Steve Blank, author of Four Steps to Epiphany,together with Eric Ries, has helped formulate the thinking behind the Lean Startup methodology . I had an opportunity to meet him during a discussion around the Startup Genome project. He observed that most startups that succeed aren’t lean: Their goal is to have an exit rather than ...

Earlier this year, Kristo Ovaska, Varun Singh and I decided to work on a startup together. It didn’t work, but for the right reasons. Here’s the tale of a failed “lean startup”. How it started Funrank started from a simple wish: we were three friends who wanted to work on something exciting together. We have ...

The Baltic entrepreneurial scene has been very active lately. The success of startups such  as Rovio, Applifier, Grabcad, coupled with the Startup Sauna program scouting for the next Skype, prompted me to ask Hussein Kanji (recently ranked as Europe’s most influencial angel investor) his thoughts on the region: Have you been following the Baltic tech ...

The Aalto Venture Garage is starting its fourth and largest accelerator program yet for Nordic and Baltic startups. Finland and the rest of the region is urgently realizing that to drive their economy, they have to stop relying on Nokia, Skype and Getjar and shift their focus to creating new startups. The goal of the ...

LAUNCH conference, which I attended, is positioned right before DEMO and SXSW, and I have to say,I wondered how many startups need to launch at one time. The answer is many, and a lot of them rock. The turnaround was impressive: 100 startups launched a new product, either on stage or at one of the ...

We’ve covered how to play user-generated games on PC, and while user-generated content is very much in demand, another popular avenue for gamers is that of open source clones.  One such game is Ultrastar Deluxe, is an open source clone of Singstar for Windows, Linux and Mac. The game comes bundled with a few songs, ...

If you fancy yourself to be an “old school” gaming enthusiast, and have always harbored a closet desire to design titles of your own, you’re in luck.  Zelda Classic is a game engine that allows you to play custom quests created by the community, and to create your own. The engine itself is quite powerful: ...

Point & click adventure games such as Monkey Island, Sam & Max and Space Quest were the most popular genre on PC in the early 90’s. They are much more difficult to find nowadays and often look outdated, which might put off first timers. Here are several high quality titles that have been made more ...

Super Mario just turned 25 this year! The world’s favorite plumber is more recognized than Mickey Mouse. Several indie developers have attempted recreating a good clone of Mario Bros, myself included, and failed to recreate the gameplay and quality of level design of the original. Super Mario Bros X is the most successful Mario game ...

Christmas is coming, and like every year, people are going to buy a lot of dull, expensive AAA games for their favorite console. I would like to share with you some different games I think you should play. As these are independent games, the cost of all of them combined is less than the latest ...