Are you an awesome startup? Can you see yourself speedboat racing on the Gulf of Finland? Boy, do we have the contest for you.
Open Ocean Capital, to celebrate the first closing of its Fund Three at €40 million (approximately $60 million), is announcing Friday a new startup competition. The winning startup team will be treated with an all-inclusive summer visit to Finland, where they will not only gain insight from the Open Ocean partners, but also just enjoy some leisurely activities.
“Like a lot of people in our business, we work hard and we play hard,” said Patrik Backman, Opean Ocean Managing Partner. “However, as venture capitalists that were once founders, we want to stress that we come into this in a very untraditional way and we’re looking for a different kind of venture partner that is doing for their industry what MySQL did for web databases.”
“More than anything, we really want to bond with those start-ups we choose to invest in and make sure they know they are more than just some numbers in a ledger to us.”
Before moving on to Open Ocean, Backman led MySQL AB’s global engineering team and managed the company’s strategic technical alliance with SAP AG. Backman’s fellow partners and colleagues–Ralf Wahlsten, Tom Henriksson and Michael “Monty” Widenius–are all former MySQL and Nokia executives.
If you think your startup has what it takes, and if you think you could stand to hang out with those guys in Finland for some undetermined length of time, then this is the competition for you.
Though Open Ocean typically focuses on European software startups developing user community or open-source business models, the competition is open to any startup in any region working on any kind of service. What they’re looking for are game-changers, truly disruptive companies.
Current portfolio companies include SkySQL, WOT, MoSync, Vaadin, Chat Republic and Ironstar Helsinki.
Startups that would like to enter the contest must submit their pitches, including a maximum five-slide presentation and three minute video, by June 15 at the latest. Though Open Ocean hasn’t said this specifically, I can bet that a winning video will not only highlight the startup’s amazing product and brilliant business model with a user-base to back it, but also show off the awesomeness of the team behind that business.
More information should be up on the Open Ocean Capital site by tomorrow, though interested candidates can contact Tom Henriksson directly.
