Silicon Vikings Blog

Finnish Entrepreneurship, Seed Funding and Support

This post complements and extends the recent post on Nordic Venture Funding and focuses on some recent developments in Finland (and the Vigo Program) and puts this in a broader context of Finnish entrepreneurship developments.
Released: May 15th, 2012 11:37 PM by Eilif Trondsen EilifTrondsen
Eilif Trondsen
Tags: accelerators, Finland, Seed funding, tekes

Upcoming Silicon Vikings and Partner Events

Find out about the hottest event you don't want to miss!
Released: May 14th, 2012 03:46 PM by Katarina Bennich SiliconVikingsHQ

Reflections on Nordic Venture Funding

This posting makes some reflections around Nordic seed funding of startups, and starts with a recent announcement in Norway about the government planning to set up 6 new seed funds to provide funding to Norwegian startup companies. The post also comments on the situation in some other Nordic countries and relates the funding situation and trends to what analysts have found when it comes to Nordic startups and their relative successful history.
Released: May 13th, 2012 07:01 PM by Eilif Trondsen EilifTrondsen
Tags: nordics, startups, Venture funding

EdX: The Future Powerhouse in Online Learning and MOOCs?

On May 2, 2012 the presidents of Harvard and MIT jointly announced a new, major online initiative—edX (a non-profit organization jointly owned and funded by Harvard and MIT)—where “the two institutions will collaborate to enhance campus-based teaching and learning and build a global community of online learners.” (http://www.edxonline.org/). This initiative follows months of growing interest and activity around MOOCs (discussed in my earlier posts) triggered mostly by the enrollment of 160,000 students in an AI class given by Stanford lecturer Sebastian Thrun and Google researcher Peter Norvig.
Released: May 06th, 2012 10:01 AM by Eilif Trondsen EilifTrondsen
Eilif Trondsen
Tags: edx, Harvard, MIT, online education, technology

Steve Blank on Innovation around Online Education

Steve Blank is a well-known entrepreneurship guru in Silicon Valley and far beyond. According to Blank, he “moved from being an entrepreneur to teaching entrepreneurship to both undergraduate and graduate students at U.C. Berkeley, Stanford University, Columbia University and the Joint Berkeley/Columbia Executive MBA program.” As a respectable academic, he has of course also authored popular business books, including Four Steps to the Epiphany, as well as The Startup Owners Manual, which he says ”integrates 10 years of new knowledge.” This post focuses on a blog post Blank made on online education, a topic he has not previously addressed much, as far as I know, but his post is very interesting and contains an excellent graphic that illustrates some of the challenges facing academic institutions now challenged to address the growing online education tidal wave.
Released: May 05th, 2012 10:09 PM by Eilif Trondsen EilifTrondsen
Eilif Trondsen
Tags: Innovation, MOOCs, online education, steve blank, technology

Nordic Entrepreneurship Night at Silicon Vikings

This post gives a brief description and some comments on what was a very interesting and exciting launch event for the Entrepreneurship and Learning SIG of Silicon Vikings, which took place on May 1 in Silicon Valley (you can see the event description here: http://bit.ly/JcoCNE). The event was a joint initiative with Seed Forum International.
Released: May 02nd, 2012 11:34 PM by Eilif Trondsen EilifTrondsen
Eilif Trondsen
Tags: Nordic Entrepreneurs, pitch session, Seed Forum

Entrepreneurship in Asian High-Tech Industries

This post summarizes and comments on two interesting presentations given recently at Stanford University, as part of the Entrepreneurship in Asia High-Tech Industries seminar series of US-Asia Technology Management Center.
Released: April 29th, 2012 10:22 PM by Eilif Trondsen EilifTrondsen
Eilif Trondsen
Tags: Asia, entrepreneurship, stanford

“From corporate manager to entrepreneur in a weekend” - A story from a newly hatched CEO

 

You're fired - all of you!

Although not the exact words this was what most of us heard. I remember feeling my body sinking deeper into the seat and for a moment I didn't hear anything around me. What was I going to do without a job?

Roughly 1000 people were gathered in Copenhagen on April 27th 2011 to hear the announcement from the Nokia Management team that the Copenhagen R&D Center would be closed completely. This is just about one year ago and the closing of the R&D Center in Copenhagen has changed the life of a lot of people - including me. 

I have always wanted to start my own company but to be honest it's pretty nice to be working in a multinational company with lots of opportunities, great benefits and a nice paycheck in the mail every month. The closing of Nokia Copenhagen was a welcomed kick to move out of the corporate universe without taking too big financial risks. Nokia's severance packages and support to employees was beyond compare.

So how do you take the most advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime situation?

My story will cover some of the challenges and learnings I have experienced on the way from being a Sourcing Manager to becoming a single founder in an IT startup. I hope you will find some inspiration and maybe a few pieces of advice to take away.
 

Startup Weekend
Ironically, my startup venture began at my very last working day in Nokia.

Nokia hosted a Startup Weekend event and encouraged those of us who had entrepreneurial dreams to show up. We even got a discount. I didn't know what to expect and went along mostly out of curiosity. I was hungover from the Danish Midsummer Party the day before and didn't think my idea was strong enough. 5 hours later I had the most votes of all the pitches and was forming a team around the idea "CompetenceMe" - a concept where people's competencies are rated on both hard skills and soft skills. A way to display a person’s potential rather than just showing the resume which is retrospective.

Learning #1
I probably wouldn't have been where I am today if I had stayed home from the Startup Weekend... Be open and show up for events even if you don't know what to expect or ...

Released: April 25th, 2012 12:18 PM by Jesper Andersen JesperAndersen

Disrupting US Education

The posting points to a number of prominent academics and business people who recently, or in the past, made predictions about how emerging technology will radically impact our education system. Signs are now that significant changes is now approaching, bringing new opportunities to entrepreneurs who understand the industry and the needs of both educators and students.
Released: April 15th, 2012 11:02 PM by Eilif Trondsen EilifTrondsen
Eilif Trondsen
408-386-4304
Tags: Education, forecasts, Learning, technology

A call for application to attend the Tällberg Forum for SI Alumni

The Swedish Institute each year sponsor the participation fee for selected scholarship holders and this year we would like you as a former SI Scholarship holder to be able to secure a seat at this interesting forum.
Released: April 11th, 2012 10:35 AM by Katarina Bennich SiliconVikingsHQ