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Mikko Suoenlahti
 
Mikko Suoenlahti has over 35 years of start-up experience including 10 years in operations (CEO, sales, R&D) and has been on the boards of approximately 100 businesses in various countries. He is also a limited partner at Icebreaker.vc, a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage Nordic startups. At present. Mikko is a director of three funds with € 300M assets under management - pre-seed and seed fund Icebreaker in Finland, fund of funds SmartCap in Estonia and a Finnish family foundation, which supports engineering professorships and students. His early-stage businesses have reached a valuation of more than $ 3B with two companies - over $ 1 Billion, and three have been realised for $ 200M each, including two Nasdaq US IPOs and two with a 20x return. He has been a lead investor for all five of them, three of which have initially been pre-revenue stage businesses.


interviewed
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Rick Salmon
 
Rick Salmon is an entrepreneur, executive coach and public speaker. In 2009, he was recognized as one of the winners of the renowned EEVC European Venture Contest due to his significant expertise as a serial entrepreneur. He co-founded three successful technology companies over the course of his career: BlueSky Software, which was subsequently renamed eHelp and acquired by Adobe, Scala Inc., the current global leader in digital signage, and RPR Technologies. In 2016, he incorporated The Technologies of Influence AS, Oslo, a startup that utilises artificial intelligence and scientific measurement of human behaviour traits as tools for coaching entrepreneurs and executives, enabling them to have a greater impact and influence while presenting and pitching.