The summer is basically over and everything is starting to pick up speed again. Startups are getting ready to launch their products, corporations are back looking for talent and partnerships and investors are almost ready to start considering possible investments. So we were happy to hear that there is a brand new accelerator out there.
Finland already has a fair share of various accelerators and incubators, but it is always good to see new ones that have a very specific theme. After all, that creates the feeling that the people behind it must be specialists in their particular industry. That is why the brand new Nestholma in Lahti caught our eye.
The idea behind the accelerator is to focus on “imaging” startups. Basically anything that has to do with images, video, 3D printing, etc. Topi Järvinen told us that “pictures and videos are in central role in many of the most successful services and products at the moment” and we could not find a way to disagree, just look at Instagram, Vine or even Facebook itself.
The accelerator partners bought Eirikuva, traditional photo printing business, a year ago and then started thinking how they could offer the traditional production to startups in order to come up with unique and new ways of creating physical products, however they later decided to expand that to all sorts of imaging startups whether they concentrate on physical or online projects.
The model of Nestholma has two ways of working with startups. One is a loosely defined partnership, where they can be in Nestholma in order to get the right connections and define their product and market. The second is the official program starting in November.
Järvinen told ArcticStartup that they “do not want to have a bootcamp, where [they] actually try to mould everyone into one type of operational or business model. [Their] model is that [they] want to support the startups over the three month period and try help them define the customer need and develop something that they can show to investors that Nestholma brings in.”
The program will feature 5-10 startups and will last for 3 months, where startups will receive mentorship and receive a seed investment. Startups that are not fully ready to join the program still have a chance as Nestholma promised to help them find funding to proceed further. If you are interested, you can apply for the November batch here.
