Aaltoes is Aalto University’s student-run entrepreneurship society. We’re students who build things, and we run the events and programs that make it easier for everyone else to start.
Some members start companies. Most don’t, at least not yet. They join startups, run events, learn something a lecture hall was never going to teach them, or find people they like working with. All of that counts.
What is Aaltoes?
A community for students who like startups, technology, design, science, and building things that don’t exist yet.
We run events, programs, workshops, trips and projects. They all point at the same thing: getting you from being curious about this stuff to having actually made something.
A decent chunk of the Finnish startup scene grew out of Aaltoes. Slush, Junction, Kiuas and Dash all started here. We’re still doing the same job, which is helping students take a first step, whether that turns into a company, a job at one, a side project, or just a different way of looking at your degree.
Why your first year is the easiest one
You’re meeting people from every school, you haven’t specialised yet, and nobody expects you to know what you’re doing. That combination doesn’t last. Later your courses get heavier, your circle gets narrower, and trying something new costs more.
Aaltoes is one of the most active student communities on campus. People here are organising events, shipping side projects, working at startups, and starting things well before they feel ready. That’s more or less the trick.
You don’t need experience or a plan. You need to show up once.
Where to start
Come to an event
Show up. That’s genuinely the whole first step.
Our events are free and easy to walk into: talks from founders, workshops, parties, sauna evenings. Come alone or drag a friend along. Nobody expects you to network, pitch anything, or pretend you know what a term sheet is. Standing at the back and listening counts as a first event.
The kinds of events we run
Aaltoes events generally fall into three categories:
Who you’ll meet
Aaltoes is more about the people than the startups.
Designers, engineers, business students, physicists, artists, and a healthy number of people who have no idea what they want to do yet. What they share is that they’d rather try something than talk about trying something.
Help run it
Aaltoes is student-run, which is a polite way of saying nothing happens unless students do it.
Members organise the events, run the programs, handle partnerships, and built the site you’re reading. You don’t need to be qualified for any of it. Most people start by helping with one thing and end up running something a year later.
Questions we get a lot
I don’t have an idea.
Almost nobody does at the start, and the ones who do usually change it. Ideas come from talking to people and noticing what annoys them, not from sitting down and deciding to have one.
Come to an event, help with something, build a small thing badly. That’s how it tends to start.
Is this only for business students?
No. Aaltoes pulls from every school at Aalto: ENG, BIZ, SCI, ELEC, ARTS, and CHEM. The projects worth watching are usually the ones where those mix.
Do I have to want to be a founder?
No. Plenty of members are here to understand how startups work, to meet people, to learn something practical, or to find a team to build with. Some of them start companies later. It’s an outcome, not an entry requirement.
First steps
A short version, if you want one:
- 01Follow usEvents and open applications go up there before they go anywhere else.
- 02Come to one eventPick whichever one sounds least intimidating and turn up.
- 03Talk to someoneAsk what people are working on. Everyone at an Aaltoes event was new to it at some point, and for a lot of them it was recent.
- 04Build something smallA program, a hackathon, a weekend project. It doesn’t have to be good.
- 05Bring a friendIt’s easier with someone else in the room.