#boostturku

Boost Tales: Maria Jensen

First time I heard about Boost Turku was when a researcher colleague of mine asked me to apply for the Startup Journey in spring 2014. As cell biologists, we would come up with a business idea that was to “create your personal training program based on your DNA”. We entered the accelerator with that idea, but during the Journey changed it to “creating DNA tests for racehorses” after being sparred by advisors. When summer ended and the Journey was over, we all went back to our research and the business idea was almost forgotten.

After a while I started to miss the candid and energetic atmosphere of Boost Turku, so in spring 2015 I applied for a board position and was elected to the Boost Turku board. During my year as a board member I had some of the most awesome times as well as learned plenty of useful things regarding board activity and budgeting. What I had no idea about at the time was that the fact that I joined the board would very soon change my entire life. 

Boost Tales: Erika Halonen

My name is Erika and I worked with Boost from 2012 to the fall of 2015. I started out as a volunteer, helping out with events and what not. After that I was part of the board and after that I worked community manager from 2013 to 2015.

So was it worth it? Did I learn anything?

Absolutely.

When it comes to my career I think Boost was the best thing that could have happened to me. It provided me with an environment of ambitious people from all sorts of backgrounds who taught me a lot about startups, entrepreneurship, technology, and event management just to name a few.

Boost Tales: Toni Perämäki, Founding chairman of Boost Turku

Who?

Co-founder & Chairman of the board, 2009

Board member, Startup Farm & Startup Journey project,  2010

Boost community manager 5/2011 – 12/2013

Tell us about yourself and how was your time in Boost like?

I guess my journey with Boost started like all the best things do, by accident. I’ve always been involved in different extracurricular activities and at Turku School of Economics I was in the board of KKOY & Wiiniklubi. In the autumn of 2009 by couple of co-incidences a group of weirdos who wanted to help students to become entrepreneurs was formed within Universities of Turku. That group was later before the Christmas to be transformed into the founding team of Boost Turku. I was part of that group. That was the beginning of Boost Turku for me and Boost Turku.

What is Startup Journey?

Startup Journey is a ten-week program for teams with kick-ass attitude who want to make their idea a reality. We are looking for teams with a potent business idea, skills to execute and willingness to commit to the program.

What do we expect from you?

Team: Awesome, highly motivated bunch of people who are willing to break through walls to get their idea going and who work well together.

Business idea: You don’t need to have company or a ready set of products yet, but scalable idea that can potentially reach audiences abroad

Commitment: During the program we expect you to take part in the arranged program, help others and most of all have fun!

Apply now!

Once you submit your application, you will receive a link in your email to update your application. You can do that until the end of application period.

STARTUP JOURNEY APPLICATION!

This post has most like been written again a thousand times and still it is always as important as it was the first time. Still many first time startup entrepreneurs fall victim of their own mind in thinking that their business idea is totally unique and unheard of. With this presumption the actual competition research is left thin which turns into surprises during the later stages of the idea development.

Please all you out there: Don't think your idea is unique. Really, please don't.

This said you should not automatically think that finding competitors is a bad thing. For me at least the presence of competition only validates the market and customer pain.

So where should You start the research then?

When you start looking for your competition you should of course first list and define search words related to your startup and the industry. When you have done this you can move forward to the actual searching.

Obviously the first option is to start by using Google. This gives you nice glance about the activity around the industry and your specific keywords. Don't forget that the Google trends is also a good tool.

For more startup specific information sources there are many good ones. You should use as many as possible and really create a full picture of your competition landscape. Below is a list of good information sources:

Crunchbase Angellist Quora YouNoodle ChubbyBrain Venturebeat profiles Killer Startups SpyFu TagURLs.com

So you know Your competition - Then what?

If you go thoroughly through the above list you should at least start to have some kind of picture who are the other players working in the same field as you. This of course is not enough. When you have your competitors mapped out you should be able to somehow categorize them in a meaningful way. For this there is no one solution that fits every situation. Below are some ways for trying to make sense of this whole categorization issue.

First thing to do is to open the Excel spreadsheet or take the pen an paper and start listing product and service features. Create a list where you have all your competitors and their product features listed in one file. From there you can start comparing them to yours to see what is your differentiator against others.

You should also check what people are saying about your competitors. What are the features they like and what do they hate and why. This allows you to gather great deal of insights about the customers.

You can also go through the competitors business models and look if there are some unique features that are working good and which you should learn from.

The same time you are looking in the differences you should look into similarities. This helps you to position your own startup towards competitors that are already in the market and help validate your product assumptions.

It does not stop there

After you have done all the research the information should not be left to rot in your drawer. There are many tools you can use to keep yourself updated about what your competitors are doing. One very simple one is Google Alerts. Just put it to alert about hits with the name of your competitor or your business area. Google for more good tools to keep yourself updated.

Hopefully this post gave you some idea and tools for your competitive search. Also please comment and add more good sources of information if you are using a source not mentioned here.

As the logo says: "The idea is your first step"! - Have you already taken your first one?

The Boost board and actives have been quite busy last weeks. With the weekly events going on, plans for the future are done and also preparations for the Startup Journey have been on the way.

The Startup Journey will be truly amazing! There has been quite many smaller and bigger changes if you compare the program to last years Summer of Startups. Below is a some of them:

First of all we have built the whole program structure around three weekend long intensive Bootcamp sessions. These will be the points in the program where the teams will be really pushing to the limits of their intellectual and physical strength. The Bootcamps will also be held in locations yet to be undisclosed.

Trust me when I say - it will be great!

Second update is to bring in one of the advisors of Boost Turku as the Entrepreneur In Residence for the Startup Journey program. Serial entrepreneur Mika Marjalaakso will be taking that responsibility and working with the teams to really make them push the extra mile and crystallize their ideas. We are honored to have Mika onboard.

Third as sales and selling has been the known challenge for many of the Finnish teams, Startup Journey will also address that challenge. We are delighted to have another Boost Advisory board member, Managing Director of Symbioosi Partners, Juha Mattsson onboard to cover this angle in the program. Juha is working on the front lines of sales in Finland through Symbioosi and has broad experience in his field. It is great to have Juha with us.

In addition to the mentioned, Startup Journey will include coaching sessions from some of the most experienced startup entrepreneurs, investors and coaches in Finland on varied topics. Topics will include Team building and goal setting, Financing, Venture Funding, Working with media, Law and IPR issues, Inbound marketing, Technology selection, UI/UX issues and so forth.

We are also delighted to announce that the Startup Journey program will be organized with the support of Turku center of regional development, Turku School of Applied Sciences, University of Turku and Turku Science Park.

If you want to take your startup idea forward and build something meaningful out of it Startup Journey is the opportunity. The application period is open until Sunday midnight 19.2.2012.

Click the HERE to start the Journey! You never know where it might lead you.

Ever thought how to make more money with your existing customers? Today we had another Master of Mind meeting in BoostTurku where founders of companies gathered to exchange ideas on how to maintain healthy and prolific relationship with customers and get more business with them.

Here are some ideas without any special order.

Learn about customers. You never can know enough. Learn about their life, habits, intentions and challenges. When you know what they care about and what they struggle with, you can help them with it with what you do.

Add value. Do not sell your services but solve problems related to the business or lives of your customers. Share important information for them, buy them books that can help them excel in their business or life.

Keep customers informed. Many customers might want to do business with you again but they are so busy that forget about you. Inform them about changes in the company, good thoughts and things to consider through your blog, newsletter or in person.

Loop. If you provide service, think about things that you sell to customers as a loop. Something like “do - evaluate results - do again”. When you have delivered a service to your clients you can get extra work by evaluating results and then suggesting additional steps that you could also be in charge of. At the same time, don’t restrain your customers with tricky contracts. Let them leave if they do not want to work with you.

These are just couple of ideas that were mentioned today. And how you build relationship with your clients.

Written by Dmitry Kanevsky. Based on clever thoughts and ideas by Tiina Jäätinen, Renato Kern, Tatu Patronen and Minna Jahnonen.