How to build a company in an unconventional way | Ilkka Paananen and Taizo Son

Slush 2014 | Silver Stage | Tuesday 18.11.2014
Fireside with Taizo Son, founder and Chairman of GungHo and Ilkka Paananen, Co-Founder and CEO of Supercell, hosted by Petteri Koponen - How to build a company in an unconventional way

Taizo Son has worked fervently for the past 15 years to start new IT-related venture companies. In 2002 he founded GungHo, one of Japan’s most successful online gaming companies. Their flagship game Puzzle & Dragons is the world’s top grossing app for iOS and Android, making more than $100M in monthly revenues. With Movida Japan, a seed accelerator he founded in 2009, the aim is to significantly boost the venture ecosystem in East Asia by 2030. He also serves as an Advisor at SoftBank, a Japanese Telecom and IT conglomerate with more than 1300 subsidiaries and affiliates worldwide, founded and led by his brother Masayoshi Son.

Ilkka Paananen is the CEO and co-founder of Supercell, the Helsinki-based mobile games developer behind Clash of Clans and Hay Day. In October 2013 Japanese companies Softbank and GungHo acquired 51 % of the company for a reported $1.5 billion. IIkka has been an entrepreneur in the games industry since 2000. Prior to Supercell, he was the CEO & co-founder of Sumea, which was later acquired by Digital Chocolate, where he worked as a President until 2010. In addition to his role at Supercell, Ilkka helps other entrepreneurs as a partner in Lifeline Ventures, an early stage investor. Ilkka is also an active member of the Helsinki-based startup community where he mentors and coaches other founders. In addition to games and entrepreneurship, Ilkka is passionate about ice hockey. Ilkka’s favorite games include old classics like Civilization and Command & Conquer.

// Slush 2016 will take place in Helsinki, Finland on November 30th - December 1nd! //

In 2015, Slush brought together 15.000 attendees, including 1.700 startups, 800 venture capital investors and 630 journalists from exactly 100 countries. People from more than half of the world’s countries traveled to the cold and dark Helsinki, with the ambition of taking their business to the next level.

Slush is a non-profit event organized by a community of entrepreneurs, investors, students and festival organizers. Although Slush has grown from a 300-person event to become one of the leading events of its kind in the world, the philosophy behind it has remained the same: to help the next generation of great, world-conquering companies forward.