“Peter also opened two kindergartens in Beijing.”
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Financial Graffiti” (ID: caijingtuya), author Shi Yuanjing.
At the recent Slush Shanghai Technology Innovation Summit, Peter Vesterbacka, the father of Angry Birds & Slush, shared his company’s intelligence expert, Caijing Graffiti, after leaving the game developer Rovio Entertainment, who has been away for many years. Entrepreneurial story. Peter’s ambition to be an entrepreneur is evident from the development of a world-renowned IP Angry Birds to the study of artificial intelligence and education, and the construction of a €15 billion submarine railway tunnel.
01 Father of Angry Birds:It took 6 years to develop 51 games
in retaliation The fat pigs who stole the eggs, the angry birds used their bodies as weapons, and used the slingshot to eject themselves to attack the fortress of the fat pigs. This casual puzzle game, which debuted in iOS in December 2009, was hit after the release,
In the short span of 3 years, the number of downloads worldwide has exceeded 500 million. In 2014, the total number of downloads exceeded 2 billion, and the company developed its own commercial IP. It launched a series of derivative businesses including movies and animations. , peripheral products, expression packs, theme parks, etc., have become a global phenomenon,
And the developer behind it, the Finnish game company Rovio Entertainment, which was founded in 2003, has also become a new generation of mobile Internet entrepreneurs with its six-year dilemma. But this success is not accidental or fortunate. Before the Angry Birds came online, Rovio has developed 51 games, and Rovio’s strategy at the time was to constantly introduce new ones until they created an explosion game. Expand to all the right platforms.
The nickname is “Invincible Eagle” Peter played a vital role in the development of the Angry Birds game and the brand promotion stage. As Rovio’s Chief Marketing Officer, he will build the Angry Birds IP This Finnish puzzle game has taken the world and is therefore called the father of angry birds.
“You need to maintain a long-term great goal. After setting such a goal, you will subdivide the layout and consider it step by step. What should be the short-term plan for achieving this goal. But you must also know This won’t be smooth sailing. (The angry bird has experienced it before) 51 games, 6 years. You just need to believe that you will always succeed, and the previous 51 games are not a failure, but a growth study. Experience,” Peter said.
Of course, just having ambition is not enough. Similar to games like Angry Birds, Peter wants to create a global explosion in the image, Peter believes that the user experience is crucial in the early stages of product development. What kind of experience do I want to bring to the user? Do you need to provide different usage feelings for different customer groups? These are all issues that entrepreneurs must seriously consider. Whether in the game, education or service industry, how to effectively provide high-quality user experience on a large scale is the top priority for creating image-level products.
Some independent game teams face the dilemma of low manpower and low budget, so they will be slightly weakened in terms of brand and marketing. But Peter believes that brand awareness is very important to the success of a game. “An angry bird is more than just a game. More importantly, it is a brand IP. All games, movies, animations, etc. are developed around this IP. When 700 new games are put on the shelves every day, If you just make a game with a simple profit model, the competitiveness is not enough, and building a brand image can help you reduce the cost of user acquisition. As a company must always clearly understand what we want to shape. What is it?”
02 Education is eternal enthusiasm:Let teachers reduce boring work
In 2016, Peter decided to leave Rovio Entertainment, which has experienced the ups and downs, to explore his entrepreneurial dream again. Like many entrepreneurs, education has attracted Peter’s great enthusiasm.
FinlandEducation is recognized as one of the world’s most outstanding education systems, with a reputation for smart education reform, higher education benefits, super-excellent faculty, standardized testing and a relaxed and free teaching environment.
As a Finnish, Peter has always wanted to bring quality education from Finland to the world and attract outstanding Chinese students to Finland to receive quality higher education. At the same time, Finland has always had a shortage of talent in the technology industry, and the arrival of Chinese students can bring more innovative talents to Finnish technology companies.
Currently, Peter’s team has established its own low-age education institution Fun Academy, and opened two kindergartens in Beijing. Based on Finnish pre-school education teachers and concepts, it is guided by interesting learning methods, featuring scientific enlightenment, and cultivating learning ability. And future talents with innovative abilities to customize suitable learning and development programs for children aged 0-6.
In the context of the rapid development of artificial intelligence, Peter believes that technology should be educated, artificial intelligence can be used to reduce boring work, and teachers can be better focused on education itself, for example Finland currently uses AI to develop its own design curriculum without human intervention.
03 15 billion euros undersea tunnel, dream of building “Northern Silicon Valley”
2016 One night in May, Peter was having dinner with friends at an entrepreneurial event in Tallinn, Estonia. From Helsinki, the capital of Finland, to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, it is very close and far away. Although only 86 kilometers away, the only way to get to the other side is to travel two hours along the easternmost side of the Baltic Sea by ferry, which is time consuming and laborious. The idea of connecting the two places was actually proposed as early as 1871, but it has never been realized. On the night of May, Peter made a decision, let’s walk the walk, and he was determined to realize this dream more than 100 years ago.
Despite the turmoil in the game, Peter is a newcomer to building tunnels. He had no previous experience and was questioned..
In an interview with VICE, Peter once said: “Although I don’t have a background in infrastructure, my approach to this is: How hard can this be?” In this project, Peter played a special role. Role, bring attention and interest to the project and find funding and technical support.
Learn about infrastructure from scratch, and Peter’s bold place is not just that. As a €15 billion project, the scale of construction and the required capital chain are huge, but Peter chose to attract investment as a private project, without using any public funds. From the perspective of entrepreneurs to complete such a huge infrastructure project.
Helsinki and The capital of Tallinn has a population of about 1.5 million. People are very active in transportation between cities and cities due to work and leisure. The submarine tunnel is currently the world’s longest undersea tunnel, which will span the Gulf of Finland and connect the Finnish capital with the Estonian capital, becoming the focal point connecting Asia and Europe. The length of the tunnel is 103 kilometers. The first phase will be opened on December 24, 2024. The high-speed railway operation service will be provided. There are 4 docking stations connecting Helsinki-Vantaa Airport and Tallinn Airport.
According to the official website, the current one-way fare for the railway service is 50 euros, the round-trip fare is 100 euros, and the one-year unlimited number of fares is 1,000 euros.
As the founder of the Finnish-Estonia Bay Area Development Co., Ltd., the company responsible for the construction of the tunnel, Peter revealed that the company received a €100 million financing from the UAE ARJ Holdings Group at the end of 2018, and with China The fund (Touchstone Capital Partners) signed a €15 billion memorandum of understanding on tunnel construction. According to the memorandum, one-third of the 15 billion euros of funds provided by the Point Stone Fund will be used as private equity investments and two-thirds as debt financing. According to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the project will begin to achieve profitability in the 37 years after its operation.
Point stoneThe fund focuses on investment in the Belt and Road project and has more than $30 billion in funds in East and West Europe, Russia, Australia, North and South America, and Africa. According to the official website of the Dianshi Fund, its financing partners include Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Exim Bank, Bank of China, etc.; strategic partners include China Communications Construction, Sinoma Energy, and China Railway Group.
“We are working closely with China Railway, which has the world’s leading railway construction technology and tunnel construction technology,” Peter said. “We treat the project like a startup project and have different financing stages. I think public infrastructure projects can be learned from the perspective of entrepreneurs, and at the same time, it is also possible to have industry leaders like China Railway. A great thing, this will be a win-win thing.”
But Peter The “ambition” is not just a tunnel. In the future, he hopes to connect the two countries into a new metropolitan area and establish an artificial island capable of accommodating 50,000 people, setting up a new one in Helsinki. The technology center will serve as the foundation for the future construction of the “Northern Silicon Valley”. The opening of the tunnel will reduce the transit time between the capitals of the two places from 90 minutes to 20 minutes, which will attract more large technology companies, start-ups and innovative talents to Finland and Estonia.
“This tunnel is more like a chess piece in the big picture, we want to build the Bay Area, not only Finland, Estonia, but also Stockholm, Sweden Countries such as Russia, and some of the world’s best science and technology companies in this region, such as communication service Skype, cross-border transfer platform TransferWise, Nokia, music service platform Spotify, angry birds, game company Supercell, etc. If you can build such a large technology center, you will achieve multiple goals such as accelerating local economic growth, maintaining sustainable development, and large-scale development of affordable housing,” Peter said excitedly.
From games to education and infrastructure, Peter has always been adhering to the idea of trying multiple cross-cutting innovation projects: “The best time to start a business is now, not tomorrow, not the day after tomorrow. You will always meet all kinds of difficult challenges. But don’t worry too much at the beginning. Of course, I need to do some planning in the early stage, but the soldiers will stop and solve it when they encounter problems. I think it is very important that you must believe that you will succeed and be brave and let go.