Blog
A collection of thoughts, stories, and findings on all things entrepreneurial, from the minds of the AVP team.
Aaro and Isaac are a young gay couple from Helsinki studying at the school of Business at Aalto University, who turned their experiences of alienation into a strength. They started Giggeli, a company that makes penis-shaped candles and soaps, to spread joy and raise awareness on the issues of the sexualization of genitalia.
30 Jun 2022
The fear of not being accepted: we think it's a fear everyone faces when going to new places. LGBTQ+ people, however, need to face it every day. In every interaction, they must decide: do I feel comfortable showing who I really am? At GAYY, we would like to add a queer touch to Otaniemi and let the minorities also enjoy the community that we have.
We recently visited three East African countries: Kenya, Tanzania, and Rwanda. We intended to learn more about the local startup ecosystems, entrepreneurship education, and — in particular — the local market opportunities with regard to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. In our ten days, we had to rewrite most of all the assumptions we came in with.
22 Jun 2022
Africa is a mobile-first market. A small group of us from AVP recently visited East Africa to learn about the startup ecosystems and opportunities in Kenya, Tanzania, and Rwanda. In this post, our co-director Kalle Airo shares some of his observations and learnings from the visit.
16 Jun 2022
Koor is a Somali word referring to a bell attached to a camel — the number one livestock in the country. If a farmer is missing a camel, they can find it by the warning of the bell. Likewise, Solve the SDGs winner, team Koor, hopes their solution could give a warning to farmers in the Horn of Africa about incoming droughts.
06 Jun 2022
We've all been in a situation where we’ve no idea what we want and where to go. And that’s ok. Setting meaningful and reasonable goals was never easy, and the pandemic and now a war in Europe can make long-term goals feel pointless — but setting them now is as important as ever. Let’s break down what good goals are like and how to set them like an entrepreneur.
24 May 2022