Nordic Startup News Early Stage Startup News From The Nordics
Running from the airport to the bus, trying to find my way over to a place called Bruno, using Google maps in desperation trying to find to this place. Finally arriving, sweaty, tired and confused — But I made it. I made it to Ultrahack 2015.
Let me give you 5 good reasons to go to Helsinki in November.
1. First of all, it’s Helsinki. If you haven’t been here, you need to go. During my first 16 hours in Helsinki I experienced a lot of crazy things and I met a lot of cool people during my time at Ultrahack.
2. Secondly, Helsinki is exploding with tech & startup events in November. Slush being the catalyst behind it. In the middle of November every year, over 15 000 people flock to Helsinki in order to get a taste of the startup scene and experience a lot of crazy tech stuff. If you’re an entrepreneur in the Nordics (anywhere in the world really), this is the place to be during the month of November.
Maybe it seems a bit backwards, because many of us might want to go to a warm country when it’s getting colder, but if you want to see the heart of the Finnish tech & startup scene you need to go to Helsinki. Trust me, it’s worth it. Want to know what other events you should visit in November if you’re an entrepreneur of the Nordics? Check out my other article, 4 events you need to attend as a nordic entrepreneur.
3. Ultrahack being one of the big hacks connected to Slush seems to attract a lot of really skilled people. During 3 days of intensive hacking, over 300 people spent their weekend in an abandoned train reparation facility*. The venue is designed so that all the attention is focused in the centre, which allows the hackers to continue hacking even though there’s some announcement going on. The Finnish people are crazy efficient, let me tell you that. I talked to one guy from Butterfly effect after they won the grand prize of getting to pitch their idea at Slush, with a chance of winning 20.000 Euros. He told me he hadn’t slept for 3 consecutive days. Thats insane! I asked him if he was going home to sleep now, he told me “No. Now I need to work even harder. Now we need to prepare ourselves for the Slush pitch, and everything has to be perfect by then”.
4. Ultrahack is one of the biggest hacks connected to one of the biggest tech & startup events of northern Europe, and that attracts a lot of skilled people from all over the world. During this years edition of Ultrahack, they were hacking around areas such as creative charity, health games, IoT, next gen ecomm, smart city and sports & fan experience.
5. If you like free beer, pizza, hacking and networking (who doesn’t?), Ultrahack is the place to be. The people working with Ultrahack this year were super nice, whenever someone would come up, look a bit confused and wanted help, they would immediately try to solve whatever problem you had.
The people organizing this year’s Ultrahack are heroes in my eyes, so naturally I invited them to join Nordic Heroes next week. A one day seminar that I’m hosting in Copenhagen that gathers people like the organizers of Ultrahack — the real heroes of the Nordics. The true supporters of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in this region. Even if you don’t like beer, pizza and hacking, it’s a great opportunity to meet some of the coolest people in Helsinki and maybe recruit some people to your team? You need to go to Ultrahack 2016! Alright? They even brought a sauna & a hot tub out to the venue, to let the hackers sweat out some stress. Finnish people and their saunas, I don’t think I’ll ever understand it. But what I do understand is that the Finnish people are some of the most tech savvy, entrepreneurial and creative people in the world. There’s no wonder why Finland is one of the top ranked countries in the world for technology and innovation.
If you want to see most of the day, the final pitches and the prize ceremony, you can rewatch the livestream here:
