 Everyone, full room. I can really feel the anticipation in the air as this Slush 100 pitching competition gets closer to its end. Now it's time for the final stage talk of this Slush. So some last-minute advice for all the founders in the audience by Ilk. Thanks for so much for joining us today. Thanks for having me. Yeah, so let's start with the importance of mentoring and advice for startups and how all that actually comes together here at Slush. So what's your take? Why are you and all of our other speakers actually here? What makes you to take the time to do this? Well, personally, I get so much out of this. These are a few days at Slush. They are all basically the highlight of my year. It's almost like this escape or a bubble of its own. And it's filled with optimism and positivity and crazy dreams and energy and all of those things that I love. And always when I can step out from this bubble, next week I know that I'm going to be full of new ideas and just inspiration. Yeah, so same for you as an experienced founder as for many of the real estate founders here. I'd be curious to know, what would you say to those that are maybe too shy or maybe too finished to approach experienced founders like yourself for advice? And actually, who are the best people to give advice for early founders? Well, I guess my advice about getting advice would be actually quite simple. And that would be that listen to everybody, but be sure to decide yourself. And I think one of the most dangerous thing to do, actually, is to blindly follow the advice from, say, quote unquote, successful people. And the reason is that, at least I can speak for myself is that I mean, obviously I've worked very hard to give all of our people and the team, but the fact is that we've been also incredibly, incredibly lucky. And if I give advice, I think that piece of advice is only applicable to the things that we've done. But maybe it's not because of the stuff that we did that we became successful. I mean, luck clearly also has played a big role. So therefore, it gets really, really dangerous if you can blindly follow advice from other people who have been successful. And of course, they have strong opinions. But maybe that advice is only applicable to their own situation. And maybe it's not even that. Maybe it's just because I simply got lucky. So again, listen to everybody, but do decide yourself. Nobody knows your business better than what you do. Yeah, that is definitely true. So you clearly talk with many founders throughout your career. And what do you think? What is the number one thing that you see founders struggle with again and again? Well, how I think about it is what I see happen quite often is that people oftentimes, they kind of found companies together with their friends. And I think I would actually advise against that. And I think it's dangerous because if you think about the kind of your friends, I mean, oftentimes you are friends with those people because you like them and you like them because you're kind of like minded and you sort of agree on things often. But that's usually, at least in my mind, that's almost the opposite of what makes a great team. Because in my experience, what makes a great team is that you have a very diverse set of people with different personalities, different points of view, which of course means that when you're trying to reach a decision, oftentimes those different points of view are in conflict in each other. And there's even tension and even heated arguments oftentimes. But the fact that you have that, it means that all the information is sort of on the table. And therefore, when you have all the information, then you can actually make ultimately the best decision. So in my mind, what's kind of common, the common nominator about the best teams is that despite these differences in the team members and despite these differences in perspectives, then they can have a like a rational discussion. And at the end of the discussion, they will agree on a common goal. And then sort of like, at the point, then they agree on that common goal. Then the sort of discussion stops and then the execution begins and then everybody aligns like behind that goal. But it's that kind of diversity of kind of perspectives that is important. And oftentimes if you do found companies with your best friends, you just don't have that by definition. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. How about then you yourself, what do you think has been the biggest mistake you've made in your founding journey? Well, talking about mistakes, I don't know where to begin. I mean, I make mistakes all the time. But maybe like thinking about this, like maybe the more recent mistakes that I've done is that they all, they have something to do with this thing that obviously like as I said, we've been lucky and we've been very successful. And then I think the more successful you've been in the past, the harder it sort of gets to be that you can repeat that success. And at least in our industry and games, that to me actually is the ultimate thing that it's the thing is not to be successful. The thing is to like try to somehow continue to be successful and repeat it and to get even better. But it becomes surprisingly hard. Like when you've had that past success and oftentimes you sort of start to view things like through the lens of your past successes rather than like looking forward and having that open mind. And I've certainly been a victim of that. And it requires like your constant attention trying to like have that open mind. And forget about the past and focus on the future. Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Well, we are currently here in the middle of the Slash 100 pitching competition and one company will come out as a winner. However, there has been 99 excellent founders, excellent startups joining the company. What would you, what advice would you give to those the ones who don't end up as a winner? Well, I would tell them that it doesn't matter. No, I think the thing about these competitions is that it really isn't about the outcome. It's about the process and about everything that you learn when you're gonna go through that process. So to those 99 companies who don't walk away with a price, you know, I'm sure that they've gotten a lot of value, you know, from this competition, you've gotten a lot of feedback. Hopefully they've made a lot of connections and all of those are like incredibly valuable. So, you know, even if you didn't, you know, win the grand prize, I mean, you will come out of like, you know, better and, you know, let's just, you know, go do, you know, what you were doing and, you know, and be equipped with all of this new information and be better and be focused on a customer, focused on a product, you know, do the usual thing. Yeah, so the competition is just like a one step in the journey, but the long journey matters more. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, from my own experience, I mean, we've, you know, before Supercell became successful, I don't think we won any competitions and, you know, like, I mean, again, like, you know, it's all of these guys are at the very early stage. It's incredibly hard to, you know, predict who's going to be successful and who's not. And I say that we've all, we've all respected the judges and the panels, but it's just hard, hard to predict successes. And I, in my experience, like, actually, we outlier successes, the biggest successes, like, what's kind of common about those is that none of those were obvious, like from a start, none of those were obvious at this stage that these companies are in. Yeah, that is definitely true. How about then the one company that will come out as a winner, top tip for them? Well, of course, you know, I'm sure, like, today, you know, enjoy the moment. It's time to celebrate. I'm sure, you know, that company and all of us, all of us companies have, of course, worked very hard. So, you know, take this day and moment and enjoy it, but then tomorrow get back to work, you know, get super laser focused on your product, get focused on your customers and, you know, solving the problems of your customers and that type of thing. And again, as I said, you know, it's not about these past successes and stuff like that, it's about the future. And this, you know, and again, even at Supercell, like, I mean, since we became successful, when all of a sudden we magically start to win all kinds of awards, but I've actually felt that, you know, those awards, like, we probably even shouldn't have those at the office, actually, because I mean, it's, they just don't matter. I mean, the past doesn't matter at all. I mean, you shouldn't really like think about it too much. You should be focused on the future. Yeah, past doesn't define the future. Yes, and then maybe briefly about what founders can take away from Slush. So, there has been 20,000 pre-booked meetings happening, a lot of side events, connections created, but this is just sort of a starting point. What advice would you give for founders for utilizing where the connections that they made here at Slush? Well, it's not rocket science. I mean, you follow up and then, you know, you stay in touch with these people and you also focus, I mean, you know, figure out like, who are the most valuable connections and then focus on those. And rather than like, you know, trying to like, you know, I mean, obviously meet tens and tens and tens, if not hundreds of people. So you can't obviously like develop deep relationships with all of those people. So you figure out who likely are gonna be most valuable and then focus on them. Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Something that I guess many of us are waiting eagerly is the legendary Slush after-party that will kick off straight after the main event ends actually quite soon. So would you have any fun after-party anecdotes or networking tips for our early-stage founders? Well, I don't think you wanna listen networking tips from me, I suck at networking, but anecdotes, well, I've heard this one funny story that actually does come to mind. I believe it's from the Slush 2012, maybe, when it was still at the old cable factory and for some reason, we Slush after-party like ran out of drinks. And that happened to be, that party happened to be sponsored by Supercell at the time and it was a big alert, like, oh my God, like we are running out of drinks. And of course, it's a big problem. And Supercell at the time was still a pretty tiny company like maybe, I don't know, 50 plus employees or so. And what we did is that we mobilized, like basically we employees and Supercell and said we had the party. And then asked them to buy whatever you can from the grocery stores nearby. But then the problem was that we, I think, because we have a really, had and still have a very constrict chief financial officer who had given credit cards only to a very few people. So maybe we had five or six credit cards and people were running around Helsinki and trying to buy whatever they could to serve us first the Slush after-party. So that comes to mind. Fun memory. Really fun memory. Yes, maybe as a final question, I'd like to hear, like you've seen many Slushes. I believe that you actually participated the very first one in 2008. What has changed and what has stayed similar? Well, it's easier to start like what has stayed the same and that's clearly the better. It is actually like today, I think it's almost exactly how it was in 2008, maybe slightly less Slushy and more cold but pretty much the same. But then I think everything else is different, like very, very different. I feel that in 2008 when Slush started, it was a lot about putting the Finnish entrepreneurship on the tech entrepreneurship on the map. And then over the years it has evolved and especially like when Miki took over, it evolved into a celebration of entrepreneurship in its own and European entrepreneurship and just became a bigger thing. So that's clear, it's very, very different. Yeah, I definitely share the feeling. Like for me as well, Slush is about escaping your everyday life and just like celebrating entrepreneurship and enjoying the company of like-minded people. Thank you so much for Ilka for joining us today and can't wait to see the results of this Slush 100 startup competition. Thank you very much.