The Finnish startup ecosystem is struggling at the early stage. The equation is simple: if we don’t have enough founders, we don’t have startup companies. If there are no startups, there will be no growth companies or scale-ups reaching rapid growth, nor new jobs.
The startup ecosystem works like a sales funnel. It is wide at the beginning and narrow at the end. We need a huge amount of inspiration and ideas to sift through to find a small number of genuine companies, of which only a few will eventually grow into international success stories.
However, the growth environment must be in order.
We can make a comparison through ice hockey. Imagine that you need to build success in ice hockey from scratch in a city or country where it didn’t exist. You can buy a top coach (or players from abroad) with money, but you cannot buy:
- local culture that encourages parents to support their children in the sport and for children to continue because it is part of the norm
- youth players who will grow into players for the local team, Liiga or NHL stars (whose success younger generations follow)
- decades of development
When the money runs out and the “mercenaries” go home, local player development dies. The same applies to entrepreneurship and startup ecosystems.
In recent years, there has been interest in bringing international ready-made models for building ecosystems to the startup and growth company sector. At a minimum, there is a desire to locally create “the same thing for us that Slush and Aaltoes did in Otaniemi.â
The problem with these models:
- They are built for a different market
- They operate with a different dynamic
- They have emerged from a local need at a specific moment
At worst, this leads to money being spent on buying a miraculous model, not on building local capabilities. In this, the entrepreneurship and startup ecosystem operates with the same logic as ice hockey culture. The culture ensures that local people, supporters, and communities encourage participation. Players (or in the business sector, founders and their companies) grow from the local level, some of whom make it to the big games.
On average, 15â25 players move from the Liiga to the NHL each year. Of about 2000 active startups in Finland, 60 companies grow into scale-ups, from which unicorns and publicly listed companies emerge.
Some cities fear that businesses will move away to the capital region or abroad. This is not something to worry about. Just like in hockey, the quality of the local ecosystem as a ‘development league’ matters. The success of the top players flows back into the entire ecosystem.
Role models matter. In hockey, the 1980s Kurri â 1990s stars SelĂ€nne, Koivu, Jutila â the current hockey crowd. The same applies in the startup scene. The more diverse role models there are, the better. In Otaniemi, there are a few, but the same figures are often recycled, and in other cities, stories are too rare.
What if we strengthened local capabilities and culture in Finland with money? The ecosystem is not just one service, program, or project, but it is created by local people, over a long time, through repeated encounters, failures, and role models.
External expertise can be brought in to accelerate the building of culture, to connect people, and to open networks. The level rises from that.
