. The task is difficult, but the community has the most potential of anything I've ever seen. I’m still surprised why some adults think it's a good idea to give young people nearly a million euros to build crazy things. Maybe someone has seen into the future and knows we’re going to achieve something great.
How to boost entrepreneurship
I think Aaltoes has three ways to encourage students to create companies. The first is by inspiring students. I’ve always been interested in entrepreneurship. In high school, I decided to take an entrepreneurship course, but we ended up mostly making PowerPoints about Finnish stock exchange companies. The teacher had never done anything related to entrepreneurship. The course was really bad and not inspiring at all.
When I later entered university, Aaltoes founder Kristo Ovaska grabbed the mic, wearing jeans and a hoodie, from a couple of men in suits during the opening lecture at the business school. He started raving to us about entrepreneurship and how important it is to work on your own projects during university. It was incredibly inspiring, and it may have been a turning point in my life. Aaltoes must ensure that this kind of energy continues to be brought to the campus.
The second thing is offering opportunities. Kristo mentioned that it’s really beneficial to work on your own projects during studies, and I think Aaltoes offers a great opportunity for that. The community thinks very differently from other people of the same age. Aaltoes helps you realize that you can actually achieve anything and meet anyone. In reality, movies like The Social Network paint a misleading picture of founders. In most cases, you can actually get really far just with Gmail.
The third thing that helps a lot is success. Companies like Wolt, Supercell, or Smartly have massively inspired people. Moreover, growth creates many jobs, and often, in the early stages, companies hire people the founders know personally. According to alumni, many important contacts have been made through Aaltoes. A snowball effect can happen when many early-stage employees decide at some point to build their own company. One success may have inspired thousands, created opportunities for many, and birthed tens or even hundreds of new companies. The growth is exponential. The fact that Aaltoes can serve as a platform for early-stage companies brings tremendous value.
Just join the party yourself
However, Aaltoes has problems I’d like to fix. I think organizing various programs and events is great, but it can’t be the core of the whole thing. At its heart, board members should always at least validate their own ideas to align the work with the goal. Otherwise, the situation might become a bit awkward. Would you accept a party invitation if I handed it to you saying, “Here’s an invite to my party, you go have fun, but I cannot make it there myself.” You probably get the point.
Level 1, 2, and 3
Another problem is that right now Aaltoes focuses a bit too much on level 1 activities, like speaker events or other non-concrete things. In the end, these events can raise attention, interest, and visibility, but they’re not enough by themselves to create new companies.
More opportunities should be created on level 2, like validation or building an MVP. With Aaltoes' resources, this could be super fun. We could, for example, call Boston Dynamics and ask them to send a couple of robots for testing or get a bunch of programmable smart glasses that students couldn’t otherwise afford. We could just as easily order an industrial-grade drone and have Aaltoes members set up a drone delivery service and experiment with it.[1] By testing and shipping products, Aaltoes members could discover great ideas and develop as founders.
Building things alone isn’t going to cut it, the goal should be to eventually move to level 3, where you build a company. Superficially, someone might try to build a program or some function to address this issue. But the best way is to actually try to build a company yourself and create the desired culture through that.[2] Steve Wozniak didn’t want to build products with a graphical interface, but the other Steve did, and look what happened. And even if you screw up your first three startups, no one will really care if the fourth one succeeds.
Community
Is it good for everyone in the community to focus 100% on building a company? From Aaltoes' perspective, not necessarily. The community gives board members a huge opportunity to build something during the year, and for that reason, it’s only fair to give something back. How much time should be divided between your project and advancing the community?[3] I would create a clear structure for this. Every board member should create a certain amount of value for the community, like workshops, courses, study trips, events, and other programs, and prioritize these if needed. I think this is possible if the board focuses on one or at most two things at a time.
About me, briefly
I’ve had many conversations with both current members and alumni, and through them, I’ve gained an understanding of where Aaltoes should improve. Structuring my own thoughts based on these conversations wasn’t easy at all, even though the solution now seems clear. What helped me gain understanding was that we, in collaboration with Aalto University, built an entrepreneurship course at Aaltoes, aimed at creating more growth companies in Finland. I think my future plans to start my own company, along with my strong commitment to Aaltoes and its core mission, make me a natural candidate for chair for the next term.
Notes:
[1] Of course, sponsors should be sought for purchases. I’m probably not far off by saying that with strong sales, the annual budget could be doubled.
[2] During a board year, it’s not worth going all-in on building a company, but you can lay a good foundation with level 2 activities. The trick here is that this way, board members can create a better entrepreneurial culture.
[3] These don’t have to be separate things. There can be many others involved in building an MVP or validating an idea, which creates value for everyone.
Finally, thanks to Roope Ripatti, Ernesti Sario, Tomi Tan-Röholm, and Niklas Hamberg for commenting on the drafts.