Startup Commons – New Open Ecosystem Tools for Build Startups and Startup Ecosystems

Startup Commons launched its new startup community platform July 13, when Valto Loikkanen from Startup Commons spoke in a Kauffman Foundation event in Boulder, Colorado. Recognizing the natural evolution, the Kauffman Foundation held a two-day conference on the startup ecosystem and its development, where Startup Commons also surfaced as a discussion topic. 

Startup Commons is a spin off from the Grow VC Group and it focuses especially to develop and offer tools for startup communities around the world. It is separated from Grow VC Group’s other more business and finance oriented activities. Startup Common ownership is open to all parties that are interested in developing startup ecosystems globally and its target is to offer part of the tools as open source.

The startup and innovation ecosystem has evolved to demand more and more transparent, online and efficient tools. Startup Commons targets to offer free tools for startups and tools for organizations like incubators, accelerators, investors, and universities to build startup, expert and investor communities and follow startups progress and also match investors and startups. For example, experts can create standardized scorecards to evaluate startups, and these evaluations can be repeated regularly to measure progress and give practical targets for the startup team.

“The need for transparent and measurable data in the startup ecosystem, as well as efficient and purposeful tools for those active in supporting our future growth companies, is abundantly clear. The existing landscape with all its isolated silos calls for bridges to be introduced between actors and those active in supporting innovation.” comments Valto Loikkanen from Startup Commons.  Loikkanen continues “we have also seen the startup communities have limited budgets and that’s why we wanted to separate this part from our normal business operations in the Grow VC Group, and offer tools for communities, and also activate all parties together to further develop these tools.”

Among other conclusions of the Kauffman event, the various members of the expert community, highlighted the need for more open data on startups’ history and performance. When they then grow into the fundable stages, investors and others that engage them see more data which makes the cases that much more tangible and comprehendible. Investors like to invest in lines, not dots. The first incubators and accelerators have already adopted the Startup Commons tool for this.

Startup Commons welcomes everyone that shares our mission for connecting and catalyzing the innovation ecosystem. Startup Commons has its offices in San Francisco, California, and Helsinki, Finland.



About the Kauffman Foundation
The Kauffman Foundation is often referred to as one of the largest foundations in the United States—or as the world's largest foundation devoted to entrepreneurship. Both are true, thanks to Ewing Kauffman's generosity and foresight.

The Kauffman Foundation is working to further understand the phenomenon of entrepreneurship, to advance entrepreneurship education and training efforts, to promote entrepreneurship-friendly policies, and to better facilitate the commercialization of new technologies by entrepreneurs and others, which have great promise for improving the economic welfare of our nation.