Founding an impact entrepreneurship community Wicked Helsinki
My role: Co-founder & designer
Focus: Impact entrepreneurship, community building
PROJECT BRIEF
Mission: Making Helsinki the #1 place for aspiring impact entrepreneurs.
Target group: Potential future founders (primarily university students and researchers)
GOALS
1. Increased amount of impact startups and in effect meaningful careers
2. An impact community that unites the university ecosystems, Aalto University and
Helsinki University as a part of a greater impact community.
3. For daily discourse around entrepreneurship and startups to revolve around using entrepreneurship as a tool for tackling societal and environmental challenges.
OUR SOLUTION
Wicked Helsinki - a self building community that enables this generation of founders and pre-founders to go tackle the world's wickedest challenges.
Achieve above mentioned goals by inspiring and supporting. Activities done and in planning were a newsletter, podcasts, weekly meetings and an impact ecosystem map to name a few.
OUR APPROACH
We began validating the hypothesis that there is not a true Impact ecosystem in Helsinki and there may be a need.
Even though some activities around the topic of impact entrepreneurship exsisted, we couldn't find a thriving community.
As an MVP we launched Wicked’s newsletter directed to students interested in impact entrepreneurhisp which was well received.
After consulting many stakeholders in the startup world and weeks of digging we came to the conclusion that there is a demand for further activities and connection points around impact.
STATUS
1. Currently Wicked Helsinki is a growing community of almost 200 members.
2. Initatives are planned and executed bottom up.
3. Resouces are shared and discussion held in the group.
MY CONTRIBUTIONS
I hosted weekly gatherings.
I did research of the current Helsinki impact ecosystem.
I gathered information, such as events, programs, courses and job postings related to impact entrepreneurship
that were shared in the newsletter.
I was responsible for sending out the newsletter.
I created the visual identity and brand logo for Wicked Helsinki.
I designed the marketing posters.
I was in the task force planning the future of the community.
LEARNINGS
Experience in founding from scratch
Reshaping the organizational structure as the community grew
Designing the brand identity
Using an MVP to validate interest
Learning by doing