Winners of MindTrek Startup Launchpad

The first-ever Startup Launchpad competition was held 9.10.2008 at Mindtrek conference in Tampere, Finland. One did it was one of the eight startup finalists pitching their idea to a group of experienced jury. The other finalists were Floobs, HammerKit, MahShelf, RunToShop, Star Wreck Studios, and TripSay.

The jury was headed by Sharon C. Ballard, the founding President/CEO of Enable Ventures Inc. Other members were Marc Davis, Social Media Guru and Chief Scientist, Yahoo!; Tapio Siik, Partner, Nokia Growth Partners; Pekka Pärnänen, Head of Finpro, Silicon Valley, and Henri Rantalainen, CEO, Business Development Advisor, Technopolis Ventures Professia.

Every contestant had 6 minutes to present the idea and company to the jury and after that anybody could make questions to the presenter. Our CEO Antti Villanen had his turn on fourth place and told about One did it in a nutshell. The jury seemed interested and asked a lot about MIPS calculation and how our service differentiates from i.e. Yahoo! Green. I think it went very well, the guy sitting next to me in the audience even congratulated me after Antti's presentation.

After couple of hours the jury had made their decision, and they commented briefly to all the contestants. The host was honored to announce the winners and he started to call out the winners. He said that the three contestants ended up a draw on the third place and he asked MacShelf, Hammerkit and One did it to come to front. At that point I have to admit I was a little bit disappointed, our final standing seemed to be something between 3rd to 5th. But after that the host started to thank everyone in the jury, the competitors and the audience, and this was it for this year. After a little bit of confusion it cleared out that there wasn't going to be more winners, the first ever MindTrek Startup Launchpad winner couldn't be selected from there three and we all were winners.

In this situation the winners will take a draw for the prizes later, but we got a chance to choose one member of the jury to give one-on-one time for us right after the event. We chose Yahoo!'s Marc Davis, and got into a really encouraging conversation with him. He was really excited about our concept and gave as hints to succeed with it. What a great day it was!