Finnish Startups: You’re (I’m) Not Alone
This post was long overdue. When I started this blog about six months ago, it was quite hard to find information and contacts from Finnish web startups and I foolishly felt that I was quite alone in my interest. The situation was not that bad before but it has improved quite a lot during this time. Nevertheless, more could be done.
Blogs and events
Around the same time that I started this blog, another blog about Finnish startups, Arctic Startup was established. They have gotten a very good start and are now organizing events for Finnish startups: the next one will be held May 8. These events are Helsinki OpenCoffee events (without the Open Coffee name, apparently to simplify things.).
Also the startups are organizing events. After releasing a new improved version of their site, Scred is doing their share of community-building by hosting the first Night of Code this Friday. I’ve also heard that some web startups such as Floobs, TripSay and Scred get together once in a while very informally for a beer without any outsiders (vc’s, consultants etc.) so they can talk freely about the life in startups.
For more events related to startups, Ignite has landed to Finland. The first event was be held May 20 2008. Find out more from Ignite:Helsinki.
More networking online
It would make sense that most of the networking around Finnish startups would happen online. There’s the StartupHelsinki group, created by Ville Vesterinen, who is also behind the OpenCoffee Events (which is using Meetup). Here’s a group about entrepreneurship in Finland.and here’s another. But that’s it. Not too many really useful places to exchange ideas and make new contacts. There must be more that I’m not aware of. Should you know any, let me know in the comments.
In Sweden they have created a networking site for Startups using Ning. Anyone interested in doing the same in Finland? Would there be any use for it or are the current networking events and sites already enough?
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Comments
Date: April 22, 2008 | Time: 11:36 pm
Maybe you will be the one to create a networking site for start-ups?
Date: April 23, 2008 | Time: 4:41 pm
Nign community is good idea. Here @ web 2.0 people keep asking about Finnish female entrepreneurs! Where are you ladies?!?!?!
Date: April 23, 2008 | Time: 8:56 pm
The size of the startup community here is, again, both a curse and the blessing. Here it is extremely easy to just walk up to anyone and arrange some form of partnership, and people are open to new contacts and ideas. At the same time that is also the limitation as competition is often what drives innovation and work. Finnish startups cannot afford to consider life easy with the partnerships they can arrange locally: the competition is abroad and must be addressed in every possible manner.
The challenge here is not to be seen as a Finnish company, but a global company from day one. No need to be ashamed of being Finnish, but on a global scale it’s not enough and there’s not much point saturating the local market and then losing the US and Europe to other firms. Reaching the international media and audience is not easy, however.
I would also like to emphasise that, despite all this talk about a global Internet world, nothing is as effective as meeting face to face. So, whatever you’re doing, don’t just sit in your dark room coding. Get out there, talk to people, find good ideas, listen.
I think we should thank blogs such as this for helping to form the community there is. Without them I reckon it would have been much more difficult to form the friendships we have, and to hear about new companies.
Date: April 23, 2008 | Time: 9:46 pm
I’m not suggesting of having an online community instead of meeting face to face (which is far more important), but I believe it would make these events easier to arrange and easier to maintain the contacts if there was a better tool for the networking.
Maybe “the ladies” Kaitsu was looking for will find it easier to first join an online community before attending the events.:)
I agree that the Finnish startups should definitely focus on the global markets from day one. Finnish startups can learn a lot from each other and having a vibrant community (off- or on-line) benefits all startups.
Date: April 23, 2008 | Time: 10:22 pm
Sorry, Timo, I didn’t actually mean to imply that you were suggesting online instead of face-to-face. It was meant as just a general comment, so apologies for any confusion.
For what it’s worth, a Finnish startup community site sounds like a great idea. It certainly wouldn’t hurt and I think it would actually help with the face-to-face bit too.
Date: April 27, 2008 | Time: 10:39 pm
[...] few days ago I wrote about the web startup community in Finland. Since then I’ve heard about a few more events for startups in [...]
Date: May 11, 2008 | Time: 7:27 pm
Most events here in Finland are pretty scattered and not continuous enough. There a one common network could help. As far as I see, bigger problem is that we don’t actually have much of a startup-culture here. And why we don’t have a startup-culture is that we are not doing enough startups.
So entreprenuers actually might need more doing, more understanding and more knowledge, not necessarely more networking.
But I would love to help on building a better community here. But we should still remember that events and networking don’t necessarily solve the underlyinging bigger problems or barries.
(btw Scoble seemed to visited the site, we should invite him to Finland)
Date: May 12, 2008 | Time: 10:20 am
After thinking about this for a while and talking to others I’ve come to the same conclusion, that the startup community doesn’t need another networking site. It needs a place that will bring some order into the fragmented community, gather information on startups and events and other networking opportunities in one place.
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