The Finnish Business Angels Network, FiBAN, annually gives three awards for to its members:
+ The Finnish Business Angel of the Year
+ The Finnish Business Angel Exit of the Year
+ The Finnish Business Angel Newcomer of the Year

Janne Jormalainen, FiBAN’s chairman of the Board, gave the awards on stage to the following winners:

The Finnish Business Angel of the Year 2018 is Hannu Hamari. He is an active angel investor and held in high regard by his peers. Hannu frequently participates in FiBAN activities. With successful exits under his belt, Hannu is also a good representative of a successful Finnish regional investor based outside the Helsinki capital area. He is from Oulu, the most important city the startup ecosystem of the northern parts of Finland. Besides being the home to active investors, Oulu regularly produces very interesting startups of high caliber that have gone on to achieve strong growth. Over the years, many such successful startups have received funding and know-how from Hannu.

The Finnish Business Angel Newcomer of the Year 2018 is René Kromhof. He exemplifies an new member, who recently started his career as an angel investors by very actively taking part in FiBAN trainings and other activities, such as the award-winning Nordic Angel Program (NAP). As an internationally-minded Dutch businessman, René has thus immediately begun to do cross-border investing together with others. He represents a growing number of international angel investors who are either living in Finland or become members while based in an other country. René’s home country, the Netherlands, is one of the many startup ecosystems with which FiBAN and its members are forging increasingly strong international collaboration.

The Finnish Business Angel Exit of the Year 2018 is the exit from Small Giant Games to Zynga to the tune of USD 700 million. Some years, the award goes to a single individual. For 2018 – like for 2017 – the exit was achieved collectively by multiple early co-investors in Small Giant Games. Ari Korhonen, Kim Groop were awarded on stage in front of the international audience consisting of EBAN Helsinki 2019 Gala Dinner participants. Teemu Aho will receive his awards later and Risto Siilasmaa on Tuesday morning as his keynote opens the second day of EBAN Helsinki 2019.

Please join the FiBAN office team, board and all other members in congratulating the winners.

Over a year ago, when FiBAN was elected to host the EBAN annual congress 3-4 June 2019 in Helsinki, the professionals behind the annual Arctic15 were immediately hired as the event production company. Thus, they scheduled their own event Arctic15 to be held 5-6 June 2019 at the same venue. Therefore, the city of Helsinki decided to arrange their Helsinki Startup Day on 4 June. Many others followed and now we have a #super#HelsinkiStartupWeek in a summery Finland.