Tag Archives: finderbase

The way the cookie crumbles – Day 135/139

The seed funding round for FinderBase was finally launched yesterday. Most of my active readers have received the investor letter. If you haven’t but would like to see it, just contact me directly.

So it all comes down to this.

Due to the tight schedule of this project, the funding round will be closed already next Monday at 4 pm Finnish time. This weekend is the Midsummer so I bet people have better things to worry about than our investment round.

At this point we have about 20,000 € worth of commitments to invest so we’re at least 80,000 € short to make this happen. It all comes down to the last day of my project on Monday. However, if we do get investments during the weekend, I’m happy to report the updated status here.

Happy Midsummer everyone!

Have fun and do things you like most.

Seeing is believing – Day 134/139

Today’s guest blogger is Ville Taajamaa, business development and internationalization manager at FinderBase.

There is an old story about three blind wise men trying to make sense of an elephant. They started each from their own corners and felt their way through. Then the arguing started:

  • Elephant is an animal with a big long nose said one
  • no, elephant is an animal with bulky legs said the other
  • no, you are both wrong, elephant is an animal with huge ears.

There was no resolution although everyone was right.

My China is this elephant.

My China is a nation that puts great value to people, education, learning, working hard and strong family and friendship ties. Not to forget the best food in the world. The next steps in both the local and the global path for China are evident:

  1. The environment has to last also to our grand children’s children.
  2. The difference between the quality of life in cities and in rural areas needs to be diminished.

To tackle these challenges, China differs from other BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India & China) nations in one crucial perspective. China is centralistic. Once something is decided, it can be implemented with a speed that leaves you gasping for air.

FinderBase could be one blind wise man to the elephant.

FinderBase has a great opportunity to offer valuable platform to the Chinese audience. China is a community that cares. There is an actual need for a service that connects people with their lost valuables to those who care and want to help.

With one word the market can be described as big. In China people are honest and always eager to help. FinderBase can offer technological and service-based value by connecting both urban and rural areas and helping people to find each other.

Let’s make the world a better place!

Spoils of war – Day 130/139

My war is over and it’s time to check the spoils.

War and entrepreneurship?

People nowadays tend not to have any idea what war means. Same goes for entrepreneurship. At least they have in common that neither is positively just good or evil although they both have heavily biased characteristics on that scale.

Both war and entrepreneurship offer enormous opportunities. Great things are started from death and renewal. Finland has lost almost every war in the country’s history. Still it has managed to become a wealthy nation on the international scale.

Positive mindset on the edge of despair.

During the war last week I was badly wounded. I lost my right arm in a grenade attack and lost consciousness shortly after. I was taken to a medic and later evacuated.

Losing an arm in a war-game isn’t such big a deal. You just miss a few hours of good night sleep. But losing something else while being unconscious is another story.

Who could say it better than Matti Nykänen: “Every chance is an opportunity”.

Local communities – Day 128/139

Today’s guest blogger is Oskari Nokso-Koivisto, artistic director, FinderBase.

For last few days I have been in Urbania in Italy. Urbania is a town with 7000 inhabitants. Weather is nice, food and wine are excellent and people are relaxed. At least so far it seems that stereotypes about a small Italian town are a reality here.

My reason to be here is to study Italian opera. We have 18 singers rehearsing for example parts of Cosi fan Tutte, Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Simon Boccanegra. To sing Italian opera, you have to be familiar with the Italian culture as well.

An amazing quality in Urbania is, that even as I have walked quite lot, I haven’t seen a single lost item. My guess is that if a community is small enough to be able to communicate efficiently about lost items in traditional ways. Everyone basically knows everything important all the time. Of course taking advantage of that kind of communicaton is not easy for visitors who are not part of the community.

The problem of lost items must have begun at the same time when the idea of ownership came into existence. In the small communities the problem can be solved in the ways it seems to be done in Urbania. However, the world has changed and is still changing in a fast pace. Towns and cities are growing. Most of the world population is living in environments, where it is impossible to know everything. In those environments we need innovations to solve the communication problems.

In July I will be in Rome, home of 3.5 million people. My guess is, that the lost item problem in Rome is not solved as well as it is here in Urbania. There will be work for FinderBase to do, I presume.

As easy as 1-2-3 – Day 123/139

Today was an important day in my project. We finally got the answer to the ultimate question:

How can this project end?

As we all know there are two possible outcomes and the shareholders of FinderBase decided today what they mean:

  1. My project will fail. The seed funding round will not be closed if we raise less than 100,000 € (50 % of the target sum).
  2. My project will succeed. The seed funding round will go through.

Who wins if I succeed?

If we think only in terms of cash, the biggest winners here are the guys who have been linking to my blog. If the round fails, my project will end up on the negative side. But if the round goes through, I will get my “million dollars” and these guys will get their affiliate money. And there’s still a lot of money in the budget so anyone can help out by spreading the word.

But how could the round fail? We have the guys at GrowVC helping us out. If you want to be a part of this success story, join the seed funding mailing list and we’ll tell you more.

Investment proposal – Day 122/139

To get this project to its goal, we need to see if we have been able to create measurable value in the eyes of investors. With investors I mean anyone who has some money and wants to put it to a good cause.

According to the recent poll, there are at least 34 people who are interested in hearing our investment proposal. So if you want to receive the FinderBase investor brochure, please leave your contact information to this

FinderBase seed funding mailing list.

The investor brochure will be in Finnish. If you’re interested in investing and don’t speak the language, please contact me.

There are no specific rights or any obligations to joining this mailing list.

Half a million views – Day 121/139

Throughout the years one program has constantly gathered a lot of viewers in the Finnish television.

That program is the 10 pm news on MTV3.

The most notable feature of those news is the less serious news story in the end. Usually a short tongue-in-the-cheek story about a topical matter.

Today’s entry is about me and FinderBase. Try not to laugh.

Cooperation – Day 119/139

Cooperation on the business-to-business difficult because different stakeholders have different agendas that they follow.

Best cooperation is such that it fully supports the core business functions of all the stakeholders.

We are aiming just that with our new cooperative campaign targeted to businesses:

Kierrätyskeskus + FinderBase

English transcript:

  1. We will create you a free account on FinderBase.com. Your lost&found property is photographed and added to the service in cooperation. You will hold the items and the valuables are delivered to the authorities.
  2. The happy customer finds their item in the Internet and collects it from you. The person getting the item will show their id.
  3. Kierrätyskeskus collects the remaining items after 3 months and recycles them to reuse.

If you had a business, would you cooperate with us?

Ideas best forgotten – Day 114/139

It has been about 100 days since I first introduced the list of good ideas. Having the list has been an enormous asset. But it doesn’t work all the time.

Have you ever had the weird feeling of not understanding your own notes?

This is probably quite common when revisiting bad notes. My problem is that I think I only make notes that are relevant. The question is:

What on earth did I mean with these notes?

  1. remember what Wili said“. Must have been something really important. Asking  Wili himself what he might have said would be a bit awkward. If you recall something worth remembering he has told you, please let me know – it just might be it.
  2. my ff is happy you“. I remember writing this down one evening as it was the clearest note ever. The following morning, I had absolutely no idea what ff meant. I’m quite sure it is something related to FinderBase or this blog or just generally a brilliant idea that needs to be implemented. Please help me out here. What could it be?

Which way is it?

Are the best ideas forgotten or are they best forgotten?

Status update 8 – Day 113/139

The summer has arrived and for the first time it feels that this project is actually going to end one day. A lot has happened and a lot keeps happening all the time but unfortunately sometimes behind closed curtains.

Here are some current milestones:

  • I just hit the 100 found items mark today on FinderBase. This raises a question on what to do with a basket full of lost&found stuff? What would be the best way to recycle the stuff to reasonable use? NetCycler, Huuto.net, Kierrätyskeskus, charity?
  • FinderBase just hit the 1,000 found items mark! We could soon be one of the biggest lost and found offices in Finland.
  • Last week we got 3000 hits on one lost item alone.
  • It’s safe to say about 100,000 Finns have seen our brand in the media one way or another.

Now that we’ve been in business for a month we can already say something about the business we’re in. Some observations:

  • We’re in societal business. We don’t expect anyone to actually pay us for anything and believe that will pay us in the end.
  • We’re in trust-building business. Our success is decided on whether people trust us or not.
  • We’re in value-creation business. Putting even a worthless object on our website raises it value, as weird as it sounds.

It’s a funny business. And I love it.