Do I need a real startup idea before I look for a cofounder?

No. Plenty of student founding teams form around a shared interest or a rough problem before either side has committed to a specific idea. Trusted Cofounder's 'Looking for' field is free text: it's fine to write that you're exploring rather than pitching.

Is this different from just asking around Aaltoes or a hackathon?

It's a supplement, not a replacement. Aaltoes events, Junction, and Startup Sauna-legacy spaces are still the highest-density in-person venues for this in the Aalto/Otaniemi ecosystem. A public directory reaches people outside your own course, program, or friend group who you'd otherwise never run into.

Do I have to be at Aalto specifically?

No. The same approach works from any Finnish university. Aalto and Otaniemi have the deepest concentration of technical and design cofounders in the country, but the directory itself is city-scoped, not university-scoped.

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Finding a cofounder as an Aalto or Otaniemi student

You don't need a finished startup idea or a business plan to look for a cofounder while you're still studying. If you have a side project, a thesis-adjacent idea, or just a feeling you want to build something with someone, the same public directory Finnish founders use works for students too: create a free profile, describe what you're exploring, and see who else in the Aalto and Otaniemi ecosystem is looking for the same thing.

By Curtis ThomasLast updated 2026-08-05

Why looking outside your own cohort matters

A course project group or a friend from your program is the easiest cofounder to find and often the wrong one. Shared classes select for similar skills, not complementary ones. The strongest student founding teams usually pair a technical Aalto engineering student with someone from business, design, or a completely different faculty, people you would never meet through a shared course.

Aaltoes, Junction, and the wider Otaniemi ecosystem are excellent for meeting people in person, and nothing here replaces that. A public directory just extends the reach past whoever happens to be in the room on a given night, to anyone in the Helsinki capital region actively looking.

You don't need to pitch anything yet

Most guides to finding a cofounder assume you already have an idea to sell someone on. As a student, you often don't, and that's fine. A profile that says "still exploring, interested in [broad area], looking for someone to think out loud with" is a completely normal starting point. Nobody on the other end is expecting a pitch deck.

If you want to think through what stage you're actually at before writing your profile, see how to find a cofounder when you have an idea (it also covers the "I don't have one yet" case).

What to put in your profile

Your field of study and what you actually enjoy building, not just your major. "Studying CS, but I care more about the product than the backend" tells a design-minded cofounder more than "CS student."
Whether you're available now or planning around graduation. Both are fine, just be upfront so nobody assumes full-time availability that isn't there yet.
A rough area of interest, even if the idea isn't fixed: climate, health, developer tools, consumer, whatever actually pulls you in.

Where this fits with the rest of the Aalto/Espoo ecosystem

Espoo, and Otaniemi specifically, is the deepest concentration of Aalto-affiliated founders in Finland. For the wider ecosystem detail, universities, notable companies, and where founders physically meet, see the full Espoo cofounder page, which also shows who from the area is listed in the directory right now. This page is deliberately narrower: it's about the specific, lower-commitment starting point of looking while you're still a student, not the ecosystem overview.

Ready to see who's out there? Browse the public directory, or filter straight to the Espoo/Helsinki area.