Antti Vilpponen has co-organized the SLUSH event with ArcticStartup, the leading weblog on Nordic and Baltic startups, founded by Antti in 2007. Since there were also a number of startup companies involved in the organization of the SLUSH, Antti finds „it is a great show of talent to have a startup event organized by startups themselves“. Antti „fell in love with small companies and organizations“ after he graduated and started working for Apaja, a Finish gaming company. He finds working for a startup company „is a way of life and it’s about enabling things and creating new stuff.“
According to Antti, „Arctic companies are slowly becoming more like their Western counterparts, more aggressive in marketing and product launching. At the grass-roots level we are doing relatively well, but we need to embrace the whole ecosystem from the governmental side with bigger organizations embracing startups as well.“
That is why ArcticStartup wants to facilitate connections: „We need to create a strong online community to form companies and share ideas,“ says Antti. „It is also crucial to see more knowledge sharing from the ones who have IPOed. That way we can produce success stories even faster.“ ArcticStartup helps create „a radically optimistic entrepreneurial culture in the Nordics and Baltics“ and wants „to grow the blog larger and incorporate it into a company relatively soon in order to have a true market-based business.“ Furthermore, the ArcticStartup team wants to facilitate the internationalization of Nordic and Baltic internet and mobile software startups: „You just can’t break free from the Arctic regions without connections“ stresses Antti. „Also, the language is a big barrier – that’s why we blog in English.“
Anybody interested in the Nordic market should contact ArcticStartup, says Antti. „We’re more than glad to help!“
Please also notice that as of now, Antti will cover the Nordic startup scene on
www.tiburon-tv.com in a regular report.
