startups

I was visiting Huomenta Suomi tv program again on last wednesday morning (21.11.2012), at around 07:50.

We talked about entrepreneurship, risk taking, attitude, bankruptcy, the Slush conference, what the government should do to facilitate more startup success, etc.

Here's the Vid in finnish:

Also on the live broadcast I announced the news about me joining Wunderkraut as the managing director for Finland.

All feedback and comments welcome as always!

Today, just a few minutes ago, I was speaking at the AaltoES Startup Sauna kickoff event.

Here are my slides as a PDF from that event:

Small filesize version here. (1 meg)

Large filesize (over 60MB, very high res images you see...) version here.

As always, all feedback is much welcomed!

Today me and Lasse Männistö published a finnish language proposal about renewing the growth company / startup financing in Finland.

As any experienced startup entrepreneur in Finland knows; the state is heavily involved in giving grants and loans etc various kind of direct and indirect support to companies. All together there are about 100 different instances, giving out over 1000 separate instruments of support, that total over 2 billion EUR annually. This is quite complex and quite confusing.

One interesting stat from the "support jungle" is that there are approximately 4-5 thousand government officials involved in this machinery (by a wide definition) - and arguably Finland has less than 4-5 thousand strong growth companies; so in essence we have a system that has more than one person working it for each growth company we have.. Doesn't sound very efficient, now does it?

Our finnish language proposal can be downloaded from here.

And the associated press release from here.

What we are proposing is just a good start - something to get things moving. Naturally there would be more action following these initial steps. We formulated our proposal to be politically easy to accept and realistic. It is designed as an expense neutral program: meaning that it would not increase government expenditure; in fact there's a rather high chance that it would produce money instead of drain it.

In brief, we propose:

1) Tax breaks for innovative R&D activities. Finland is just about the only western country in the world that doesn't use these kind of tax breaks. Even Germany started using them recently. Many others like Norway and the Netherlands use them extensively and with very good results.

2) Incentives for angel funding and other seed funding. This kind of model has been successfully implemented by Singapore, Israel and to some extent (with very heavy tax breaks) by Canada as well. We would need incentives for business angels, and for grass roots level funding from the groundswell. The state needs to get into market driven asymmetric funds and let commercial free market mechanisms decide what kind of innovations to fund - encourage growth by other means than government official decisions.

3) The support jungle machinery needs a reform. It is too inefficient and too massive for its own good = there are not enough good results coming out of it per cost of running it.

The job creating power of startups is amazing; when it comes to new jobs they are not the major thing; they are pretty much the ONLY thing. They drive job creation and growth more than anything else out there. They drive prosperity and wealth. We don't need another monolithic Nokia in Finland; we need a thousand Angry Birds and a lot of things we can't even predict yet - that will raise up from the mists of creation to conquer the world!

If you agree with this proposal; expand on it, champion it, talk about it to political decision makers and make noise about it in general! With the elections at our doorstep there is a genuine chance to get positive things done in this very vital and important field as well!

I'm also very interested to hear how the proposal could be even better?

Edit (20.3.2011 18:48) Petteri Koponen has good commentary on this, here:

http://serialtrier.wordpress.com/2011/03/20/on-improving-finlands-startu...

Here's a short list of upcoming evens you can find me in.

First of all the event I blogged about previously in here, got moved to a new date; 4th of Novermber 2010. So far we have managed to secure some amazing speakers; Andreas Ehn (Spotify, Stardoll, currently at his new stealth startup), Timo Soininen (Sulake), and Andreas von Koskull (Mr. Goodliving, Sauma). The event will be at Korjaamo in Helsinki. You can sign up through this link here. The event is part of the IBP programme and is financed by the EU through ESR.

20.9.2010 I will be on the FInnish Internet Forum, at the parliament building, speaking for a brief while and then as a panel member. This event is also streamed to the interwebz so you can watch it from your own couch.

30.9.2010 I will be a speaker and a panelist at an event called "Vuoden Veemäisin Yrittäjätapahtuma", part II. Finnish language program only, click the link for details and signup. Other speakers will be the country manager of Microsoft Finland, Google Finland's head of industry Ari Ojansivu, and sales director Kimmo Laaksonen from Elisa. The topic is a really juicy interesting one: Ethics and morality.

5.10.2010 WIll be speaking in Tampere at the local entrepreneurship association's event. About social media and digital marketing. Other speakers from various companies.

6.10.2010 I'll be at MindTrek in Tampere, and also running a full day "IBP Camp" training session at Demola. Details are here. I'll be co-running it together with Prof (emer) Reijo Luostarinen, for a full 8 hours straight. It's likely to be in finnish, but if some english-only participants sign up, then the language will switch. The topic is really interesting: how to design your company's strategy and operations for success? How's all that done? What to consider? etc.

7.10.2010 I'll be at MindTrek proper; as a one of the panelists/judges for the MindTrek launchpad.

8.10.2010 There's a Noridc Open event in Tallin, Estonia. I'll be speaking in the afternoon programme and as a panelist later on.

12.10.2010 I'll be speaking at HMEA's Entrepreneur Tuesday event. In Espoo.

13.10.2010 There's an IBP pitching clinic for internationally aspiring companies; to pitch and win a 18K EUR funding package and close up support for the UK market. Details and signup are here. Other pitching panelists include Mr. Steve Smith from Software City, UK, and Mikko-Jussi Suonenlahti from Veraventure.

14.10.2010 There's an entrepreneur event for women in Joensuu, organized by Nordea Bank. I'll be one of the keynote speakers. Will probably be there with Google's country manager, Anni.

21.10.2010 Itella is organizing an e-commerce event in Helsinki. I'll be the main outside key note speaker there. This is an invite-only event I think.. (ask me if you think you could benefit from an invite).

2.11.2010 e-learning centre of Finland is organizing an event in Vanajanlinna. I'll be the key note speakers for the day there. Programme & signup here.

4.11.2010 is the first mentioned event with very good key note speakers - be there!

12.11.2010 I'll be briefly introducing a topic for discussion at Tieke's breakfast event.

18.11.2010 Marketing Talks -event by Metropolia polytechnic. I'll be speaking to students about tech entrepreneurship.

... hmm that's quite a few events and such for this fall. Be in touch if I can help you with any info regarding any of the events. Hope to see you in some of them!

I am organizing a 1 day event together with Accelerando, as part of the IBP project for all companies in digital businesses.

It will take place on the 23rd of September 2010 (thursday). Somewhere in Helsinki.

The event is targeted for growth companies who are perhaps already international, or currently seeking to get there. Some are startups, some are more than 10 year old established companies that seek to enter new markets and expand their business. There's a whole big list of companies that have claimed to belong to this group, here.

There's a questionnaire up behind this link. I urge you to take it (just a few questions, very quick) - its purpose is to help us plan the best kind of event for you. Possibly getting in international speakers etc, tailoring the program to your most urgent business needs.

I invite you to participate now! Go through the questionnaire and contribute your ideas, views and hot topics. The budget for this is humble, but there's still tons of options to get things organized; so feel free to aim big and really "vent" what you would like to see & hear about the most.