| 05.12.2018

Pre-Slush event in Hanken Business Lab

The event featured pitching of start-ups, mingling, and a sleep over. The companies that made a presentation were part of a two-day programme arranged by Hanken in collaboration with Eureka.

– Entrepreneurship is important to us, and we are glad to contribute to Slush with our own side event with international guests. There are companies here from Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and England, says Markus Wartiovaara, Director of Hanken Business Lab.

Six companies gave a presentation to investors during the Pre-Slush event on 3 December before Slush started on 4 December 2018. The companies had been selected out of 20 companies that participated in the Hanken Module from Start Ups to Scale Ups in October, which Hanken arranged in collaboration with the international organisation Eureka in Brussel. The selected companies also got tickets to Slush.

EUREKA is a publicly-funded network, which aims to enhance European competitiveness by fostering innovation-driven entrepreneurship in Europe.

– The idea behind the module was to help start-ups to become scale-ups, commented Minna Martikainen, Professor of Financial Accounting. It’s not only the pitching experience, the investors also listen to the company presentations and then they get to present themselves at Slush. Even if they wouldn’t get funding in this round, being part of this process is also very valuable.

Minna Martikainen, Markus Wartiovaara and Benjamin Maury, Wahlroos Professor of Finance, were involved in teaching at the collaboration project with Eureka.

International students on sleep over

After the Pre-Slush event, the Hanken Business Lab turned into accommodation. Students from Stanford University in California and University of St Gallen in Switzerland attending Slush were invited to stay the night at Hanken Business Lab.

– The students thought this would be a good way of saving money and we agreed to transform the Lab into a place to stay overnight, says Markus Wartiovaara.
 

 

Markus Wartiovaara öppnade kvällens program.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The companies that presented themselves during the event were Codelegs Ltd (UK), AMT Medical B.V. (NL), Physiolution GmbH (DE), ioLiving  (FI) Alpes Lasers SA (CH) and Digital African Woman (BE).