You have a world changing idea. What’s next?

After winning Garage48 hackathon, we decided that we’re awesome enough to execute that idea. We felt as special snowflakes (haven’t you felt the same?)

We were happy to try literally everything, that could drive us forward. After building MVP for the 4 months we started asking ourselves: what’s next? Google suggested us to apply for an acceleration program.

Back then, we had a zero understanding of accelerators. Being an experienced professional in some specific areas doesn't automatically make you an experienced founder.

Where can startup babies apply?

Are you a part-time team, self-funded and on the pre-prototype stage?

Great! The equity-free accelerators might accept you (“might” is the key word).

Ukrainian startup folks recommended us Lisbon Challenge and Startup Sauna. We were not sure which one would be better for our solution, targeted on mobile designers & developers (ok-ok, we were not sure if somebody would take us). So we applied to both programs.

Wait… how can you apply without working MVP?

Surprise-surprise!

Startup is not only about the greatest technology. You have to sell yourself. So, firstly we got YES from Lisbon Challenge. Ahmed, founder & CEO quit popular Ukrainian startup Petcube and dove into startup madness… We did not have much resources, so only one founder flew to Lisbon.

Unexpectedly, in a month we got YES from Startup Sauna as well. The next candidate for becoming unemployed founder of the “future unicorn” was our growth hacker, Lisa.

We ended up attending two acceleration programs simultaneously with one founder in each, the rest of the team stayed in Ukraine.

What did you like in each program?

Let’s start with Startup Sauna — 5 week acceleration program in Helsinki (its cool name comes from too many saunas in Finland ❄).

Are they really equity free?

Yes.

You don’t give away any equity and don’t receive an investment when accepted. No term sheets or agreements. You can get a grant, beside that — all cost are on you. Fair enough ☝

Startup Sauna provides 1000 EUR grant or paid hotel for foreign startups. We did a smart trick and cooperated with our good friends from energy saving startup Ecoisme, who were accepted as well. So we took 2000 EUR grant for two startups, rent a fancy apartment near the Startup Sauna open space (1000 EUR for 5 weeks) and used the rest of money for living.

The grants were easily given based on the receipts, no bureaucracy (Startup Sauna even prepaid our apartment directly to the owner).

Downside:

If you have zero money and high-living standards, apply to accelerators who take equity and give some cash. Finland is expensive, especially if you are from Ukraine. We were riding bicycles everywhere, buying low-cost food or looking for free meals (yeah, it was an interesting time). From our experience, 1000 EUR is OK for 2 persons to stay alive for 5 weeks.

Contacts and Intros

Would you like to meet with Angry Birds team?

Alexander from Ecoisme was lucky enough to meet with EVP from Rovio Entertainment!

Startup Sauna gives you access to literally anyone you want to reach out to in Finland. Regional ecosystem is also strong. Some of the best respected entrepreneurs in Finland will be your coaches (there are about 60 coaches).

Thankfully, startup dudes in general love giving advice and Finns have something called “talkoo” on top on that (“pay-it-forward” culture). For Startup Sauna residents this Finish feature results in genuinely desire of mentors to help you in every possible way. We got an uncountable number on intros. Our favourite “contacts provider” was Moaffak Ahmed, an awesome head coach & Finnish angel of the year 🌟.

It’s widely known that one of the most valuable drivers of joining an accelerator would be the access to the alumni network. Currently we don’t see the benefits of being in Startup Sauna alumni network. However, there are around 170 alumni companies.

Downside:

As we mentioned, the network is mostly local. If Nordic countries are not your business focus at all, it may not make a lot of sense to attend an accelerator there.

Startup Sauna is not a kindergarten. So if you need somebody specific, you have to do your research as well. No magic happens without you:

Don’t hesitate to ask Startup Sauna for intros. And even if they don’t have contacts to a person you need, just write directly to this person via Linkedin. People in Finland are open-minded and in most cases they will be glad to meet you. My best business contacts in Finland were those, whom I reached directly via Linkedin.

Alexander Diatlov, CMO of Ecoisme (Fall’15 batch)

Investments Hopping

Let’s talk about money.

Some magic way of getting investments — fall ’14 alumni Enbrite.ly raised a €750k round after winning Slush

With Startup Sauna you get access to a wide investment network in the Nordics. In our case, we did not get an offer straight ahead. However, we started building healthy relationships with some cool angels & funds, we enjoyed talking at sessions.

We know startups, who got good investment deals in Finland shortly after the program. Good example is our Ukrainian friends — PromoRepublic, a service that helps to create content for social networks. They got investment from Finnish fund Vendep and business angel Pekka Koskinen. That, combined with Tekes grant gave them an opportunity to test the U.S. market.

Guys also went to Silicon Valley Trip with Startup Sauna (🚀 top-performers of accelerator are invited for an intensive week of pitching to the U.S. investors, accelerators and companies).

Startup Sauna does their best in educational part as well. We really loved 6-hour session about different aspects of local funding opportunities: funds, angel networks (FiBAN), grant money (Tekes). Indeed, Finland supports entrepreneurship a lot!

It is an honour to work with Startup Sauna, from the initial selections all the way to the finals. Teams and ideas are hand picked and then they get extra help from us in order to become truly unique or almost dangerous in their positioning, disruption and plans. When the batch is over, we do investment decisions just like we do anywhere else. Sauna makes it very easy because we know the teams very well at the end.

Torsti Tenhunen, Vice Chairman of FiBAN & Founder of Pivot5 Fund

Downside:

Startup Sauna can’t make you investment-ready or convince Finish angels to put money in you. None of accelerators are the secret source of success here! Paying customers lead to investment, not accelerators. Startup Sauna guys can help you get in contact with relevant angels & funds. All the rest is your job.

Awesome open space with free food

We loved the place!

This was some hard Wednesday barbecue party. Guys from Rentmania (Spring’15 batch) still remember it :)

Real sauna, free Thursdays breakfasts & Wednesdays barbecues, great kitchen with free products, safe and very fancy workstations. The infrastructure is provided by Aalto university and indeed, we haven’t seen such in Kyiv.

“The unique tradition of Startup Sauna is Weekly National BBQ. The challenge for chefs from different countries is to make national meals from Finnish foods! We provided Russian-Ukraine party with Vodka & Salo & Salt fish. Indeed, it was the most crazy party that batch)))”

Arkadiy, founder of Rentmania — community for renting goods

Btw, the open space is in Espoo (15 min outside the Helsinki city center), so you can see rabbits every morning & late evening. And you can leave expensive stuff everywhere, it’s very safe there.

Downside:

When you’re trying to grasp a problem, a loud conversation behind you or visit of Brazilian president can be annoying. So take a noise cancelling headphones with you 🎧 Also, all rules of open space work here: first come — better place, food without a label — will be eaten (by us, for example).

Viber ecosystem with engaging community

Welcome to the innovation hub.

✨ Some @SoluMachines magic was happening at the stage ✨

Sauna is also elemental in the Finnish startup ecosystem, providing a huge domestic and international network of investors, venture capitalists, governmental organisations, coaches, specialists, piloting partners and customers. I’d say it is one of the coolest accelerators in the world, by its style, quality and the ecosystem around.

Torsti Tenhunen, Vice Chairman of FiBAN & Founder of Pivot5 Fund

Literally every 3rd day something happened at Startup Sauna open space — receptions, professional events, president’s & government’s visits, startup stuff and even meetups of Slush conference volunteers.

The most memorable event for us was the presentation of a brand-new type of the computer with its own operation system (omg 😱). It calls Solu and it was founded by one of our mentors, Kristoffer Lawson, very cool Finnish entrepreneur.

Also, don’t forget about your closest community of founders from all over the Europe:

“Some of the best advice we got at Startup Sauna came from our fellow startup entrepreneurs who could really identify with the challenges Leadfeeder is facing as a rapidly growing startup.”

Peter Seenan from Leadfeeder — lead generation company

Downside:

There are way too many conferences, meetups, activities are going around the Startup Sauna & Helsinki. Think twice before attending. Are you going to learn something? Meet someone important for you? Be careful not to become“startup party-animal”, unless you are attending to get free food & drinks :)

Finnish perfect way of organization

Startup Sauna is very harsh and structured.

You always know what happens tomorrow. Everything started on time and in the right order. The 5 week program was divided into the weekly topics with appropriate set of activities:

* 1st week — Focus & BMC usage & KPI’s

* 2nd week — Customers

* 3rd week — Competition & Go-to market & Differentiation

* 4th week — Team & HR & Processes & Funding

* 5th week—KILL IT

Interesting, that every day of the week, we had the same set of activities. In our batch everything started at 9 am and went up to 6–7 pm:

* Monday — Founder Talks

* Tuesday — Pitch day

* Wednesday — 1-on-1 coaching

* Thursday — Workshops

* Friday — “Kick-the-shit-out” day

We always saw fast, proactive and very professional behaviour. Startup Sauna was run by three Finnish students — Panu, Jaakko and Kasper. This made us even more amazed by the quality of their work 👏.

Downside:

Communication was structural as well. We mentioned, that Finnish people are too strict and not really emotional. Even when Startup Sauna CEO, Jaakko was preparing a pancakes for the teams, he was extremely serious. So expect staff loudly complaining on you if you’re 3 min late or fucked up something.

Useful program, especially for early stage startups

@supercellgames founder was giving an inspirational talk. We liked the guy, he knows how to run $924M profit company.

5 weeks of coaching, feedback and meetings.

We read tons of articles about top-accelerators, so we could call Startup Sauna “a smaller & lighter Finnish version of Techstars”.

For us it was enormously helpful having the 1–on-1 Wednesday mentors’ sessions (5–7 sessions for 40min). Startup Sauna invited founders from various industry sectors, executives, legal & patent guys, investors, government representatives, HRs, marketers.

We calculated and were shocked that we had around:

* 39h of master classes

* 27h of 1–on-1 coaching

* 32h of pitching sessions

However, good ideas from learning sessions disappear very soon. So it’s your job to write everything down and share with your team. Interesting fact, in our autumn batch it was only one startup Uploadcare, who had a full team of 4 founders on the program (guys developed a cloud filesystem for web and mobile apps). Here is their thoughts on the program:

“We participated in a number of different startup conferences and accelerators, and Startup Sauna was the most useful of all of it. What really helped, was the dedication of each mentor, every of them was ready to spend an exact amount of time that is necessary to help us, or even more.”

Igor Debatur, Uploadcare CEO (Fall’15 batch)

Downside:

Firstly, usefulness of the program strongly depends on your existing experience and level of coachability. If you’re going to write mails during the master class — it’s a waste of mentor’s & your time.

Secondly, with such packed program focusing on everyday operations is extremely tough.

* Have you fit your new insights with current strategy?

* Have you prepared for tomorrow sessions and the client meetings?

* Are you sure, you can lead the team, when you’re tired and overloaded?

You got the point — normal job & life stops when you have acceleration program (or two of them :)

Pitch trainings & Demo day at Slush

Are you sure you can pitch in front of 1500+ people?

Flawless App pitch at the Demo Day. Lisa was a bit nervous, not every day 1500+ people are listening to you :)

Startup Sauna has a strong focus on pitch trainings, which we had every Tuesday for the whole day. Coaches cover all aspects — the words to use, the structure, the delivery. We even got the opportunity to learn breathing exercises, voice coaching and “show” elements.

Lisa probably practised pitching our company over 100 times. In the days before Slush we’d say she in average trained a pitch over 15 times per day.

Demo day was sort of graduation with 3 minutes of glory 🌟. For autumn batch the Demo was during Slush — a huge tech conference. We met there very cool guy & coordinator of Lithuanian startup community, who was impressed as well:

A number of local and internationals angels and venture capital investors truly amazes there. However, startup founders need to be aware that most of the work and arrangements need to be done prior SLUSH, otherwise a chance to meet some one you are looking for is 1 in 15000, literally.

Ugnius Zasimauskas, LOGIN Startup Fair organizer

Downside:

The feedback on pitch was no-bullshit-type-of-feedback going from “follow the structure” all the way to “you are f**ked”. But when it comes to “you are f**ked”, coaches were very rude (do you remember, that Ukrainians are very sensitive? :)

Also, after the demo day, there is an expectation that your pitch, product & traction are so good that you will be able to raise a seed investment straight afterwards. This is an illusion.