OUR STORY
The mission of Hippo Enabler is
to help Good People build Great Companies
via game-changing tools, methods, and approaches
Live Case Experiments
Hippo Enabler is a result of vast co-creation, several complimentary track records, shared discoveries and values, and a crystal-clear mission. Its story started from university-based experiments led by Marko Seppä, after his VC career, as a fresh PhD, on how to create business in the Digital Era.
During a local pilot of EU’s eEurope programme at Tampere University, Marko’s eBusiness Research Center team discovered that venture capitalists were losing their role as the key enablers in the 21stcentury. He learned how profoundly Founders and Financiers need new approaches, methods and instruments to shift focus from ineffective pre-investment activities (the “pitching lane”) to go-to-market focused post-investment actions.
During the Global Venture Lab (GVL) experiment at University of Jyväskylä, now invited as Professor of Growth Venture Creation, Marko and his team created a number of new methods and approaches with colleagues from IIT Kharagpur and UC Berkeley. His Runway-to-Growth (R2G) method received a JCI Productive Idea Award and GVL’s live case based approach is manifested in the Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship.
Call for Positive Disruption
Based on their successful live case experiments, Marko’s GVL team proposed an exploratory new domain aside of Science of Business Administration, coined as Art of Business Creation, to enable education of people who can create Great Companies by people who themselves can.
To put money where mouth is, the team disrupted the venture evaluation paradigm in Finland, and successfully replaced a decade-old, nation-wide “beauty contest” (Venture Cup) with their R2G method based approach (KasvuOpen.fi). In the new approach, co-entrepreneurially committed and thematically specialised jury members engage in business creation alongside the participating entrepreneurs.
In 2011, Marko, together with serial entrepreneur & PhD student Christian Aspegren, and fellow team members established Global Enabler to make their proposed “Professor as a Service” based new domain available to universities worldwide. As the proposal proved to be too radical, the new-born venture baby had to start searching for new channels to bring its disruptive new methods and approaches to market.
Proof of Concept
Design and launch of Kasvu Open for the Chamber of Commerce was literally the new company’s first order as a business. Feedback from founders, enablers, and financiers on this new R2G empowerd approach with annual events in Silicon Valley were critically important proof of concept for Global Enabler’s disruptive new business creation algorithm.
Christian’s anchor test case startup, and longitudinal proof-of-concept action research case company, Naava.io, emerged from the first season of Kasvu Open. By 2018 Naava had raised – enabled by the new approach and algorithm – over 10MEUR and reached a 30MEUR valuation.
Helping IPP.vn boost the startup ecosystem in Vietnam, in 2015-2018, enabled Marko to test and prove the R2G method cross-culturally and at an ecosystem level. In 2018, he was proud to see Kasvu Open receive the Internationalisation Award of the President of Finland and the European Enterprise Promotion Award (EEPA) of the European Union.
Pilot Stage Actions
In 2018-2020, Global Enabler team explored different business models and started to develop a digital tool for the needs of knowledge investors: A tool to enable ambitious founders to discover and communicate resource needs to potential co-entrepreneurs. The work which produced an early prototype of HippoMeter succeeded beyond expectations thanks to Christian’s visionary initial designs, Marko’s R2G algorithm, and co-creation by several fellow contributors.
In 2021, thanks to encouraging feedback on the HippoMeter prototype, and boosted by the covid pandemic, Global Enabler started transformation from a hands-on knowledge investment operation into Hippo Enabler, a SaaS based digital service. By Q1/2023, we had developed Hippo Enabler Service and performed 18 pilots with international, national, and local enabler organisations, private and public. The pilot stage actions had engaged 429 founder team members from 191 startups in 34 countries on 5 continents.
The development and our pilot stage actions were funded by equity investments from our shareholders, revenue from pilot customers, and grant funding from Business Finland, ELY Centre, and the European Union. There would be no Hippo Enabler Service without these contributions, for which we are profoundly thankful.
Live Case Experiments
Hippo Enabler is a result of vast co-creation, several complimentary track records, shared discoveries and values, and a crystal-clear mission. Its story started from university-based experiments led by Marko Seppä, after his VC career, as a fresh PhD, on how to create business in the Digital Era.
During a local pilot of EU’s eEurope programme at Tampere University, Marko’s eBusiness Research Center team discovered that venture capitalists were losing their role as the key enablers in the 21stcentury. He learned how profoundly Founders and Financiers need new approaches, methods and instruments to shift focus from ineffective pre-investment activities (the “pitching lane”) to go-to-market focused post-investment actions.
During the Global Venture Lab (GVL) experiment at University of Jyväskylä, now invited as Professor of Growth Venture Creation, Marko and his team created a number of new methods and approaches with colleagues from IIT Kharagpur and UC Berkeley. His Runway-to-Growth (R2G) method received a JCI Productive Idea Award and GVL’s live case based approach is manifested in the Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship.
Call for Positive Disruption
Based on their successful live case experiments, Marko’s GVL team proposed an exploratory new domain aside of Science of Business Administration, coined as Art of Business Creation, to enable education of people who can create Great Companies by people who themselves can.
To put money where mouth is, the team disrupted the venture evaluation paradigm in Finland, and successfully replaced a decade-old, nation-wide “beauty contest” (Venture Cup) with their R2G method based approach (KasvuOpen.fi). In the new approach, co-entrepreneurially committed and thematically specialised jury members engage in business creation alongside the participating entrepreneurs.
In 2011, Marko, together with serial entrepreneur & PhD student Christian Aspegren, and fellow team members established Global Enabler to make their proposed “Professor as a Service” based new domain available to universities worldwide. As the proposal proved to be too radical, the new-born venture baby had to start searching for new channels to bring its disruptive new methods and approaches to market.
Proof of Concept
Design and launch of Kasvu Open for the Chamber of Commerce was literally the new company’s first order as a business. Feedback from founders, enablers, and financiers on this new R2G empowerd approach with annual events in Silicon Valley were critically important proof of concept for Global Enabler’s disruptive new business creation algorithm.
Christian’s anchor test case startup, and longitudinal proof-of-concept action research case company, Naava.io, emerged from the first season of Kasvu Open. By 2018 Naava had raised – enabled by the new approach and algorithm – over 10MEUR and reached a 30MEUR valuation.
Helping IPP.vn boost the startup ecosystem in Vietnam, in 2015-2018, enabled Marko to test and prove the R2G method cross-culturally and at an ecosystem level. In 2018, he was proud to see Kasvu Open receive the Internationalisation Award of the President of Finland and the European Enterprise Promotion Award (EEPA) of the European Union.
Pilot Stage Actions
In 2018-2020, Global Enabler team explored different business models and started to develop a digital tool for the needs of knowledge investors: A tool to enable ambitious founders to discover and communicate resource needs to potential co-entrepreneurs. The work which produced an early prototype of HippoMeter succeeded beyond expectations thanks to Christian’s visionary initial designs, Marko’s R2G algorithm, and co-creation by several fellow contributors.
In 2021, thanks to encouraging feedback on the HippoMeter prototype, and boosted by the covid pandemic, Global Enabler started transformation from a hands-on knowledge investment operation into Hippo Enabler, a SaaS based digital service. By Q1/2023, we had developed Hippo Enabler Service and performed 18 pilots with international, national, and local enabler organisations, private and public. The pilot stage actions had engaged 429 founder team members from 191 startups in 34 countries on 5 continents.
The development and our pilot stage actions were funded by equity investments from our shareholders, revenue from pilot customers, and grant funding from Business Finland, ELY Centre, and the European Union. There would be no Hippo Enabler Service without these contributions, for which we are profoundly thankful.
Getting Started
Combined, we’ve introduced disruptive products, concepts and companies to world markets. We’ve coached major corporations through transformation to growth. We’ve trained business creators and orchestrated business creation activities at ecosystem level. Investments of this knowledge capital have resulted in a potentially game-changing new digital tool with which we are just getting started.
“There are only three types of organizations: Those who disrupt, those who enable disruption, and those who have to adapt to disruption.”
–Christian Aspegren, First Hippo Whisperer, Enabler Partner
