Start­up Express pre-incu­ba­tor par­tic­i­pants become part of the wider Oulu com­mu­ni­ty

Start­up Express pre-incu­ba­tor train­ing is held at BusinessAsema’s Start­up Sta­tion 2–3 times a year. The pro­gramme is open to any­one who already has a busi­ness idea or wants to join an exist­ing team. It is not just about learn­ing entre­pre­neur­ial skills; par­tic­i­pants also become part of a larg­er com­mu­ni­ty and mean­ing­ful activ­i­ties.

On Decem­ber 10, a group of enthu­si­as­tic pitch­ers will gath­er at Business­Asema. They have par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Start­up Express pre-incu­ba­tor pro­gramme this fall, where they have devel­oped busi­ness ideas and learned entre­pre­neur­ial skills. The jour­ney cul­mi­nates in Demo Day, where they will present their ideas in the form of a pitch to experts and the pub­lic.

– You can apply with all kinds of ideas from many dif­fer­ent fields. No idea is too strange; the doors are open to any­one inter­est­ed, and exper­i­men­ta­tion is allowed. Start­up Express helps you fig­ure out what you need to con­sid­er when start­ing a busi­ness and whether your idea has the poten­tial to grow into a busi­ness, says Jan Schmidt, one of the experts involved in Start­up Express.

Being part of a com­mu­ni­ty is an impor­tant part of the pro­gramme

The pro­gramme includes week­ly work­shops and men­tor­ing ses­sions. The work­shops focus on shar­ing infor­ma­tion, tools, and cre­at­ing inter­ac­tion between par­tic­i­pants. Men­tor­ing, on the oth­er hand, is about per­son­al guid­ance mon­i­tor­ing the devel­op­ment process of an idea and seek­ing indi­vid­ual solu­tions for the team.

The week­ly meet­ings also strength­en the sense of com­mu­ni­ty, which helps par­tic­i­pants feel like they belong – this is how social cap­i­tal is built. The com­mu­ni­ty aspect is not lim­it­ed to the Start­up Express pro­gramme, but it also pro­vides an oppor­tu­ni­ty to net­work with the entire Oulu-wide start­up com­mu­ni­ty. Many pre­vi­ous Start­up Express par­tic­i­pants are now active in pitch events and oth­er start­up ecosys­tem activ­i­ties.

– The com­mu­nal­i­ty extends beyond the pro­gramme. We have suc­ceed­ed in build­ing a com­mu­ni­ty whose impact is vis­i­ble through­out the region’s start­up ecosys­tem, Schmidt says hap­pi­ly.

Oulu has a pos­i­tive atmos­phere

The atmos­phere in the Oulu start­up com­mu­ni­ty is pos­i­tive and inspir­ing. Accord­ing to Schmidt, the pro­gramme attracts ener­getic com­pa­ny founders and peo­ple who want to join a team and are ready to take the next step. Start­up Express is home to a new gen­er­a­tion of entre­pre­neurs with a spe­cial ener­gy and their own way of build­ing a busi­ness: they are not sit­ting around wait­ing to be hired but seize the oppor­tu­ni­ty to build some­thing of their own.

Net­work­ing, events, and devel­op­ing their own skills give par­tic­i­pants the con­fi­dence to move for­ward. The pro­gramme, which has been organ­ised sev­er­al times, has already had around 200 par­tic­i­pants, result­ing in the estab­lish­ment of 17 new com­pa­nies. The future will show what will grow out of them.

How­ev­er, the goal is not for every­one to start a busi­ness right away, but rather for the pro­gramme to pro­vide the nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion, net­works, and tools for the future. One can also apply pure­ly out of inter­est in join­ing the dis­cus­sion and becom­ing part of the com­mu­ni­ty. The skills learned can be used in one’s own work, even if they do not become an entre­pre­neur.

The next cohort of Start­up Express will start in Jan­u­ary

The oppor­tu­ni­ty to apply for the next Start­up Express pro­gram is cur­rent­ly open, as a new group will start at Start­up Sta­tion on Jan­u­ary 22, 2026. The train­ing is avail­able in both Finnish and Eng­lish. There are some open­ings left, so appli­ca­tions are still accept­ed. Schmidt empha­sis­es that per­fec­tion is not required – the most impor­tant thing is to try out your idea and see if it has poten­tial. You can read more and reg­is­ter here.