Grow VC > Blog

It’s been a while since the last Grow VC update post, so I think it’s time to share some insight on what’s been going on in the past months. First a bit about our schedule.

Last December I wrote:

“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 startups”.

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.”

In regards to that, we are pretty much right on schedule. However one thing have changed and that is that we will not start accepting applications yet at this point like we originally planned, but will start accepting them at launch time. So that we can offer better tools right from the beginning and also be more clear what our service is about when submitting your application.

Other parts of the above details are still on track, meaning that by the end of this month we are planning to open our protosite for a limited group of users and that the actual service launch we are aiming for the end of Q2 (first as a closed BETA by invitation only, more about details at the bottom of this post).

Big developments in two areas

Our development has basically been split in two main areas, where the one part is the actual software development and the other is company developments like our team, company & partner structures and agreements etc.

Some things you may have noticed here already, like some new people introductions, new logo and overall visuals. Of course what you see outside is just a tip of the iceberg – a huge majority of the stuff is going on behind the scenes. But before talking about that, I should tell a bit more about our team.

About Company developments

At the very beginning (late summer 08) in the initial idea and concept stage, our team was basically Jouko & myself. After we had hammered on the idea long enough to decide that we want to get this idea of the ground, we then started to build our Grow VC core team. On top of our roles as founders (doing everything that needs doing), we needed to cover the roles of great programmer, designer/UI expert, legal & PR.

Our first goal was to get our core team established before beginning of this year, so we could start pushing forward with confidence that

• a)    we can find more good people to join and
• b)    that all of us see the same vision and commitments to our goal of launching the Grow VC service.

After going through several candidates for each role of our core team, we feel that we now have an excellent team in place, so I think now is a good time for introduction:

Valto Loikkanen, CEO/Founder
Valto Loikkanen is a serial entreprenuer who has started several companies across Europe and the US in the web and mobile fields. At the age 24, Valto started and grew his first company VTG Worldwide, selling custom mobile phone covers, from the ground up into an international business turning over 84 million FIM. Forward thinking and always seeking the next big web and mobile success, as a serial entrepreneur and startup advisor, Valto got fed up with the lack of transparency and openness in the startup funding process. Web 2.0 companies often need only small amounts of money to grow, due to the cost-effective nature of their business models, and the investment market hasn’t historically been suited to raising small amounts of capital. Valto saw that with Web 2.0 taking hold, lack of transparency no longer works in helping the Internet’s shining stars find their grounding. Wanting to battle these challenges, Valto founded GrowVC to apply the principles of web 2.0 to the area that has historically been sorrouded in mystery – VC funding. He aims to bring a better, fairer environment for technology startups seeking funding.

Jouko Ahvenainen, Chairman/Founder

Jouko is an investor and entrepreneur across the US, Europe and Asia and is active at a senior level with many web and mobile enterprises. With more than 15 years experience in international business management and having been close to many VC deals in past, ranging from 150k USD to 15M USD, Jouko is passionate about the challenges in finding and supporting the next great venture. Jouko believes that 2.0 will significantly change all business, and finance cannot avoid that change. Now is the time to create new open models to accelerate early phase company funding.

Starting his first software company at the age of 16, Jouko then held progressively senior positions at diverse technology firms including Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, Powerwave Technologies Inc., Nokia, and Sonera. He is a pioneer in the field of social media marketing, and played a significant role in developing the first social marketing intelligence solutions for mobile and media companies. Jouko is on the boards of various start-up companies and is a co-founder or seed investor at six companies, including Replicon and Xtract. Jouko is a certified advisor for NasdaqOMX Stockholm and Helsinki early phase company lists.
Jouko regularly speaks at marketing, start-up funding, mobile and web 2.0 conferences including Mobile World Congress, CTIA, and Informa, IIR and others’ conferences around Europe, Asia, and the US. He is also a co-author of the Social Media Marketing book (Futuretext, London, Feb 2009).

Jouko holds an MBA from Helsinki School of Economics, a joint program with McCombs School of Business, at the University of Texas, Austin and a M.Sc.(Tech.) from Helsinki University of Technology.

Gal Smolar, Legal Counsel
Gal is an experienced transactional lawyer who brings extensive experience with funding deals and setting up funds around the world, currently based in Israel. Gal has International experience in acquisitions, dispositions, joint ventures and investment transactions. Bringing excellent contract drafting and negotiation skills in areas such as general corporate matters, licensing, research and development, Gal also advises on transactions and other operational activities.

Christoffer Langenskiöld, Chief Experience Officer
Chris is an expert in user experience bringing a solid background in usability, visual, and marketing planning and implementation. He has strong focus on the user-centred, goal-oriented concept design of websites, interactive demos, UIs and mobile applications. He is currently based in Finland.

Jussi Holm, Chief Technical Officer
Jussi has extensive hands-on experience developing and implementing web services that require good usability and high design reliability, currently based in Finland. Jussi’s previous work includes web software design and development for #CMAX.gg Gameserver Marketplace.

MSc. studies in communications and software engineering at Helsinki University of Technology give Jussi a solid understanding on the potential of Web 2.0 technologies, and his vision and experience in agile development methods allow him to turn that potential into reality.

Emily McDaid, Head of Communications
Emily has senior-level global communications and PR experience from the UK and the US, and started her own successful PR business in 2008, currently based in England. Over the past decade Emily has led communications for hundreds of technology companies ranging from the very established (Virgin Media, HP, The MathWorks, S1) to the most innovative startups (Xtract, Huddle, Doodle) and IPO cases (Mobestar). Emily began her work in PR at the esteemed CSAIL at MIT and has a degree from Johns Hopkins University in the US.

Team effort

One feature that we needed to build our structure was for our team to be international, with international experience. So now our team includes people from Finland, USA and Israel, with work experience from all over the US, Europe and Asia and from various different countries.

On top of this we have also been building our advisory board to help us out in our business strategy and connection in different regions. Our advisory board members areas of expertise cover, legal, investment banking, venture capital and angel investing among other basic international business expertise.

As we have finalized our company structure and internal agreements between advisors, we will start introducing them via this blog as well.

Also one big discussion has been the location or locations from where the business will be run. So we have been doing due diligence for the company location itself. More about that later.

Software developments

In software side our progress have been steady and we are starting to see very finalized looking software, sure there are still tons of things missing and needed to fine tune, but it’s starting to come together well.

As said in the beginning of this post our goal for launching the service has been June 2009 and that continues to be our goal. So far it’s looking good for us being able to achieve that and we are all very anxious to get there

That said, 10 months from just having an idea to building a great team and launching an actual service isn’t that bad.  Even we feel on weekly basis that we would like to just reveal everything, we are keeping our cool. One thing that helps us do that and not become overly nervous on spending our time and money, is the great feedback we have and keep getting, as we do our limited introductions of our concept during the talks with potential partners, advisors and people throughout the market.

More about our roadmap to launch

It’s now April and this month we are looking to invite limited test users to our proto site, to test our service and give us feedback before our closed beta launch in June. Test users will be invited from our supporting sites members, LInkedIn groups, friendfeed room and from members that have joined via friend connect at our site. So if you are looking to be invited, you may want to check that you have joined one of those.

For the closed beta launch we will be offering invitation codes for blogs that regularly cover web startup, entrepreneur & VC related topics. With these invitations, these blog readers will get entry to our closed beta and these invited users will also be converted to normal user accounts for free (subject to normal approval). If you are running a popular blog that regularly covers the above subject(s) and you are interested to give these invitations to your readers, contact Emily for details at emily@growv.com. If you have any questions about the service itself feel free to shout me at valto@growvc.com.

Thanks for reading and sorry if it was long winded!
Valto