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The idea behind Restaurant 1163 is to help transform a barren train yard in Pasila, a central neighborhood in northern Helsinki by building a sustainable steam engine restaurant, with a giant, slightly transparent oven in the locomotive’s nose, a kitchen in its tender, and three converted carts into dining and storage units. The wider goal of the project is to contribute to an economy which recognizes transparency, green values, respect for history and craftsmanship. The project is headed by Philip Rosengren.
The primary aim for the project is not profit; it does not promise to offer a generous return for a given level of risk. It wishes to create local participation where there is none, to reignite a lost community through its clear activity, and to favor forgotten spirits undermined by years of designed neglect.
The project has been received very warmly as an idea by people in all kinds of professions: from economists, electrical engineers, and skaters to architects, hipsters, and chefs. With my own efforts and wits and the anasthetic property of that wide enthusiasm, I’ve been able to weather the high asking price by the steam engine owner, the lack of any tangible investment, and the natural entrepreneurial problem of missed opportunities and second guessing.
While I wait for events to shape accordingly to make my moves (and I am confident they will within two years), I’ve been busy creating a brand image (the naive logo sans text), forming a passionate and active tribe of interested folks, meeting with farmers in Åland, and building an oven prototype out of a cylinder sauna oven.
It is clear that this idea is not along the lines of currently trendy concepts: internet businesses, cloud computing, learning algorithms, robotics, or alternative energy. Indeed, a restaurant is one of society’s oldest business models and, in its abstraction, this project doesn’t claim any radically new way of doing business.
It still firmly requires farmers, chefs, and diners. And yet, something is different. There has been a creation; an evolution of value. I’m gratefull that Hankenes, as a society, has the minds and, more importantly, the personalities to respect that transformation.
This post is part of our ongoing series profiling founders and businesses with a connection to Hanken Entrepreneurship Society.
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Hanken Entrepreneurship Society kicked off its summer season by its very first VenturePad event. Present at the meetup where a lot of new faces with a wide range of businesses and ideas.
The idea of the meetup was to get to know other entrepreneurs at Hanken, bounce ideas, gather feedback and share information. The event was all in all a success and we will try our best to organize a VenturePad each month. We also had a special guest with whom we could do some exciting stuff later this year.
We’ll start featuring the different businesses and the people behind them here on our blog as we move forward.
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Entrepreneurship might not be the first word that comes to mind when you think of Korea. The peninsula is more known for its automotive industry and high-end consumer electronics, not its start-ups. Hankenes met with some of the people who are trying to change this.
Richard Choi, head of operations and creator of the party guide SeoulGrid, says that the rise of the smartphone is transforming the entrepreneurial scene in Korea.
”Such wild spreading of smartphones allowed one-man companies to arise. Any developer could theoretically make apps and start a company. Also throw in Facebook as a platform for application development. All these smartphones app companies, Facebook-based app or game developers, and social commerce started taking off in Korea. The entrepreneurial scene in IT is definitely on fire.”
Besides renting out workspace (start-ups usually stay for six to twelve months) they also hold seminars and workshops. The main focus of the start-up incubator Seoul Space is on IT. Richard Min, co-founder of Seoul Space with a background in Google, tells me about their next event, a hackathon organized in cooperation with the Austrian embassy. Start-up weekends, similar to Garage48, are also popular at Seoul Space, according to Richard.
A problem that Korea shares with Finland is a lack of funding for start-ups. Richard Choi is however optimistic.
”As there are so many companies that are coming out of the horizon, funding opportunities are coming out as well. As with anything, with good reference and the right connections, there are a few companies that are offering funding opportunities. Angels aren’t as common as they are in for example Silicon Valley, but I feel that in a few years’ time Korea will see more venture capital.
There are currently seven companies renting space in Seoul Space. One of them is Token (token.co.kr), run by Mike Sim and Peter Yoon. Mike is very happy with the set up and says that he will probably stay there for as long as possible.
”Peter and I both had zero experience running any sort of business. Seoul Space has been incredibly helpful in providing us with working space, insight, and the necessary resources to get us standing on our feet.”
Mike and Peter first came to Korea from the U.S. as language teachers. When Groupon was making it big in the states they got the idea to try the concept in Korea. The fact that Groupon recently launched in Korea doesn’t seem to bother Mike. “It is very exciting to follow them as they enter a new market. We don’t worry too much about the competition as we have our own niche.”
Many of the start-up’s founders at Seoul Space have an international background. Mike suggests that it is because Korean’s are under a lot of pressure from their family to get a stable job after they finish university. “Also, I believe that having an international background makes you less risk sensitive. It also makes it easier to see opportunities.”
This guest post was written by Erik Johansson, a Hankenes board member currently on exchange in Seoul.
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Hanken Entrepreneurship Society co-founder Markus Lampinen has received the prestigious Anders Wall scholarship. Markus is an active and versatile student who has many irons in the fire both as an entrepreneur and as a promoter of entrepreneurship”. This is how the jury of the Anders Wall Foundations characterised Markus, a 24-year-old student at Hanken, who was the recipient of this year’s Anders Wall award. Valued at SEK 125,000 (approximately EUR 13,000), the award is one of the largest scholarships awarded to students at the Hanken School of Economics.
Alongside his studies, Lampinen works as the Head of Operations of Grow VC international. Grow VC is a young company and a virtual community for entrepreneurs and investors. Lampinen is also one of the founders of Fresh Tunes Finland, a company that represents several artists and creates innovative solutions for the rapidly changing music market. He was also involved in the founding of the Hanken Entrepreneurship Society and has acted as the Finnish representative in the Sandbox Network, an international community for young, extraordinary achievers.
Lampinen plans to use his scholarship for finishing his diploma work on entrepreneurship and for participating in entrepreneurship conferences abroad.
The Anders Wall Foundations distribute approximately two million Swedish crowns in scholarships and educational grants every year. The scholarships will be awarded to entrepreneur-minded young people in the fields of research, entrepreneurship, international studies and culture on 11 March at the 30th anniversary ceremony at the Royal Swedish Academy of Music in Stockholm, Sweden. The Anders Wall Foundations bring a significant number of young people together to form a network that meets regularly.
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This post is a quick summary of our trip to Silicon Valley which started in late October 2010 when we hopped on a plane in Helsinki and arrived to San Francisco after 20h of drinking free refreshments, watching bad movies and eating miniature meals. On the way over the Atlantic the guy next to me was playing Angry Birds on his iPad for hours, go Finnish startups! After arriving we dragged our jet lagged souls to Union Square and grabbed some Italian after hitting the beds.
On Saturday, the third day of our trip we went to the first conference: BizTechDay. This was the first major event in our trip shedule. Here are some free notes I scribbled down during the event that was held at the Metreon in downtown San Francisco.
Jan Bosch (Intuit Innovation), Bob Upham (Yahoo!), Bob Meese (Google Business Development): When roadmaps of large companies and startups match magic happens, find those.
Jessica Jackley (Kiva, Profounder): Entrepreneurship is about building a better tomorrow. Giving a loan is also about giving attentio
Naval Ravikant (VentureHacks, Angle.co): Small exits create small angels. Doing angle investments: Be picky, join the heard, brand yourself, be humble, stick to standard terms, shun power. Most startups fail because disputes inside teams.
Gautam Godhwani (Simply Hired): Jobs: My #1 job is to make sure that the top 100 people at Apple are A+ players, when that is done everything else takes care of itself.
Fabio Rosati (Elance): 30% of the workforce are going to be independent workers. Work is going online: the human cloud.
Next day, Sunday, was relocation day. After checking out from the hotel we got a rental and toured around the rainy and foggy San Francisco. After driving down Lombard street we hit the 101 and headed to Palo Alto. We had no problems finding our new hotel. Later in the evening we had the kickoff dinner at Fishmarket with the Aaltoes and Boost guys.
On Monday we headed to Japan town where FailCon was rolling on full speed. The most memorable speakers at FailCon wheree probably Scoble, Pouge, Adelsson and Buchheit. Here are my notes on the most interesting topics:
Navigating a successful exit: The moment distrust enters negotianions, deals start to unravel. Distrust leads to more mistrust and finally there’s a total tailspin.
On Tuesday we had an early morning breakfast at the Stanford campus with Peter Vesterbacka from Angry Birds and Chris McCann from StartupsDigest. Great to meet Chris finally, he’s doing such a good job at StartupDigest. Rumour says that we’ll have a StartupDigest list in Helsinki, soon. Later at noon we headed to Yahoo. Wednesday was also spent on the Stanford campus where we met a a couple of VCs.
Friday was the last big day for us, the grande finale. We visited Startup Waffles, Dogpatch Labs, Kicklabs, Venture I/O and GitHub. We met tons of startup people and had a blast despite the tight schedule. One wierd aspect of San Francisco was that 1) Almost all the places we visited had a dog 2) There were lost dogs/cats signs up everywhere. Is it just me or doesn’t this seem a bit fishy? Well anyhow, the grande finale. The good folks at PariSoma had let us organize a Finnish Night at their place in the evening. It was great to see such a bunch pack up into PariSoma that night. We all had a blast!
We took a laid back day after the run around day yesterday and a transatlantic pressuchamber hour in front of us. Visited the Stanford campus and in the evening Mårten Mickos was kind enough to treat us with a dinner, sauna and pool. Halloween and Go Giants were the topics of the town that day.
