Slush 2018 concludes with vision for further expansion

The 11th Slush, a startup and investor event held at the Helsinki Fair Center, concluded Wednesday with the ambition to expand its scale and influence.

At the opening of the two-day event, which attracted 3,100 startups, 1,800 investors and over 20,000 people, the chief executive officer of Slush Andreas Saari announced the launch of Slush Academy, which aims to offer guidance and tuition to startups.

The program will give students from around the world access to training for high-growth entrepreneurship. Students will have access to internships and mentoring in growth companies and former startups that have grown to be large players.

A long list of academic partners was published, including Oxford Said Business School, London Business School, Aalto University, UC Berkeley, Singapore University of Technology and Design.

Slush Academy is scheduled to start in 2019, and will be gradually scaled up to a full program and free of charge to the participants.

The idea of the academy was born from the realization that current study programs around the world are covering very limited parts of the toolkit of an entrepreneur with global ambitions.

"Slush was originally founded to change the attitudes towards entrepreneurship by helping the local entrepreneurs thrive and pass their knowledge to the next generation of founders," said Saari.