Blog
A collection of thoughts, stories, and findings on all things entrepreneurial, from the minds of the AVP team.
Juho Uzkurt Kaljunen never wanted to be an entrepreneur. And yet, he is now an AVP alumni and the founder, CEO and CTO of NPHarvest, a spin-off from Aalto University that collects and recycles nutrients from wastewater. We chatted with Juho to learn more about his unexpected journey and where he thinks it’ll take him next.
07 Jun 2024
Plastic has a bad reputation that it doesn’t entirely deserve. It’s a durable, lightweight material that — when recycled correctly — can be used repeatedly with low costs and very little material loss. AVP alumni and serial entrepreneur Mona Taponen Balzarini wants to demonstrate this with her Muoviamo project by showcasing and letting people try how plastic waste turns into new objects.
20 Jun 2023
A while ago, we had the pleasure of having Mårten Mickos — an Aalto alumni, entrepreneur and current CEO of HackerOne — visit us for a talk. He shared his journey from Otaniemi to Silicon Valley, full of useful tips for the aspiring entrepreneur. We gathered eight of what we think are the most important lessons from his talk
14 Jun 2023
Rosa-Maria Alaraasakka and Tuomas Hätälä are the founders of Opack, a startup that aims to revolutionize the reusable food packaging industry. The company is based on an idea born on Startup Experience and it almost died during Covid, but was born again thanks to an unexpected savior — the EU.
06 Apr 2023
In this opinion piece, AVP student Júlia Vila provides insights from AVP’s Bay Experience, which they joined last January. During the program, she participated in the Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship (BMoE) bootcamp at UC Berkeley and began to understand how Finnish and American universities are different.
30 Mar 2023
Wen Ouyang and Richard Dunn know how difficult it is to make it as an artist or — as we like to say — a creative entrepreneur. Together, they decided to help people like them, and Artmu was born. They found their way to AVP's Impact Studio, where their business started to gain momentum.
16 Feb 2023