Solu To Launch A Brand New Personal Computer

    We have been stuck with basically the same type of computing devices since the beginning of the internet/computing era. The computer mouse dates back to 1941, most operating systems have not changed drastically since 1980’s. Solu is taking a stab at redefining all that with their launch on October 15th in San Francisco.

    If you are from Finland, you have probably heard of Solu, the stealth startup that got a lot of people excited while nobody quite knew what they did. They have now announced that they building a completely new personal computer. That includes everything: hardware, software, interface, monetization – everything.

    Don’t misunderstand this statement. They are not building yet another PC company, they want to redefine how we do computing in every way imaginable. From the ground up.

    Solu is going after Apple, Microsoft and everyone else in the personal computing market and they want to take it over. Recently, I have had the chance to see the product in action and with the permission from Solu – here is a little preview on how it feels.

    The physical product is not yet revealed, but you can get a glimpse of how it looks on the homepage. From that, you can deduce that the change is in everything: the form factor, the ingredients and the size. It takes into account the move to mobile, the ways we want to use computers and the modern technology to make it possible.

    The interface and the operating system takes into account how we interact with computer and people in a modern way. It also takes into account how people think, making the interface super intuitive and I believe that my three year old son could become almost immediately proficient with Solu in just a matter of minutes. The same can not be said of anything else out there.

    To make it happen is a huge task and although we loved the initial demo, it is still difficult to imagine how exactly they will be able to pull it off. After all, they are going after the biggest companies in the world with a minuscule budget in comparison. Not only that, but we already have most of our data on the other platforms and switching might be difficult. They need to shift mindsets and that is not an easy task.

    Imagining a brand new company with a total funding of just over €1 million being able to do what Microsoft could not with over EUR 80 billion is difficult to say the least. That being said, we do know that Solu thought about that quite extensively and the product addresses this issue. So with some luck – it might just work.

    The hurdle that Solu needs to overcome is massive, but I am happy to see someone so ambitious. It reminds me of Garry Kasparov’s speech at the Nordic Business Forum recently. He said that when Steve Jobs created Apple, he wanted to grow and kill IBM. Whereas right now every entrepreneurs dream is to become big and sell to Apple. He told the audience to think big and Solu is one of the very few companies that does just that and I truly hope that they will be able to find their place in the market.

    They know it will be hard, but they also know that it takes someone crazy and revolutionary to change the world as their video, starring a famous Finnish rapper – Paleface states: