Jyväskylä Business Rally EBAN Investor Day brings international investors and scaleup companies to Jyväskylä on 31 July

The Jyväskylä Business Rally – EBAN Esports and Gaming Investor Day event is designed to bring together investors and scaleups from around the world. It is organised by Business Jyväskylä, the city’s economic development unit, in collaboration with EBAN, a European business association for business angels and AKK Motorsport, the Finnish organisation behind Neste Rally Finland.

In the Investor Day the audience will hear pitches from scaleup businesses as well as presentations from leading business experts, including Jukka-Pekka Vuorinen, Chairman of the Finnish eSports League (FEL) and Jeremy Jackson from esport and gaming analytics specialists Newzoo. A local take will be offered by Kirsi Hakaniemi, Chief Digital Officer at Mediatalo Keskisuomalainen, who will discuss why this traditional media outlet has chosen to get involved in the esports sector. Also taking to the podium is high profile angel investor and serial entrepreneur Angelo Dalli. Dalli has a track record of investing in numerous tech and entertainment industry businesses around the world and has written extensively about many topics, including artificial intelligence.

Businesses and investors seeking opportunities 

At the EBAN Investor Day, a total of eight scaleups, preselected for the event through an earlier application process, will be invited to give a six-minute pitch that is an opportunity for the businesses to sell their ideas and convince potential investors of their ability to deliver both growth and returns for investors. The scaleups are seeking funding in the range of EUR 300K to EUR 1 million to underpin rapid new growth and expansion for their business venture. The businesses participating in the event are already well established with strong turnover and growth they now want to bring to the next level. 

Two of the featured businesses are from Jyväskylä, three from elsewhere in Finland, two from the United States and one from Estonia.

Zaibatsu Interactive, the largest game studio in Central Finland, was one of the nine businesses to qualify for the event. The company currently employs 14 staff and specialises in mobile games under their own brand and AR/VR and software development on behalf of external clients. Around 50 per cent of the company’s turnover is generated through domestic sales. 

“We’re really looking forward to the event and very much see it as an opportunity to make new contacts. It will be attended by high profile investors specialising in this industry so it’ll be great to meet them, have a chat and get the chance to share our story. The programme looks excellent as well. In the past, it’s been difficult to find investors for gaming and esports because the industry has a reputation for being a bit on the tricky side. It’s fantastic that the event is bringing in investors who understand what we’re all about,” Zaibatsu CEO Jussi Perttola said.

“We’re thrilled to have attracted such a high number of investors, especially given the level of specialisation involved in this field. Ultimately however, it’s not about the numbers, and I personally prefer to measure the event’s success by how well we manage to match these startups with investors. When you bring together exciting companies and investors with the right profile, there’s real potential for amazing things to happen,” said Jacopo Losso, EBAN’s Director of Secretariat, commenting ahead of the event.

Jussi Perttola is excited about the opportunities and the wider business environment that exists in Jyväskylä and in Finland in general.

“The gaming industry is fundamentally an international one. It doesn’t matter that we’re a small studio in, what to many people, would be a fairly remote location. Finland offers an excellent set up for us. The industry culture is really positive and open. Finland’s obviously home to a few big global names as well, so that lends a certain level of credibility and appeal to the rest of us too. Jyväskylä is a higher education hub as well, which means that there is an excellent supply of highly qualified graduates for the industry.”

Strategic collaboration for success

The close relationship between EBAN and the City of Jyväskylä has developed gradually over a number of years. Since 2015, Business Jyväskylä has organised the Jyväskylä Business Rally investment panel with Suomen Yrityskehitys Ltd. On the first four occasions, the participating businesses came mainly from the local area with some from further afield in Finland. Every year, the event has also attracted visitors from the EBAN network. The investors have been invited to explore key local development projects, like Hippos, and the city’s sports, health and wellbeing sectors.

“We are excited about our visit to Jyväskylä and look forward to seeing eight great companies introducing themselves on stage. It’s a real achievement to have more than thirty investors from across Europe arriving in Jyväskylä, and in peak holiday season too, to discover these gaming and esport businesses for themselves, because we know that investors tend to view the industry as new and unfamiliar. Jyväskylä is a great place to visit, and we know that the event will be professionally run with great attention to detail and have wonderfully relaxed and informal atmosphere,” commented EBAN’s Jacopo Losso.

“This sort of collaboration is possible when there are strong interpersonal relationships in place and a great deal of trust as well as active involvement with the wider network. The engagement has to be genuine with everyone committed to creating win-win outcomes for all. Every single day, events like this one are taking place in big cities around the world. If we were using the traditional marketing approach, we’d never stand out from the competition. Instead, we’ve worked hard to create long-term relationships with people that are based on a genuine sense of trust and respect and that’s been instrumental in moving things forward and attracting the right people to Jyväskylä,” commented Suvi Vuojolainen, Business & Marketing Manager at Business Jyväskylä, who organises the Jyväskylä EBAN Investor Day.

“The collaboration between Business Jyväskylä and EBAN is now beginning to generate real results. I’m delighted to say that we have some exciting news to share but we will wait until Investor Day to make the formal announcement,” Vuojalainen said.

“Investor Day is just one of the many ways that Business Jyväskylä works with the EBAN investor network. Other initiatives are also in the pipeline, and discussions are currently ongoing regarding how new incoming businesses would align themselves with the city’s business ecosystem. At Business Jyväskylä, we are very much focused on the task ahead”, Vuojolainen concluded.

The Jyväskylä Business Rally – EBAN Investor Day programme, list of speakers, featured businesses and other useful information are available on the event website at https://eban.jyvaskylabusinessrally.fi/

Media representatives are welcome to attend the event, but we ask that you register your attendance in advance. To register and to organise interviews, please contact Suvi Vuojolainen, Business & Marketing Manager, Business Jyväskylä. A professional photographer will be in attendance at the event, and an image bank will be made available on the Jyväskylä Business Rally website in the afternoon of 31 July. The images can be freely used in Investor Day-related reporting. https://eban.jyvaskylabusinessrally.fi/

There are some photos of Jyväskylä Business Rally 2018 in our image bank for media in Investor Day-related reporting.

You can also join us through our live stream on the Business Jyväskylä YouTube channel.  

For further information, please contact:

Suvi Vuojolainen, Business & Marketing Manager, Business Jyväskylä, City of Jyväskylä
+358 50 311 8820, [email protected]
Sakari Oikarinen, Chairman, Induco Oy, Senator of World Business Angels Forum
+358 46 921 6060, [email protected]
Jussi Perttola, CEO, Zaibatsu Interactive
+358 50 412 4420, [email protected]

EBAN is a European business angel network with 100 members around Europe comprising the umbrella organisations representing angel investors across a number of different countries.

Business Jyväskylä is a City of Jyväskylä unit responsible for building business links and driving economic growth within the local area. We are a reliable and solutions-focused partner with an excellent understanding of local and international networks and the ability to promote fast-paced growth for businesses at all stages of their development. Our role is to attract both domestic and international businesses to the local area, drive the ongoing development of the city’s economic model and to create attractive business ecosystems to underpin our main development projects.