Jouko Ahvenainen, co-founder Grow VC

Jouko Ahvenainen

Jouko Ahvenainen is a serial-entrepreneur and co-founder of Grow VC, the first global peer-to-peer micro-funding service for startups.

His previous startups include Enreach Group Inc. (was Rate Cards), an advertising solution company and Xtract, the world first social network analytics company.

Before his serial entrepreneur career, Jouko held senior positions at diverse technology firms including Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, Powerwave Technologies Inc., Nokia, and Sonera in various sales, managerial and management consulting positions.

By design, Grow VC aims to be a global, virtual Silicon Valley, not just reproducing the “secret sauce” of the Valley in some other place. In its first year, Grow VC has racked up some impressive numbers for its social network/capital marketplace:

• 73 active startups.
• 7,229 registered members.
• $16,721,135 total capital available.
• $5 million in co-investment funds from angel investors and other networks.
• 1,758 total number of startups.
• An open investment fund that allows individuals to invest as little as $20 a month.

In 2010 Grow VC launched local chapters in India and China and plans to open chapters – much like local angel-investment networks – in the U.S., Europe, Russia and Latin America in 2011.

Video

Cash-strapped entrepreneurs get creative, on BBC News site.

Contact Info

Grow VC.

Jouko’s web site.

Jouko on Twitter.

Jouko on Facebook.

Jouko on LinkedIn.

Interview questions:

• So how is Grow VC different than an angle investor network, a VC, and a micro-loan service for startups?
• Grow VC’s tagline is all about being a virtual Silicon Valley. How is that better than the real Silicon Valley? Or Silicon Alley in New York? Or all the startup investment ecosystems that are springing up in places like Colorado, London, Berlin, Barcelona?
• What do Investors – big or small – get out of Grow VC?
• How about Startups?
• How does a good Grow VC investment candidate differ from what an angle fund, or a traditional VC, wants?
• Isn’t it harder to raise capital outside of the U.S., the UK and Europe?
• If you fund an Indian startup with funds from the UK that is going to be doing business in the US, how do ever keep straight what laws of which countries apply to what?
• In “the Valley” people build reputations by where they’ve worked, what they’ve accomplished. They build networks of people who can “warm intro” them to potential angels and get them into the same room with important people. Can this kind of serious relationship building actually happen globally?
• How about cultural and language differences? In the Valley, there’s a set of norms – it’s okay to fail, things happen very, very fast, and more – that’s worlds apart from the day to day lives of people in Bangalore, Barcelona or for that matter Boise, Idaho. Is there really a global culture, a global set of beliefs now?
• What’s ahead for Grow VC in its second year?

(Interview set for Feb. 21st, 2011, Show date: TBD)

What would you like to ask Jouko?