Illme, a company that says it will rid the world of the common cold, wins my vote for the best company presenting at the "Slush" conference here in Helsinki.
The company was one of seven very early startups presenting, and hasn't launched yet, but it's an idea that may be more achievable than you'd initially think from its laughably audacious stated goal.
The company will match the symptoms with its list of known common colds and tie the symptoms to the location -- by tracking where users say they live, work and send their kids to school. The company will diagnose the location of certain colds as they spread through a social network. It will offer a sort of weather forecast for colds: locating where colds are present in social networks and making them visible for people to avoid. The idea is that if enough people are warned, the colds will have fewer people to infect, and so will die off sooner.
People in the audience were cracking up (the co-founders realized they have a bold objective and were playing along). Their appeal for venture funding: "For investors: This is a small investment for us, but a giant investment for mankind."
The company said the the cost to the U.S. health care system to manage and combat common colds is about $40 billion annually. If the company can warn enough people to nix about 10 percent of these colds, savings could reach $4 billion.
The company's message was relevant given several people in the audience who said they have the flu or a cold. Helsinki is particularly depressing this time of the year. Indeed, after I landed, a snow storm from Russia swept in and dumped a foot of snow on the city; add that to the fact that the sun never entirely comes out (all reasons why the conference is named Slush).
Here are the other companies that presented:
Nixarn -- a Digg-like product to let you know about upcoming consumer products Siilein Research -- a speech-to-text translation service Pot it! -- matches buyers with common goals FPP (Food Price Project) -- lets you compare and track food prices Hila -- a discussion channel for public sector services ClassicExplorer -- a social web service for classical music artists and their audiences