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Yesterday morning I was a guest at the Good Morning Finland (Huomenta Suomi) TV show again.

The overall topic was adult usage of the Internet, privacy and people's rights to their own content.

Language handicap: unfortunately the talk is entirely in finnish again, sorry. Here's the embedded video:

Taneli Tikka in Huomenta Suomi at 11.2.2010 from Taneli Tikka on Vimeo.

Couple of things concerning this: I don't talk about the usage of the Internet for entertainment purposes - because that's a given. Everybody does that. So only focusing on the differences of usage. With adults its much more official and serious -toned, while the younger age groups simply have all aspects of their life online, one way or the other.

I mention insurance and finance product comparisons as one of the uses adults have. That's linked to www.vakuutuskone.com

The end segment is about banks who do not provide XML feeds of people's own data to the people, while it would be technically simple and while they simultaneously do provide it for companies. That's linked to www.balancion.com

Banks have intentionally decided to stand in the way of progress and disable the XML feeds for private accounts. I have understood that they would have the infrastructure in place already because of SEPA and the way their backends are build. In some banks enabling the stream would be almost like flipping a switch, some others would have a small amount of work to do.

Why do they disable it then? Because they have failed in their strategic thinking. They have made the false conclusion that by being protectionist they would somehow run a better business - while in fact they are missing out on a huge opportunity for growth and new revenue generating services, entire new business models, etc. Opening up the feeds would grow the entire market and increase the size of the pie for the whole sector. Their decision is cowardly, showcases weak leadership and communicates fear and lack of self-confidence from their part.

Finland had it's first telephone line in the year 1877. Back then the printing press, the "newspaper men", were afraid of this modern form of progress; and protested against the telephone by arguing that it will kill out the print media because now news can travel faster. While in fact the opposite happened; faster communications and the telephone is a big reason why the print media grew to be bigger than ever, as gossip spread faster and people were even more focused and interested about the news they provided. The telephone increased the need for their newspaper products and grew the entire market size.

When ever I see this kind of fearful and weak resistance to change with false logic behind it, I most certainly remain unimpressed. Banks should do better than this, way better. And we as their customers should actively demand them to do so.

Banks have opened up their XML (and various other formats) feeds in Estonia. Finland is the backwater hillbillytown of progress. A country of fearful weak banks that would rather fall behind in progress than go for the huge opportunities ahead and grow their businesses. Not progressing a vital infrastructure the like the banking system makes us fall behind even on a national level, which makes it even more sad and reprehensible.

Few links about the Balancion discussion:

http://www.tietoviikko.fi/taustat/apaja/article370344.ece

http://www.arcticstartup.com/2010/02/01/osuuspankki-says-no-to-balancion/

http://twitter.com/#search?q=balancion

http://www.kasvua.org/~toivotuo/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi/2010/01/29#banks-and...

http://www.tarkkamarkka.com/blogi/2010/01/osuuspankki-kielsi-balancionin...

http://www.sombiz.net/content/osuuspankki-says-no-balancion

http://www.pinseri.com/2010/02/01/balancion-ja-opn-oma-talous/

http://tweetmeme.com/story/513122620/osuuspankki-says-no-to-balancion

http://onespot.contentnext.com/paidcontent-uk/2010/02/01/a/572900074-osu...

A while back there I joined Netcycler as an advisor. It's been motivating and interesting to be a part of a startup with great green values. Focus on something that potentially makes a big impact; recycling and swapping secondhand stuff amongst us instead of just throwing it away to a landfill "someplace".

I bet many of you have seen "The Story of Stuff", right? if you haven't, go check it out at:

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

The Story of Stuff is a very nicely done fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our (arguably unsustainable) production and consumption patterns. Basically the ugly truth is that we consume too much and mindlessly throw away valuable resources and raw materials, waste energy and pollute our environment in the process of doing so.

A little more than a decade ago (or a few decades) there wasn't such an industry as "the self-storage industry". Now days that segment alone is worth more than 20 billion USD annually (already past 20Bn in 2007). That means that people (and some companies) pay up more than 20 billion USD a year to lock away their unused stuff & crap to decay in a storage facility someplace.

Besides the housing bubble we have pretty much had every other sort of economic bubble since the late 80's: people have been going crazy with their credit cards and amount of personal debt. Way above sustainable levels. People have bought so much stuff that the storage space they have isn't enough to pile it all up: hence the fast growth and the emergence of the self-storage industry. It sounds crazy, right?: to have a separate storage rented out somewhere just to throw your unused treadmills, exercise equipment, dirt bikes, canoes and other stuff in.. Well, it IS crazy, and there's a better way to do this, there has to be.

Netcycler is a service that allows you to swap stuff you don't need (or are willing to give away, if you get something good back) for other stuff that has more value to you. For example: you could swap the pair of shoes you only wore twice for an iPod.

Netcycler does very effective swapping with a little help from computational power and mathematical science (one of their founders has a PhD in physics). Netcycler finds long swap-chains of stuff; so that the chances of getting something excellent back, when you let your old skateboard go, are excellent. In fact they are exponentially excellent; the more people Netcycler has in their system, the more swap-chains they can form and the better value it will be for everyone.

Here's a simple pic to illustrate how it works:

I want a trombone and give away my old iPod. Somebody else wants an iPod and gives away a pair of shoes.. To somebody else who wants the pair of shoes and gives away the trombone. Netcycler already has swap-chains that extend to 5 people, and they are just getting started.

The interesting thing about very long swap chains is that the value of swapped goods can increase every step of the way. With a little luck you might end up trading away your old iPod and receive a sea-canoe, or even something crazy like a house in return. Swapping a red paperclip for a house is precisely what happened to Kyle MacDonald. Apparently the swap-chain took him a year to execute, and you can read his story from here. So, potentially, if you are extra lucky, you can end up with an amazing swap-chain getting you something much more valuable in the trade than what you are giving away. Remember that the value of stuff is highly subjective. This means that it is possible to get long swap-chains were every swap in the chain is perceived as a "tradeup" to something more valuable, making all participating folks happy. The more stuff you put on Netcycler and the more people are on it, the better the chances of this happening are. In Netcycler you'll see nice lists of the stuff that's available as a swap against your items; so you can pick and choose the things that have the most value for you.

More illustrations on how it works:

First you add your stuff. You can place offers (offer a stuff for something you want) and you can go and click items to your wishlist that would be valuable to you.

Next: the magic happens and Netcycler does the matching. You can end up with a really long swap-chain, or a shorter one. It takes into account anything that's on your offer & wish -lists and tries to optimize the swap-chain for every person involved.

Finally you go and do the swap for real. Or agree how to do it. There are several Netcycler meeting points and using one of them is a good option. If you don't wish to leave your apartment (or your storage room ;-)) you can just mail the item to the other swapper.

One of my things in there is a bodyboard, check it out.

I find the whole idea behind Netcycler exciting. This is certainly something that we, as a very material society, would need. I'm a hamster; which means that I'm the kind of guy that ends up rarely throwing anything away. I just pile up and save way too much stuff; and when I get rid of it, I try to come up with an intelligent way of disposing stuff. Throwing things into the garbage bin just isn't a good option - I much rather give stuff away to friends or somehow put them in recycling or charity. Netcycler hits this need and "consumer behavior" precisely and promises something better; you can actually trade up, not just get rid of stuff.

You can request beta-access to Netcycler from this signup page:
http://www.netcycler.fi/signup

Muxlim continues it's interesting "path of conquest" or at least "path of success" by grabbing a very prestigious award; the 2009 Internationalization Award. They just announced it today at around 3pm. This is significant noteworthy limelight for a startup; as this award has a history of over 40 years, and not that many startups have ever received it (you could argue that none of the previous winners were startups). In fact they usually go to well-known big corporations that have been international for quite a while. Muxlim now receives the exact same award as Nokia did back in 1999. It's a positive thing for the whole startup community to get recognition to one of its members.

Muxlim's CEO, Mr. M (Mohamed El-Fatatry) is going to attend President Obama's Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship in Wshington D.C. this spring as well. It looks like "presidential attention" on Muxlim is going to continue, even attention of the binational kind.

Finpro's CEO also comments: "The Internationalization Awards of the President of the Republic highlights concepts and business models as examples for other Finnish companies that are going international. This year, all the award-winners represent highly specialized expertise and the combination of expertise from many different industries. Furthermore, the international service industry has an important role in their businesses,” says Jorma Turunen, President and CEO of Finpro."

The official info continues: "Every year, Finpro looks for candidates for the Internationalization Awards and carries out their preliminary assessment. Based on the evaluation the Board of Directors of Finpro proposes a list of candidates to the President in collaboration with the Association for Finnish Work. The President of the Republic decides the winners of the Internationalization Award. Today’s award ceremony was the 42nd in the history of the award."

Nice to see that a startup has found its way up there ;) Finpro notes that Pictures of the Award winners are here at some point: http://finpro.materials.fi > Events

Now what does this mean to a startup then? Hopefully better recognition and a strong show of support to its legitimacy and right to exists. Startups often lack super-strong reference and concrete evidence to prove their value and usefulness. Recognition like this will certainly carry some weight and should help build trust towards customers, consumers, investors and partners alike. After all, they do check this stuff, make their DD and are careful about who to nominate for these kinds of awards. I am sure any startup would welcome equal fame and recognition with open arms, as any startup will need every advantage out there to pull through and eventually make it big. Looks like Muxlm is well on their way!

Congratulations! Great work Team Muxlim!

TechCrunch Europe just came out with the announcement from Xiha:

http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/01/25/xiha-life-secures-1m-and-adds-jaikus-engestrom-to-board/

This is also the very first Vigo -deal, making it the pilot case and first fruit of the whole Vigo growth company financing and acceleration programme. As I mentioned in my last blog entry I have been in the Vigo steering group since last fall. Glad to see the programme working and in action.

With more proper funding Xiha is quite certainly hiring. So keep on eye on the job postings, especially if you are well versed in the art of PHP programming, statistics science and agile methodologies.

Cool stuff! Yet another good finnish startup gets a real chance at going out there and shining like the star they are!

Gratz to Jani + team for closing this at a very demanding time.

It certainly has been a busy 2010 so far. Two startups I have worked with closed their financing rounds recently. Seems like 2010 has a lot more optimism and positive energy packed into it! There's event talk of some juicy IPO prospects this year.. if only..

The end of 2009 also saw me getting placed to the Vigo Programme steering group (led by Risto Siilasmaa). I am hoping to contribute in the renewal and reinventing of startup and growth company funding in Finland. The programme certainly has some good and ambitious goals, and plenty of work ahead of it.

My last blog entry was about a TV chat (again, sorry, they keep wanting me back, and I keep going.. ) That's now Online here behind this link. Big thanks to Vesa Palmu for that!

This spring I'll be "outing" quite a bit. I'm going to be out there to present about various topics and have sparring sessions with startups etc. Here's a list of upcoming events where I'll be around:

Jan 22 - Talking about social media at a SAP event
Jan 26 - Talking about social media at an MTL event
Jan 27 - Coaching and sparring startups in Hämeenlinna
Feb 3 - Coaching and sparring startups in Kouvula
Feb 4 - Speaking at a Nixu event
Feb 9-10 - Sparring startups in Tampere
Feb 16 Sparring startups in Vaasa
Feb 25 - Speaking about social media at TAMK event in Tampere
Mar 3 - Speaking about social media at a Nordea event in Turku
Mar 11 - Speaking about social media in Tampere at an entrepreneur event
Mar 18 - Speaking at a Microsoft event
Mar 23 - Speaking (or lecturing?) at TKK school in Otaniemi
Mar 25 - Panelist in an event of Innovation Journalism
May 5 - Speaking about social media in Tampere at a TAKK event

Btw the "coaching and sparring startups" events are FREE for companies to attend and all the places are not booked yet. Sign up from here.

Why do I get around that much and take on speaking assignments? There are a few reasons why I do it;

1) I meet interesting people and expand my network. This happens almost every time, always a big plus. After presenting people usually want to talk to me, that is, if they haven't boo'ed me off stage..

2) an entrepreneur needs to be a decent presenter. This helps hone the skill and keep a good touch to it. If you haven't presented in a while, you kind of loose touch. Getting out there and just doing it is good practice and comes in as a valuable competence when presenting your new startup to audiences - not to mention investors.

3) Hopefully I also have something useful to say - and it would be actually beneficial for people to attend a talk, listen and have a chat. This is a way to keep that in check and get feedback - if people hate it, they will say it.

.. There isn't that kind of money in speaking gigs that it would be financially very smart to do this as a job. If you plan on maximizing the money alone, my advice for you would be; focus on building up the value of your company and forget a hobby like this one ;-)

However, we all know that Finns especially need the practice when it comes to pitching and presenting. I am no exception there. Go for the opportunities to pitch & present and practice, practice, practice.. If you plan on being a successful entrepreneur you will need the skill in so many encounters along the way. Even consider taking one of those PR training courses where they video your presentation and force you to watch it. I have one two of those: highly useful and always humbling..