Finland’s Startup Sauna coming to Tokyo, brings opportunity for local entrepreneurs

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Startup Sauna is a startup accelerator from Helsinki Finland, now touring 25 cities around the world, with an upcoming stop here in Tokyo on September 17th at Open Network Lab.

startup-sauna

The event will feature a panel including Taizo Son, the CEO of Movida Japan and founder/chairman of GungHo ; Peter Vesterbacka, the chief marketing officer of Rovio ; Hironao Kunimitsu, the founder and CEO of Gumi, and Naoki Aoyagi, the CEO of GREE International. But many of our readers will be pleased to hear that there will be a pitch event as well, with the winner receiving an invitations as well as free airfare (courtesy of the event sponsor Finnair) to attend Slush 2013 in November in Helsinki. That two-day event is expected to host 1,000 startups 5,000 attendees, and more than 600 international investors. So it certainly looks like a great opportunity.

Miki Kuusi, the director of Startup Sauna, noted in the event announcement:

Our two countries [Japan and Finland] have always had a lot in common. We share strong educational institutions that produce leading technical talent, a culture that has yet to warm to neither entrepreneurship nor failure, plus economies that must lessen their dependency on established electronics industries and seize huge opportunities in fast-moving companies.

If you’d like to apply to pitch at the event, you can do so here. The last day to apply is September 13th. Good luck!

Prime Minister of Russia Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister of Finland Jyrki Katainen visited Startup Sauna's entrepreneurial co-working space
Prime Minister of Russia Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister of Finland Jyrki Katainen visited Startup Sauna’s entrepreneurial co-working space