THE STORY OF HIPPOMETER
The purpose of HippoMeter is
to help Good People build Great Companies
Roots in lessons learned
The roots of HippoMeter are in what we learned of success and failure as entrepreneurs and venture capitalists during our early careers: Lessons on what all is required to achieve market acceptance for innovative new products and services, and what all you need to know to build a Great Company.
We learned firsthand how:
– entrepreneurship is akin to venture parenthood
– founders are in many ways like single parents to venture babies
– the key challenge is to expand parenthood as per the unique needs of each venture baby
– the responsibility of owners is undividable, but ownership can be divided
– how smart expansion of ownership is your safest bet to build a Great Company
– how Ownership is the make-or-break vehicle when realising an Opportunity
These lessons led us to conclude how critical it is for each unique startup team to figure out by themselves — maximally effectively and efficiently — what all, and who all, they need to succeed. This conviction led us to conceptualise a powerful new approach and develop a robust new method.
Solid scientific foundation
The scientific foundation of the HippoMeter method rests on our PhD theses and award-winning university experiments that followed: Action research on Big Opportunities and how to reach the required Scalability, Defensibility, Capability, Profitability, and Market Entry via smart expansions of Ownership.
Much of this work took place via the Global Venture Lab platform we founded at JYU with colleagues from IIT Kharagpur and UC Berkeley. Besides publications, over 200 live case experiments and several startups emerged from our exploratory integration of the university’s three missions: Research, Education, and Innovation.
Our findings were acknowledged by the Research Cluster of Excellence Award by University Alliance Finland, JCI Productive Idea Award, and The Entrepreneurial Act of the Year in High Education Award by Chambers of Commerce, and the findings manifested also in the Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship.
Proof of Concept
We gained Proof-of-Concept for the HippoMeter method by creating and launching the Kasvu Open (e. Growth Open) for the Central Finland Chamber of Commerce.
The new venture building concept successfully replaced a decade-old, nation-wide “beauty contest” (Venture Cup) with HippoMeter method based approach where thematically specialised jury members engage in venture building alongside the participating entrepreneurs (KasvuOpen.fi).
The overwhelming feedback from founders, enablers, and financiers from the annual events we organised in Finland and Silicon Valley provided clear market evidence on the power of our new method. In addition, in 2018, Kasvu Open was granted the European Enterprise Promotion Award (EEPA) and the Internationalisation Award of the President of the Republic of Finland.
Productization
HippoMeter is a product of intensive co-creation led by Marko Seppä across time as venture capitalist, professor, and entrepreneur. Besides the core team’s recent efforts, Christian Aspegren’s initial visionary designs were instrumental to getting the first prototype off the ground. The productization of HippoMeter has also benefited from the global parenthood of independent non-executive contributors: Enabler Partners.
The prototyping, productization, and development of HippoMeter into a SaaS offering – based on feedback from 18 international pilots engaging 429 team members from 191 startups in 34 countries – reached an MVP stage in March 2023.
The development of HippoMeter and the 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.
Roots in lessons learned
The roots of HippoMeter are in what we learned of success and failure as entrepreneurs and venture capitalists during our early careers: Lessons on what all is required to achieve market acceptance for innovative new products and services, and what all you need to know to build a Great Company.
We learned firsthand how:
– entrepreneurship is akin to venture parenthood
– founders are in many ways like single parents to venture babies
– the key challenge is to expand parenthood as per the unique needs of each venture baby
– the responsibility of owners is undividable, but ownership can be divided
– how smart expansion of ownership is your safest bet to build a Great Company
– how Ownership is the make-or-break vehicle when realising an Opportunity
These lessons led us to conclude how critical it is for each unique startup team to figure out by themselves — maximally effectively and efficiently — what all, and who all, they need to succeed. This conviction led us to conceptualise a powerful new approach and develop a robust new method.
Solid scientific foundation
The scientific foundation of the HippoMeter method rests on our PhD theses and award-winning university experiments that followed: Action research on Big Opportunities and how to reach the required Scalability, Defensibility, Capability, Profitability, and Market Entry via smart expansions of Ownership.
Much of this work took place via the Global Venture Lab platform we founded at JYU with colleagues from IIT Kharagpur and UC Berkeley. Besides publications, over 200 live case experiments and several startups emerged from our exploratory integration of the university’s three missions: Research, Education, and Innovation.
Our findings were acknowledged by the Research Cluster of Excellence Award by University Alliance Finland, JCI Productive Idea Award, and The Entrepreneurial Act of the Year in High Education Award by Chambers of Commerce, and the findings manifested also in the Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship.
Proof of Concept
We gained Proof-of-Concept for the HippoMeter method by creating and launching the Kasvu Open (e. Growth Open) for the Central Finland Chamber of Commerce.
The new venture building concept successfully replaced a decade-old, nation-wide “beauty contest” (Venture Cup) with HippoMeter method based approach where thematically specialised jury members engage in venture building alongside the participating entrepreneurs (KasvuOpen.fi).
The overwhelming feedback from founders, enablers, and financiers from the annual events we organised in Finland and Silicon Valley provided clear market evidence on the power of our new method. In addition, in 2018, Kasvu Open was granted the European Enterprise Promotion Award (EEPA) and the Internationalisation Award of the President of the Republic of Finland.
Productization
HippoMeter is a product of intensive co-creation led by Marko Seppä across time as venture capitalist, professor, and entrepreneur. Besides the core team’s recent efforts, Christian Aspegren’s initial visionary designs were instrumental to getting the first prototype off the ground. The productization of HippoMeter has also benefited from the global parenthood of independent non-executive contributors: Enabler Partners.
The prototyping, productization, and development of HippoMeter into a SaaS offering – based on feedback from 18 international pilots engaging 429 team members from 191 startups in 34 countries – reached an MVP stage in March 2023.
The development of HippoMeter and the 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.
And the Story continues!
We invite you to take advantage of HippoMeter, let it keep your team aligment and slaceup progress in check, make it your tireless virtual assistant, and write the next big chapters with us.
“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
