Knowledge exchange visit to Finland

I previously wrote about the SAFIPA, Knowledge exchange visit to Finland and i was fortunate enough to be selected as one of the entrepreneurs who will be visiting Finland. We will be leaving on the 24th, and arriving in Finland on the 25th of October. I am pretty excited as we have meetings planned with some of the leading mobile companies , a few universities, some vc folks and a few startups.
Finland as a country is extremely small, but when it comes to ICT it really punches above its weight. Ever heard of Nokia? MySQL? Jaiku? The next web has an interesting article on the startup ecosystem in Finland. South Africa is trying to replicate the finish model in ICT innovation and i only hope we can achieve some of the success they have. Just take a look at this partial list of exits by Finish startups provided by Taneli Tikka

Sumea, to Digital Chocolate in 2004

Animoi to Macromedia in 2004

Mr. Goodliving to RealNetworks in 2005

InnoDB to Oracle in 2005

Smartner to Seven in 2005

Hybrid Graphics to Nvidia in 2006

BitBoys to ATI in 2006

Hantro to ON2 in 2007

MySQL to Sun Microsystems in 2007

Jaiku to Google in 2007

Solid to IBM in 2007

Dopplr to Nokia in 2009

Some of the organisations i will be visiting

• Nokia
• AAlto University
• Helsinki University of Technology
• Helsinki Institute for Information Technology
• Technopolis Ventures
• Tekes / Tekie
• Advansis
• Grey Area Labs
• Scred
• Floobs

Posts on the Visit:

• First Day : Aalto, Technopolis, Otaniemi, HIIT
• Second Day: Tekes, Tieke, Advansis
• Third Day: Nokia , Design Factory
• Final Days: Scred, Greyarealabs, BarCamp Helsinki

Tweets & Media on the Visit

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