Kuva: “Tahko Ski Lift Pitch 2023 and visitors from University of Cologne, Germany and Tartu, Estonia. (Kuva: Studio Neonkeidas)”
International cooperation starts with small steps and brief encounters. The University of Eastern Finland (UEF) has been fostering cross-border startup collaboration with several European universities in recent years, but the current initiatives actually began with a 20-minute meeting at Slush 2019. That was when Joonas Ruuskanen, an innovation advisor at the University of Eastern Finland, arranged a meeting with Marc Kley, CEO of the startup center Gateway at the University of Cologne. Following a fruitful discussion, they decided to plan collaborative actions to enhance their respective startup activities. While concrete steps were delayed in 2020 due to the global pandemic, UEF received an invitation from the University of Cologne to join the Stage Two network, comprising 45 European universities with a shared vision to bring together top universities, future startups, leading companies, and investors across national borders.
The plans became a reality in the fall of 2021 when members of UEF’s innovation service team visited Cologne. Joona Kemppainen and Mikael Turunen from UEF-startup Algoa Progress, developing new treatment for osteoarthritis, also joined to explore potential collaboration opportunities. The journey with friends from Cologne continued to Berlin, where UEF participated in the startup competition organized by the Stage Two network for the first time.
During the Berlin visit, UEF’s connections from Cologne introduced them to Aivar Pere, an innovation advisor from the University of Tartu. This meeting laid the groundwork for plans to take UEF’s startup teams to Estonia for the sTARTUp Day competition and also bring Tartu’s teams to Tahko.
In April 2022, UEF hosted the first international guests from the University of Cologne at the Tahko Ski Lift Pitch. The German delegation experienced a good dose of Finnish culture, and the Cologne-based startup, Compounder, developing a platform that facilitates application processes for universities, advanced from the preliminaries to the top 20 and gained an unforgettable experience of pitching in a ski lift.
Kuva: “Tahko Ski Lift Pitch 2022 with startup ‘Compounder’ from University of Cologne, Germany.”
The visit to Estonia materialized in August 2022 when three teams traveled to Tartu to take part in sTARTUp Day 2022. Pauli Turunen and Seppo Honkanen of the UCOT team, developing ultra-compact optical transceivers for more efficient data transfer, Joonas Ruuskanen of Urban Biochar Filter -project, focusing on the purification and monitoring of stormwater, and Antti Kotimaa of Sonai Health, working on a new device for heart diagnosis. Pauli Turunen pitched UCOT to victory at the Nordic Deep Tech Pitch Match organized by the University of Tartu, bringing home the competition’s main prize.
Kuva: “The Finnish delegation visiting sTARTUp Day 2022 in Tartu, Estonia.”
The Stage Two collaboration continued in October 2022 when Marginum, a startup developing fluorescence-based tissue monitoring solutions for oncological surgery and the winner of Tahko SLP that year, was chosen to represent UEF in Berlin. Marginum’s Samu Lehtonen stated that he gained valuable competition experience and interesting investor contacts from across Europe.
Kuva: “Samu Lehtonen from Marginum and Tomi Tuovinen from UEF in Stage Two -competition in Berlin, October 2023.”
In April 2023, visitors from Cologne and Tartu arrived at Tahko Ski Lift Pitch with four international startup companies. Three teams advanced to the semi-finals, and Akmal Kosimov from RedoxNRG, developing a method to turn CO2-emissions into green fuel, convinced the jury with his confident pitch. As a result, RedoxNRG from University of Tartu won the competition and for the first time the main prize of Tahko Ski Lift Pitch went outside of Finland.
sTARTUp Day and Stage Two visits also continued in 2023, with Tero Puustinen and Pasi Karjalainen from CorFlux project, developing a solution for preventing aortic aneurysm rapture, representing UEF first in Tartu and later Puustinen also in the Stage Two competition in Berlin.
Kuva: “Tero Puustinen from CorFlux in Stage Two competition in Berlin, October 2023.“
Meanwhile, the collaboration took on new forms beyond event visits, as online sparring sessions for startups between the Universities of Cologne, Tartu, and Eastern Finland were arranged, and startup coaches from the University of Cologne and Tartu served as guest jury members at the Havuja Bootcamp business idea acceleration program organized by Business Center North-Savo.
The cooperation will reach new heights in the coming April 2024. That is when, in addition to Germany and Estonia, participants from Belgium, Spain, Holland, and Cyprus will be participating in Tahko Ski Lift Pitch through the international YUFE (Young Universities for the Future of Europe) network. Around 10 international startup companies are expected to arrive in Tahko to compete, get to know UEF’s innovation activities, Finnish culture, and the local startup ecosystem. For many, the trip to the North is the first of its kind, and it’s great that the destination is Eastern Finland. Tahko Ski Lift Pitch continues its internationalization year after year, and the University of Eastern Finland strongly pushes this progress forward.
See you on the slopes of Tahko in April 2024!
Text by
Tomi Tuovinen
Innovation Advisor, M.Sc. (Econ.)