Greetings from New York City

Now that we are back in Finland is time to update what we have learned. The lecture of Ernest Von Simson was very broadening experience.  It dealt with the meaning of laptops and tablets in the future. We also discussed about the security issues on the Internet. According to Von Simson every single website will be hacked at some point! That’s nuts, isn’t it? The lecture gave us a lot to think and brought new ideas to GlobeOut.com. The market of iPads is enormous in the States and we noticed that we have to concentrate more on the application side of GlobeOut too. After the lecture, we came up with one word that would describe GlobeOut the best. SOCIAL TRAVEL GAME.

We met again with Jonathan Hill on Monday evening. First we went to visit him at the Pace University where we had a chance to talk with his students. They were all really nice and helpful and we got great support from them! In Finland the support of others haven’t been exactly what we wanted it to be and it was nice to notice how helpful the students of Pace University were.  After Pace we headed over to Downtown association with Jonathan Hill and we discussed more about GlobeOut. After few hours of good wine and food we promised to send him some materials about GlobeOut and if he and his students like what we’re doing they might help us out maybe by making the prototype of GlobeOut for us.

So all and all, the week went very well and now it’s time to suffer from great jet lag!

A quick catch up

It's day four in New York and a lot has happened already. Upon our arrival we rented a car for two days and we were driving around Brooklyn, Manhattan and New Jersey doing some sightseeing and shopping. Hilma was driving like a lunatic but so were everybody else too. We stayed few days in New Jersey and Thursday morning we headed over to New York.

Before we got here we had been in contact with this cool professor called Jonathan Hill from Pace University. He was kind enough to arrange some meetings and meet us up. We had a lecture on Thurday night at Pace University with a very intelligent Ernest Von Simson, President and senior partner at Ostriker Von Simson. The lecture was about today's and tomorrows technology in computers, smart phones etc. It was very interesting and we noticed that Finland is way behind with a lot of things. We'll write all about the lecture later!!

Here is a very interesting video called Social Media Revolution that they showed us at the lecture:

4 days here have been absolutely amazing and we felt like the girls from sex and the city when driving with taxis around Manhattan! Pictures and more posting coming soon!!

GlobeOut goes to NYC

This week has been quite a busy one. We have been working like ants to put our idea in order. The key advice that most of the Startup Sauna coaches gave us was to simplify the idea and put it in a package that you can sell. It’s actually harder than it sounds. 

We realized that even though we have made a lot of research about our competitors there is still a lot to do. That’s why we agreed that there is some serious benchmarking to be done and a lot of co-operating companies to be found.

We have been contacting a lot of different universities and other people who could potentially be helpful for us and our mission. We had a Skype meeting with a Latvian gaming startup company which gave us a lot of insight of what we’ll be facing in the future. We even had an interview for a magazine called Signals.

The next week will be so-called intensive week so we all will be off the campus. Minttu will start working with the content of the site while Susanna writes the press release. Eevi, Hilma and Nea will go to New York to do some benchmarking and networking. They will be having a meeting with a Pace University professor and attending a lecture; Made in NY: The intersection of tech, media and entrepreneurship in New York City's technology scene.

All and all this week has been very interesting and we can only imagine what the next week will bring to our way. So stay tuned and hear what happened in New York!

Uhlalaa what a week!!!

So GTP Group is really starting to hit it off. A about a week ago we got an invitation to Startup Sauna. Startup Sauna is a non-profit seed accelerator for new start-up projects from Northern Europe and Russia.

This week on Monday the 3^rd of October we went to Espoo to spend the day with “real” business people. As it was a competition there were altogether 9 business plans competing. The day started off with an introduction on the day and then it was our time to shine. We had prepared a pitch talk for this day and tried it out for the first time to an audience. It was really exciting. Afterwards we had one on one time with five different coaches who reported back on us how we did and what we should do in the future. They were a huge help and the whole day really got us excited and thinking more on the REAL stuff.

On Tuesday we started brainstorming and talking about the most important things. We also decided that we need to think about the areas of responsibilities more carefully. We got our idea pretty clear and even have some new ideas, surprisingly. It’s gonna be awesome.

Stay tuned… this is just the beginning!

This got us inspired this week

Avril Lavigne - Smile

SUPERSUNDAYEXCITED!!

This Friday changed our perspective on working on developing GlobeOut.com completely. The whole week was very quiet, Hilma had an angina and had to be in bed for few days, Eevi had a really bad cough and the rest of the GTP Group wasn't feeling any better either. 

But on Friday afternoon, we were hanging out in Minttu's and Hilma's apartment when we realised that StartupSauna Warmup day was coming up in 3 days and we haven't heard anything from there since we left our application. 

Nea checked her inbox immediately and... just some spam mail. What a disappointment. 

"Congratulations!" was one of the spams, and we told Nea to delete that. But because of some weird reasons she decided to read it. OH MAN, IT WAS FROM STARTUPSAUNA!! WE GOT IN FOR THE WARMUP!! Imagine, if we would have deleted that  e-mail!!!

 After screaming and jumping on Hilma's bed, we realized how much we have to work during the weekend.

 

So, This would be the schedule for Monday:

9.30-10.00 Registration, coffee

10.00-10.15 Explaining the Start-up Sauna concept, introducing the coaches

10.15-11.00 Lesson on "What it takes to built a great startup" (Juha Ruohonen)

11.00-12.30 Start-up pitches and feedback from the coaches

12.30-13.30 lunch break

13.30-16.30 1:1 time with the coaches

16.30-17.00 Wrap-up and announcing the winner

17.00 ----> Networking

Take a look at where we have put our heads into:

http://startupsauna.com/warmups/

We have 3 minutes time for our pitch and 2 minutes for questions. This is an amazing opportunity and even if we don't win, we have won already! 

This weekend we literally have been working 24/7, doing research as much as possible, trying to find answers to questions they might ask us and of course working on improving our pitch. After a long weekend filled with hundreds of cups of coffee, we are feeling pretty confident with what we have came up with. 

Wish us luck!!!

Btw, we wanted to use this song at the end of our pitch, but we realized it's illegal to use it, too sad because it would've been tons of fun! Maybe in some other presentation... :) Well, we HAD TO post it here anyways, Sounds pretty cool, right!! :)

http://www.gobarbra.com/hit/new-171044242e51673cc2ce2f534e8f78cd