Boost Tales: Toni Perämäki, Founding chairman of Boost Turku
Who?
Co-founder & Chairman of the board, 2009
Board member, Startup Farm & Startup Journey project, 2010
Boost community manager 5/2011 - 12/2013
Tell us about yourself and how was your time in Boost like?
I guess my journey with Boost started like all the best things do, by accident. I've always been involved in different extracurricular activities and at Turku School of Economics I was in the board of KKOY & Wiiniklubi. In the autumn of 2009 by couple of co-incidences a group of weirdos who wanted to help students to become entrepreneurs was formed within Universities of Turku. That group was later before the Christmas to be transformed into the founding team of Boost Turku. I was part of that group. That was the beginning of Boost Turku for me and Boost Turku.
The following years with Boost taught me more about business than I could have learned anywhere else. In addition to learning different aspects of running a startup, meeting rockstar entrepreneurs like Mårten Mickos, Sami Inkinen and many other inspiring people, I found myself in places where I would not have never thought finding myself in. These included visiting Silicon Valley four times to learn how startups are built, ending up in a graduation ball at the Library of Congress on the Capitol Hill or coaching university students on entrepreneurship in Pskov, Russia. But topping all these are the lifelong friendships I've been fortunate to make along the way with fellow Boost members.
And yeah.. without Boost I would probably had ended up in the traditional Economics career as a management consultant (so thank God for Boost). Instead Boost put me on a trajectory which led me through building and running multiple accelerator programs, being part of 21MEUR project funding mobile startups, leading the startup support of Microsoft in whole Finland and joining a kick-ass machine learning startup as their COO. So thanks Boost for saving me from a traditional work career.
Original Author: Boostturku