The sauna is heating up! We're heading to Silicon Valley!

8 of the teams from the Startup Sauna at Aalto Venture Garage are leaving this weekend for a full week of activities in Silicon Valley. Fund Friend's CEO and Co-founder Mikael Andersson, writing this guest blog, is representing one of the teams. 

Writing this, I must start with an example of the the Finnish way of coaching I just overheard from an anonymous Startup Sauna coach to an anonymous startup sauna team:

 - "This is the most important lesson I can give you: Don't just sit on your ass, go out and get feedback. You have to meet people that has the problem you're trying to solve and get their feedback. It's not that difficult... Let me put it this way: You have a mum right?"

 - "Yeah."

 - "I guess you love your mum?"

 - "Yeah."

 - "If I say that I will kill your mum if you don't get 30 people testing your stuff, you wouldn't have a problem going out finding 30 people to test your stuff, would you?"

Amazing...

I just reserved 9 nights at the Stanford Inn in Palo Alto for next week. We're going to meet prospect customers, investors and pitch like crazy. Going to Silicon Valley to do business has been a dream for me for a long time. Why? The cool stories of course but now it is also an understanding that if you're doing anything techie with a global potential that is where you need to be. Why do you need to be there? A common understanding at Aalto Venture Garage is that: If you plan to be global some day you need to validate your value proposal towards that market. You need to see which ten other startups are doing the exact same thing you're doing. You need to see if you can communicate your startup and get people interested in the most competitive forum for startups or else you'll be sure that your potential is local at best. 

Exciting times. 

If you know anyone working with financial services or visualizations in the San Francisco Bay area I would very much like an introduction!

I wIll make sure to write something about the Silly Valley-experience, see you soon!

About the author:

Mikael Andersson is co-founder and CEO of Fund Friends. Fund Friends provides easy, fast, and unbiased information whenever you're investing in mutual funds. Fund Friends makes apps and services for mobile devices that give users overview and control over their mutual funds. The startup is based at KTH, the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm with a team combining competence in finance and game technology.

Their first product, Fund Friend Galaxy, helps users to take control and get overview of the mutual funds in the Swedish pension system. Fund Friend Galaxy is available on Apple App Store now.

More info:

www.fundfriends.se

www.facebook.com/fundfriend

www.aaltovg.com/startupsauna

www.facebook.com/startupsauna

New friends joining the Startup Sauna, don't steal their eggs or you'll face the consequences

Making russian delicacy "Blov" (no idea what it is but it needs a lot of onions and carrots...) with Dimitry from russian team Fluorescent Nanoscopy