Demo Day, the highlight of our Startup Journey Accelerator 2021, is coming in a couple of days, and we now proudly introduce to you our Judges.

Unlike in some other Accelerators, our Demo Day Judges are also our Head Coaches. What do our Head Coaches do? They did not focus on a certain training area but provided broad help and coaching. They had 1on1s with our team bi-weekly to monitor the overall progress of our startups - they checked on current work tasks and results, answered all kinds of questions, suggested solutions and gave feedback. Therefore, on Demo Day, they are the Judges who already have knowledge and understanding about our teams’ business ideas and development process. The decision they are going to make reflects insightful assessment and thorough thinking. Just as we have 2 separate Tracks with separate training curriculum, our Head Coaches/Demo Day Judges are different for Business Track and Game Track. This is to ensure fairness to all teams, as they will be judged by professionals working in their specific business areas.

Don’t forget to join in our Demo Day’s livestream (24th August 04.00-07.00pm), sign up here Demo Day

BUSINESS TRACK JUDGES

Tero Karinti is the CEO and Founder of Kollektiv Ventures; a Partner, working on Customer Relations & Development at Tuumaa Education ; a Board Member at Sofokus Ventures and Chairman of the Board at Liedon Pallo Ry.Tero has over 20 years of business experience - both success and failures- in his pocket and a steady goal of helping businesses grow. His winning strategy includes great leadership, innovative sales and marketing concepts and continuous evaluation of business processes. What special about Tero is that, he works with a "late founder" mentality and guaranteed results model. This means he helps develop your company as if it was his, and he won’t stop working until you both agree that set goals have been achieved. Oh and he’s an expert and passionate Startup Coach!

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Teemu Malinen is a Digital Multi Entrepreneur; Founder and CEO at Sofokus; Founder of Sofokus Ventures; Co-Founder &Advisor at Coventures; Co-Founder & Investor at Monttu Ventures Oy; Co-Founder & Board Member at Liveto; Co- Founder & Chairman of the Board at Viversion; Board Member at The SHIFT Finland.Teemu has been working in Digital & mobile business business design since 1994, startup business & bootstrapper since 2000 and co-founded 20+ startups. His expertise is turning ideas into high growth companies with digital means.An inventor at heart, a doer by nature, Teemu believes in ”Dream big, make it real”, as well as keeping a healthy work/life balance as the key driver & resource for building high growth ventures.

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Turo Numminen is Co-Founder of Sofokus Ventures and Monttu Ventures; Investor & Board Member at Nettilasku.fi; CEO at Ad Express; Partner and Board Member at Fennicum Ltd and Silent Quote Ltd; Partner at Asuntosäästö Asua and Aitokoski Experience. Turo is an entrepreneur who enjoys training, NGO work and investing. He has a down-to-earth approach in coaching and a pleasant manner that are praised by all of his clients. Turo also has good business instinct and is constantly exploring new business solutions. He enjoys getting on new challenges, taking on new roles, making brand-new startup ideas possible.

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GAME TRACK JUDGES

Teemu Kokkonen is a Designer/Programmer, he used to work at  Aalto University, Worker Bee Inc, Twister Ark and currently he is working at Lightneer.Teemu is a game developer with a dash of design, programming and leadership. During the day is he a game programmer and designer doing hyper casual games at Lightneer in Helsinki. At night, he is the president of the Finnish Game Jam organization, which organizes and supports the game jamming scene in Finland and promotes it globally. Previously he has been working for a Japanese localizing publisher doing game and business development, as well as being a teacher of game programmer and design in Kouvola.

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Taha Rasouli is Product Manager at Avagames; Founder of KD Games Studios, Chapter Chair at IGDA Iran; an award-winning game producer with several honors and awards in Tehran Game Festivals.Taha has been active in the game developing industry in Iran for almost 2 decades. He started as a game designer and worked his way into managing positions in various organisations while teaching at Iran Game Development Institutes. He contributed in Iran’s strong and active game developing community and co-founded an accelerator in Tehran to help Indie teams. Taha is currently working with a couple of VCs in Europe to expand their acceleration program beyond their Iran borders and finding opportunities to participate in global scale game projects.

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‍Ari Arnbjörnsson is Unreal Engine Evangelist at Epic Games; Main Organizer at Games Helsinki; once a Rovio game developer who worked on the first F2P Angry Birds game "Angry Birds Friends"; and once a lead programmer at Housemarque working on Returnal for PlayStation 5. Ari has 14 years of varied games industry experience ranging from social, web and mobile games to console games. He has multiple launched titles from start to post-launch live ops. He is a big proponent of knowledge sharing and has held multiple lectures and presentations about a range of game-dev topics at conferences, meetups, companies and schools. Humorous, elegant, always thriving for new challenges, Ari has been recommended by all of his clients and colleagues for his exceptional problem solving skills and unwavering optimistic character.

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