Aaltoes
organization
Aaltoes, also known as Aalto Entrepreneurship Society, is a non-profit organization run by students, based in Helsinki, Finland. Founded in 2009, Aaltoes has helped the rapid emergence of a startup culture in Finland in 2008–2011.
Aaltoes's purpose is to inspire international, high-growth entrepreneurship in Finland and especially in Aalto University.
History
Aaltoes was founded in spring 2009 by a group of students from Helsinki University of Technology, Helsinki School of Economics and University of Art and Design Helsinki, who saw that the entrepreneurial climate in Finnish universities did not support students or researchers who wanted to start companies and aim for international markets and high growth.
Prior to the founding of Aaltoes, it was decided that in 2010 Helsinki University of Technology, Helsinki School of Economics and University of Art and Design Helsinki would be merged into a single university, known as Aalto University. The underlying reason behind the merger was similar to that of the founding of Aaltoes. The former University of Technology was split into four schools in 2011 under the authority of Aalto University.
At first, Aaltoes started bringing forth entrepreneurial role models to inspire and encourage students to become entrepreneurs, soon expanding to organizing pitching evenings, hackathons, workshops and other events, where students and researchers could experiment, look for co-founders and learn skills.
In late 2009, as Aalto University was starting to gain its form, Aaltoes made a pitch for a space for young entrepreneurs to work on their companies, ultimately gaining premises and a budget from the university for a 1,500 square metre industry hall on the university's campus in Otaniemi, Espoo. The co-working space would later become known as Aalto Venture Garage.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4661413. Authority coordinates are 60.180, 24.831. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2009, 2008, 2011 and 2010.
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This entry incorporates text from “Aaltoes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.