Rovio is looking for an Animation Producer Trainee for summer 2013 (starting preferably mid-June) to join the Rovio Shanghai team. As an animation producer in our Shanghai office, you would be mainly responsible for overseeing various outsourcing and other production service projects in the Asian region. You will be working in an international and creative work environment where your input and contribution will matter.

Requirements:
• Senior (3-4 year) student in the field of animation production, film production or other relevant degree.
• Effective communication skills and fluency in English are essential. Finnish and Mandarin Chinese not required but definitely an asset.
• Project management skills. Accomplished projects (even student works) a big plus, so please be prepared to showcase your work.
• Basic IT skills including Office software proficiency.
• Working knowledge of Adobe production software (Premiere, Photoshop, After Effects etc.) a plus.

Personal characteristics:
• Passion for animation, games, entertainment industry and pop culture in general
• Attention to detail
• Team player with great interpersonal and intercultural skills
• Ability to quickly adapt to changing situations and maintain a positive working atmosphere within the team

You will report locally to a Supervising producer in Shanghai and also work closely with our main animation studio producers and staff based in Espoo, Finland, in order to plan and execute animation productions across different countries. You will also work together with other Rovio Shanghai team members representing different business areas of Rovio.

Key tasks and responsibilities:
• Scout, meet and test potential studio partner candidates
• Manage correspondence and creative workflow to/from the studios
• Facilitate material review with relevant supervisors in Finland
• Based on project scope, supervise development, pre-production, production and/or post-production phases
• Learn more about the overall animation business environment in Asia (focus: China)

The position will be filled as soon as possible. For questions, please contact juhana@startupsauna.com.

Tarmo Knuutinen

Tarmo is a fourth year information science student from University of Oulu. This summer, he will be changing the capital of Northern Finland to Capital of the World while he is joining Adcade, a mobile advertising company with a HTML5 rich media platform. Tarmo worked last summer as a project lead in a small web development team and now it’s time for him to join a fast-paced New York startup and craft the future of mobile advertising.
 
 
 
 

Fernando Leon

Originally from Colombia, Fernando is currently studying for a masters at Aalto University’s International Design Business Management program. Now, he’ll become our business guy in the Big Apple, as he is joining Medialets – a company building a rich media advertising platform. He has already a lot of experience in marketing: he has worked as an account executive and viral marketing manager and he has also co-founded a startup before.
 
 
 

That was all for New York for now. Stay tuned as we’ll reveal some more of the Silicon Valley Startup Lifers next week. In case of you haven’t already checked them out, see the first five run here.

Lauri Hynynen

Lauri was the first one to kick off his internship for this summer as he joined Backlift few weeks a go. He studies marketing at Aalto University School of Business, and computer science at University of Helsinki. While having co-founded and worked at startups earlier, both in Helsinki and Berlin, he is excited to be able to compare the experience to Silicon Valley’s super-fast paced environment. He works and lives in San Francisco, and apart from building Backlift’s amazing ‘backend-as-a-service’ platform, he enjoys crafted beer, cat videos and company of good friends.

Tatu Mäkijärvi

Tatu will arrive in San Francisco in the beginning of June. He will start his Product Management internship at the mobile security company Lookout. Lookout has grown a lot in the previous year, but it still holds on the startup culture. Having spent the previous summer working at a more established company in Munich, Tatu is looking forward to adapt the pace of a startup. He’s also waiting to change from last summer’s Weissbier and Riesling to Californian Pale Ale and Zinfandel.

Ilari Niitamo

Ilari can be quoted as a true unicorn: an artist, a designer and a programmer all in the same person. He holds a media engineering degree from Metropolia university of applied sciences and is currently pursuing a Masters degree in New Media at Aalto University School of Art and Design. Ilari is joining Findery – a new location-based note sharing startup from Flickr and Hunch co-founder Caterina Fake Ilari is an entrepreneur himself too: he has co-founded Pintxo Creative, building Spell-O-Rama – an iOS learning game.

Markus Järvinen

Markus has a B.Sc. from electrical engineering from Aalto University and is currently active in Aalto Entrepreneurship Society. Previously, he has been working at ABB Drives, but now he’s jumping in the world of mobile games, as he’s taking a product management role at Apportable, a service that automates porting iOS games for Android.

Michelle Vandy

By day a full time architecture student and by night a designer and an entrepreneur, Michelle is joining Omada Health as a user experience designer. She has previous experience from architecture office and startups, and now she will help Omada on the mission to stop type b diabetes. She will be living and working in San Francisco, and looks forward the creative environment of the fog city.

Here was the first Five Run of Startup Life Silicon Valley. Stay tuned, this all-star team will get reinforcements soon

I have never been a fan of big cities and metropolises. I don’t hate them, but the criss-crossing streets and hoards of people hurrying places have never been able to excite me in the way other places I have been. I have spent numerous winters in a small Swiss village where life revolves around simple pleasures and similar patterns: skiing, eating, sleeping and occasional drinking to break that pattern. To me the mountains represent solitude and peace, the total opposite of the bustling life in the boroughs.

Panu cycling his way through Manhattan

My past two months in New York City have been everything but peaceful from the first day onwards. I (hardly) slept for the first five nights here when I was staying in an AirBnB room in Brooklyn without heating. My first weekend I spent glued to the computer, trying to score a room in Cragislist. Getting a sensible (priced) place to stay in here can be very hard, and I have only one advice for that: don’t give up, the perfect opportunity might wait just around the corner. I got pretty lucky, and got a place in the middle of Chinatown where I can score all the turtles and frogs for my dinner from the grocery store around the corner. And our office is just a few blocks away in SoHo. Location, location, location!

Chinatown – turtles for dinner, maybe?

That’s good since I think I spend way more time there than home. Kollabora has only 8 people working full-time, and the atmosphere is really cozy. Actually a lot more cozy than my tiny room in Chinatown. And since we are building a social community for Do-It-Yourself -people, part of the office space doubles as a workshop where we craft stuff whenever we want. To be honest, days in the office are pretty much DIY when it comes to everything. In a startup this small, everyone has to be able to do everything. Just like anyone who has been working in startup knows: Search engines rock! If you don’t know how to do something but it needs to be done, google it. But watch out, you might learn something in the process, just like Nippe pointed out in one of the earlier blogpost. For example, I have been diving head first into analytics, an area that I have never been meddling with before. Took quite much googling to even get me started with the software, not to mention actually doing stuff with it. But I am feeling more confident each day, and at some point I might even have delusional thoughts of actually knowing something about data analysis…!

Anyhow, despite my love for the small alpine villages, NYC has slowly started to grow in me. Riding my bike through the hectic morning traffic is both exciting and fun, and seeing the skyscrapers in the dawn is pretty cool. Gotta watch out fordooring though, it’s pretty common here. Biking around is a also a good way to spot new restaurants, there’s 40.000 of them in Manhattan. Food here is just great, and you can get to know cuisines you’ve never even heard of! Anyone a fan of mexican sushi or japanese tacos? Try both at the same restaurant around the corner from our office. I am also planning to buy a few live lobsters for dinner some day from the grocery store next door. The frogs I might have to pass. At least for now…but maybe I will post a recipe in the next blog post….?

-Reason No.1-
People might depend on you and you might have to take on a lot of responsibility without ANY preparation to take it on. What’s worse, no one will tell you what to do, you just have to figure it out and keep moving. Even worse than that, you might feel so responsible to everyone on your team, that you end up pushing yourself to try to deliver beyond what you feel COMFORTABLE with! It’s like they FORCE you to learn!

-Reason No.2-
You will most likely have to learn a lot of what you do on the go, because often times there’s no one else who has done it before or who would know anything any better than you do. Aren’t there processes you ask? NO! They’ll make YOU come up with them as you go along!! It’s like they give you a compass, a map that’s about as accurate as printing the world onto an A4, THEN tell you we need to get from here to there and THEN just say.. GO!

-Reason No.3-
Every single day in the office is different! What ever happened to appreciating structure? To a set task list? To coming into the office at 9 and leaving at 5 knowing what you’ll be doing? One day you come in late and leave early, the next you come in very early and leave very VERY late. Some days are good, some are bad. And then It’s like something happens to your brain where you end up spending long nights at the office and you think its FUN?!?!

-Reason No.4-
YOU WILL BECOME PART OF A CULT!! This is a dangerous one. You start to think that you are on some larger mission, AS IF there is something more than having a job and making some money driving you and your colleagues – whom you start to appreciate as friends and fellow cult members on some SILLY PIPE-DREAM!! More than just co-workers!?!? Challenging you every day??

-Reason No. 5-
WARNING! YOU WILL MOST LIKELY WORK WITH INSANE DUMBASSES!
This was confirmed to me by one of our founders who said, and I quote: “You have to be a bit of a dumbass or a bit insane to start a company.” DO YOU NEED MORE PROOF!! These people are audacious enough to think that the world should be made a better place and that if they don’t do it who will. That there is value in building something new and you might even get rich in the process? Dreamers!! Overly positive, optimistic, relentless, perseverant, energetic, inspired CRAZY PEOPLE full of Joie de Vivre! Who in their right mind would want to work with that??

Who indeed?

- Nippe

Startup Lifer #22

Follow Nippe at Twitter: @_nippe

Nippe taking it easy at the Dolores Park, after a rough day living the startup life

Craigslist is awesome. You can find free or almost free stuff there that is in fact in excellent shape if you know what to look for. This is the story of how I got a super cool leather couch for $30 dollars, narrated in the style of Juhani Tamminen – coach, sun king, lätkäjätkä and Lion #79 (here’s his FB profile if you’re not familiar with this particular brand of humour .

Sunday morning, out of the car window.

Sunday morning. iPhone rings at 11am. PERKELE! it’s the guy from Craigslist asking if I’m coming to get his couch or not. “JE SUIS EN RETARDE!! MYÖHÄSSÄ!!!!” Climb out of bed, terrible hangover, SKIP kuntokoulu, quick shower and taxi to U-Haul to pickup cargo van (Ford). Driver was an idiot, had to use Google (“Don’t be evil!”) Maps and guide him the whole way. EI TIPPIÄ!!!! Van in prima condition, off to Bernal Heights (BEAUTIFUL HILLS!) to pickup the couch. How much? 30 dollars? GREAT! Chapeau Frank!!!! (previous couch owner & hipster extraordinaire) Couch loaded in the cargo space, Ford pointing due North – off to brunch in the Mission district at full speed. BRUNCH IS A MOMENTUM GAME!!!! Restaurant Kitchen Story + Cappucino + “Frisco” Eggs Benedict + Millionaires Bacon = WAU! SIMPLY GREAT!! Off to Dolores Park with friends, lying around, sun shining, beautiful day. On the way picked up a few beers to enjoy. “PARI KUKKOA!” Foursquare check-in (“this place is swarming!”), no hurry anywhere, great company – in the words of brother Mertaranta “IHANAA leijonat!”

Next stop? Thriftstore to look for more furniture. Found an excellent Aalto-esque lounge chair for $20 dollars. It’s a bit old and battered but: STYLE IS NEVER OUT OF FASHION!! Niin se menee! Load the bunch into the van and head to Market & 6th with Anders, Annika and Raimo lounging on the couch in the back. Comfortable ride and “illaksi kotiin!!” (Finnair). My apartment is just across Market St. from the Tenderloin (sketchy neighborhood!) so unloading the van on the street requires some planning – “Det blir intressant!” as Börje Salming would say. We unload the stuff onto the curb and I go find parking while the guys sit on the couch in the middle of the street: “DET BLIR VERKLIGEN INTRESSANT!” as Mr. Mickos (Solkungen at Eucalyptus) would say!! No easy parking spots nearby so have to squeeze into a tight space. Not to worry – Coaching principle No. 1: “Slow and steady gets you ready!” No dents, good job. Arrive back on the scene – no trouble from anyone as Anders and Raimo look “like a boss” lounging on the couch – TIGERS! We carry the furniture into my 4th floor apartment (kuntokoulu, medium version) Thank you guys for the help! STARTUP LIFE = COMMUNITY! CHAPEAU to MIKKO and the Startup Life TEAM! Upstairs; try out spots for the couch – Four passes break any defense? Four pivots find the right spot for a couch! SE ON SIINÄ! Job well done – kudos all around – time to “hit the sack!”. Great day!

Raimo (SL 1/2012) and Anders (SL 2/2012) lounging on the couch

To all you warriors and warriorettes out there: MAKE EVERY DAY A MASTERPIECE!! This has been an amazing experience so far. EI MUNKKILATINAA vaan SUORAAN takatolpalle (“to the website”) ja nimi paperiin! –> Apply for Startup Life. It’s not so hard.
Still going strong:

-BR, NP – Startup Lifer #22

Nippe taking it easy at the Dolores Park, after a rough but rewarding day of couch logistics