My new blog

I'm moving all my personal blogging to one centralized blog at www.valtoloikkanen.com

Grow VC and then some...

Finally some time to post. Like so many, me too have started more tasks that I can keep up with. Luckily most of them are hobbies, so even if I'm not so active with all of them, it does not effect me financially.

Anyhow, I wanted to share some insight on where my "spare time" has and will be going... Those that know me or follow multiple feeds from other sources know that I have been spending my time on Grow VC. Yep, thats where I have been putting all my extra effors, so all other blogs and activities have had to wait.

Ok, so if I'm spending all of my extra time with Grow VC, what's happening with that?

Here's a little bit info about that and about our road map. - We are planning to release the first part of Grow VC service in Q1 2009. At that time we will start accepting funding applications from new "web start-up's".

There are no geographical limitations and any Start-up that fit to following profile can apply:

Business model itself needs to be web based and aimed to be international, need for initial funding up to 100K euro or less. Other than that, it can be B2B, B2C or related to any industry, as long as the competitive edge is mainly connected to being web based service/business model.

It also need to have great potential for it to be appealing from the investment point of view. IE. clear competitive edge and opportunity within the aimed market.

Starting from Q1 we will be opening the business model with wider group of people under NDA, as part of the process on creating partnerships and co-operating agreements with various parties that will be connected to Grow VC.

The actual Grow VC service and business model in full, is planned to be launched by the end of Q2 or early Q3, 2009.

What else is new...

If you have not seen the early introduction video of Grow VC, you can see that via Vator.tv here:
http://www.vator.tv/pitch/show/Grow-VC-Grow-VC---Venture-Capital-20

And last but not least, just few days ago we added the Google friend Connect (yes we got within their beta group ;) to our current www.growvc.com site, where you can join, invite your friends and share your opinions with others that are interested about Grow VC, are looking for funding for their own start-up or just want to support our venture on changing the landscape of start-up funding forever...

A final note, if you are using multiple social networks online and are interested of Grow VC, there are also a new Supporter Group in Plaxo http://growvc.plaxogroups.com and a room in FriendFeed http://friendfeed.com/rooms/grow-vc-supporters that you can join.

Turns out, Sequoia raised more money than any other VC firm » VentureBeat

Turns out, Sequoia raised more money than any other VC firm » VentureBeat

I think this is good news. Tougher times pushes to innovate.

mobile blogging test post

This time using iblogger in iPhone. I have been looking for good mobile blogging solution for a while. I hope this one would live for the expectation.

Mobile Blogging from here.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

10 Steps to Solo Entrepreneurs Success

1. Know you market and competition, find your place and learn to adjust
2. Study entrepreneurism and use available advisers & mentors help to the fullest, to get multiple viewpoints to your own thought and decisions.
3. Build your business on top of services and/or products that have demand in your market
4. Gain visibility and good reputation, so that potential clients learn to know you and want to come to you
5. Sell your product and do your marketing, newer stop doing this. If you feel you can't sell because you have maxed out, raise your prices and continue to sell.
6. Always do what you promise, don't promise what you can't provide.
7. Take care of your bookkeeping and legal responsibilities.
8. Nurture your clients with good customer service
9. Develop your business. Cut unprofitable products and clients, cut excess costs and increase your visibility
10. Take care of your own well being

Grow VC - Venture Capital 2.0

I have been busy working with one new business venture Grow VC and just wanted to share that.

Grow VC is a new international Venture Capital business model and Internet service to help early stage start-up's to secure initial funding for their business idea.

At the moment, we are fine tuning the business model details and setting up this service.

We are also looking for interested parties to get involved and help this concept get some visibility, to help increase curiosity towards this new service and for that purpose we have also setup a "Grow VC - Supporter Group" to LinkedIn.

If you like the idea that next Google, Facebook or Apple, would become a reality because of you, then we would like to invite you to join our group.

At this time we are not yet sharing the actual service or business model. That will be done later when the service will launch and for our supporters a bit earlier (under NDA).

Website: www.growvc.com

Mobile and Internet battlefield is heating up

Relating to Google's new browser launch (Chrome), I'm doing some of my own predictions for Mobile and Internet sector.

How do you see the competition between Apple, Google, Microsoft and Nokia developing in next 5 years?