Will.Cardwell@Aalto.Fi

Outliers, Black Swans, and Internationalizing our Ecosystem

EntrepreneurshipResearch

Entrepreneurship Education

Innovation Servicesand TechnologyTransfer

GrowthVenturing and

Start-Up Services

What is ACE Today ?

xES NoteCombo ofAcademic

AndPractice!

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Inventions

priority applications

Invention Disclosures

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18IP activity benchmarks

Inventions/100 researchers

priority filings/100 researchers

ACE Innovation Services today and tomorrow *

* This is ”Practice” part and it is Critical to future of Finland and must be resourced accordingly!!

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Finland’s (and Europe’s) Challenge

CreatingGrowth

In order to make this happen,we will need to do some thingsdifferently – what we are doing is not working well enough…

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Summary of Finnish high-tech company capital raising activity – Q32010

• Finnish high-tech companies announced raising nearly €30 million of risk capital during Q3 of 2010.

• The quarterly amount was comparable to Q3 2009, when Finnish high-tech companies were able to attract around €29 million euros of financing.

• The amount of investments remained equivalent to the prior year’s Q3 activity, however, the average investment size in Q3 2008 was significantly smaller

TECHNOPOLIS PLC April 9, 2023

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Yearly Q3 Comparison - Investor Types

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In Israel (1)

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The following is how I view that the values of Finland’s innovation ecosystem need to be recalibrated, and how Aalto will help…

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The Counter-Intuitive Reality of the Black Swan

Link8

Outliers and Black Swan explained.

• Defies Prediction• Makes a Massive Impact• We make up Explanations

Afterward

Have we ever had any, and why are they so important today?

• Endowed with an unfair advantange.

• Extreme practice and work

Caveats and Disclaimers• I AM saying:

– Finland/Europe needs to create MANY €200MM+ growth companies to make the demographic math of the future work

– We, as a University community, can lay the foundations for their birth and growth, but it is challenging and we must LEARN how to do that

• I AM NOT saying:– That everybody should tune their startup to try to be a Black

Swan– That the guys at the Black Swans will (necessarily) be the

richest, though hopefully so…– That we can even guarantee any Black Swans will emerge

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1. On Passion…• Ecosystem: promotes and

rewards passion and ambition• Entrepreneur: Focus on huge,

game-changing problems

…and, lets not beat the billion euro ambition out of our founders !

Link11

2. On Risk-taking and Failure…• Ecosystem: promotes

pioneering spirit embracing uncertainty, risk-taking and tolerating failure

• Entrepreneur: You must not fail! (but its OK if you do, keep trying!)

You just cannot have a Plan B !!Link Link

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3. On Youth and Energy…• Ecosystem: Attract founders,

who are ideally young, energetic and possibly migrants, and support them patiently

• Entrepreneur: Start early! Universities will probably drive the next Black Swan. And, DON’T BE PATIENT!

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Company Foundation Founder Age

Microsoft 1975 Bill Gates 20

Microsoft 1975 Paul Allen 22

Oracle 1977 Larry Ellison 33

Apple 1976 Steve Jobs 21

Apple 1976 Steve Wozniak 26

Cisco 1984 Len Bosack 29

Cisco 1984 Sandra Lerner 29

Sun 1982 Vinod Khosla 27

Sun 1982 Bill Joy 28

Sun 1982 Andy Bechtolsheim 26

Google 1998 Larry Page 25

Google 1998 Sergey Brin 25

eBay 1995 Pierre Omidyar 28

eBay 1995 Jeff Skoll 30

Yahoo 1995 David Filo 29

Yahoo 1995 Jerry Yang 27

Netscape 1994 Marc Andreesen 23

Intel 1968 Robert Noyce 41

Intel 1968 Andy Grove 32

Amazon 1994 Jeff Bezos 30

HP 1939 Bill Hewlett 26

HP 1939 David Packard 27

Dell 1984 Michael Dell 19

Founder Company Age

Hasso Plattner SAP 28

Dietmar Hopp SAP 32

Hans-Werner Hector SAP 32

Klaus Tschira SAP 32

Francis Bernard Dassault >36

Pier Luigi Zappacosta Logitech 30

Daniel Borel Logitech 30

Bernard Liautaud Business Objects 27

Denis Payre Business Objects 27

Jamie Urquhart ARM 32

Mike Muller ARM 31

Tudor Brown ARM 31

André Auberton-Hervé Soitec 31

Jean-Michel Lamure Soitec 44

James Collier CSR 40

Glenn Collison CSR 35

Mike Lynch Autonomy 31

Richard Gaunt Autonomy 28

Marc Lassus Gemplus 49

Daniel Le Gal Gemplus 37

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aaltovg.comtwitter.com/aaltogarage

4. On Customers…• Ecosystem: Willing customers

participate in trial and error process with innovators.

• Entrepreneur: Get out of the office all the time – live and breathe with customers.

And customers: if you don’t pay, you are part of the product or

service, act like it!

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5. On Teams…• Ecosystem: Freedom offered to

talent who should not be snatched from start-ups. Talent (and capital!) MUST be mobile!

• Entrepreneur: Bring in the best wherever they come from (and many will come from abroad!)

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What are we trying to do at ACE to enable this?

• A Deep International Network– Bring world-class lecturers, practitioners and students IN– Send our community OUT to global hotspots.

• Support REGULAR bootcamps and events around key themes

• Create winning IP strategies• Raise the overall IMAGE of Growth Entrepreneurship• Collaborate fluently with our national and regional

ecosystem!• Get great ideas into the market FAST!

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Select Spin-offs and Start-Ups from Aalto University

Some Past Start-UpsHybrid GraphicsF-SecureSulakeRovioSolid… many others

Any Ideas? Invented Something?

Contact us directly:

Will Cardwell, Head, 040 514 1325

Pauli Laitinen, Innation Services team leader, 050 338 0509

Or looked at: http://ace.aalto.fi

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