 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(December 2017) |
The startup scene in Finland has given birth to companies such as Angry Birds, Supercell, Wolt, and many others.
Entrepreneurship itself in Finland is quite an old phenomenon. However, as everywhere else, the first startups appeared in the early 1990s and some faced demise with the end of dot-com bubble in early 2000.
Prior to 1995, one of the key influences was the Finnish demo scene which gathered together people interested in burgeoning technology. Many companies such as Hybrid Graphics and Riot-E as well as others have their roots in the demo scene.
The dot-com bubble in the USA lasted between 1995 and 2000. The bubble has had a major impact on the Finnish start-up ecosystem. One of the most well-known dot-com companies, together with Riot-E, was Iobox. IObox Oy was a Finnish mobile and web portal operator. Formed in 1999, the dot-com company became part of Telefónica Mobile. At a sale price of $250m (€230m) in 2000, IObox was the largest venture capital exit in Finland. It was not surpassed until the sale of MySQL AB in 2008 for $1bn (€670m).
MySQL was another start-up that was built in the middle of the dot-com bubble. The company was founded in 1995 and the first version of MySQL was released in 1996.
The period starting in 2003 and ending, roughly, around 2006 was a post-dot-com recovery time for the Finnish start-up ecosystem. One of the key players in the ecosystem at the time was Sulake, which was founded in 2001, but had its most important actions take place after registering as Sulake Corporation in 2003.
Aula movement was one of the key events in 2006 gathering people from different backgrounds to talk about social software. [1] This software community was the beginning of companies like Jaiku (later acquired by Google [2] ) and Dopplr (later acquired by Nokia). [3]
This period is characterized by the rise of a grassroots student movement initiated by Aaltoes, the emergence of a new wave of start-up entrepreneurs as well as creation of ArcticStartup, a local media 100% dedicated to covering the start-up scene in the Nordic and Baltic region.
Aaltoes, or Aalto Entrepreneurship Society, was founded in 2009 by a disciplinary group of students from the three founding schools of Aalto University. Currently, Aaltoes remains student-run and a non-profit, while maintaining the largest startup community in Finland.
As in Silicon Valley most startups in Finland are IT related. Recently, however, companies developing physical end-products has risen. Notable examples include Jalo Helsinki [4] and Uploud Audio. [5] Former producing fire alarms while the latter producing nice looking loudspeakers.
In 2009 Finland was second largest investor in early stage startups in Europe measured in venture capital as a percentage of GDP. [6]
Finnish member of Parliament Lasse Männistö has established a startup group inside the Finnish parliament. [7]
In 2019, Finland accounted for 10 percent of global startup exits, according to TNW. [8] In terms of local connectivity, the 2018 Global Startup Ecosystem report ranks Helsinki's ecosystem as the best in the world. [8]
In the 2020, Finnish startups raised a record-high of €951 in growth funding, the largest investor group being venture capital investors, who invested €495 million into Finnish startup during the year. [9]
Helsinki University of Technology was a technical university in Finland. It was located in Otaniemi, Espoo in the metropolitan area of Greater Helsinki. The university was founded in 1849 by Grand Duke of Finland, Emperor Nicholas I and received university status in 1908. It moved from Helsinki to Otaniemi campus area in 1966. The merger of HUT with two other schools created the Aalto University in 2010, and HUT briefly held the name Aalto University School of Science and Technology before being split into four schools in 2011.
Elisa Oyj is a Finnish telecommunications company founded in 1882. Its previous names were Helsingin Puhelin and Elisa Communications Oyj. Elisa is a telecommunications, ICT and online service company operating mainly in Finland and Estonia, but it also offers digital services for international operators and other companies. Elisa is the market leader in mobile and fixed network subscriptions in Finland. Elisa provides services for communication and entertainment, and tools for improving operating methods and productivity of organisations. It cooperates for example with Vodafone and Tele2.
Mårten Gustaf Mickos is a technology executive based in San Francisco. He is the current CEO of HackerOne, a security vulnerability coordination and bug bounty platform.
Jaiku was a social networking, micro-blogging and lifestreaming service comparable to Twitter, founded a month before the latter. Jaiku was founded in February 2006 by Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen from Finland and launched in July of that year. It was purchased by Google on October 9, 2007.
Marko Ahtisaari is a Finnish technology entrepreneur and musician. Ahtisaari has been CEO and co-founder of two technology companies: Dopplr and Sync Project. After the acquisition of Dopplr, Ahtisaari was executive vice president of Design at Nokia and later a Director's Fellow at the MIT Media Lab. He is a composer, bassist and singer in the band Construction.
Risto Kalevi Siilasmaa is a Finnish businessperson and the chairman, founder and former CEO of F-Secure Corporation, an anti-virus and computer security software company based in Helsinki, Finland. He is also the biggest shareholder of F-Secure, owning around 40% of the company. He was chairman of Nokia from 2012 to 2020.
Aalto University is a public research university located in Espoo, Finland. It was established in 2010 as a merger of three major Finnish universities: the Helsinki University of Technology, the Helsinki School of Economics and the University of Art and Design Helsinki. The close collaboration between the scientific, business and arts communities is intended to foster multi-disciplinary education and research.
Taneli Tikka is a Finnish serial entrepreneur and IT influencer.
Supercell Ltd is a Finnish mobile game development company based in Helsinki. Founded on 14 May 2010, the company's debut game was the browser game Gunshine.net, and after its release in 2011, Supercell started developing games for mobile devices. Since then, the company has fully released five mobile games: Hay Day, Clash of Clans, Boom Beach, Clash Royale, and Brawl Stars, which are freemium fast-paced games and have been very successful for the company, the first two generating revenue of €2 million per day in 2013.
Sulake Oy is a Finnish video game company primarily known for the creation and development of Habbo and Hotel Hideaway games.
Aaltoes, also known as Aalto Entrepreneurship Society, is a non-profit organization run by students, based in Helsinki, Finland. Founded in 2009, Aaltoes has helped the rapid emergence of a startup culture in Finland in 2008-2011.
A startup ecosystem is formed by people in startups in their various stages, and various types of organizations in a location that are interacting as a system to create and scale new startup companies. These organizations can be further divided into categories such as universities, funding organizations, support organizations, research organizations, service provider organizations and large corporations. Local Governments and Government organizations such as Commerce / Industry / Economic Development departments also play an important role in a startup ecosystem. Different organizations typically focus on specific parts of the ecosystem function and startups at their specific development stage(s).
Yousician is a Finnish interactive and educational music service made to learn and play a musical instrument. It currently supports the following musical instruments: guitar, piano (keyboards), ukulele, bass, and voice.
In business, a unicorn is a startup company valued at over US$1 billion which is privately owned and not listed on a share market. The term was first published in 2013, coined by venture capitalist Aileen Lee, choosing the mythical animal to represent the statistical rarity of such successful ventures.
Slush is a startup and tech event held annually in Helsinki, Finland. Slush facilitates meetings between the founders of startups and investors such as venture capitalists, accomplished with events such as matchmaking and pitching competitions. Slush aims to build a worldwide startup community. In 2021, Slush brought together 8,800 attendees from around the world to participate together in this global networking festival.
Video gaming in Finland consists of video game industry of 260 active video game developer studios, roughly a dozen professional players and countless enthusiastic amateurs.
A unicorn bubble is a theoretical economic bubble that would occur when unicorn startup companies are overvalued by venture capitalists or investors. This can either occur during the private phase of these unicorn companies, or in an initial public offering. A unicorn company is a startup company valued at, or above, $1 billion US dollars.
Wolt is a Finnish food delivery company known for its delivery platform for food and merchandise. On Wolt's apps or website, customers can order food and household goods from the platform's restaurant and merchant partners, and either pick up their order or have it delivered by the platform's courier partners. Wolt also runs its own chain of grocery stores called Wolt Market. Wolt is headquartered in Helsinki.
Small Giant Games is a mobile game development company based in Helsinki, Finland. It was founded in 2013 by former employees of mobile game maker Sulake. After producing two casual games, Small Giant found success with a match-three role-playing game entitled Empires and Puzzles. After the success of Empires and Puzzles, Small Giant was acquired by Zynga in December 2018.
Metacore is a Finnish video game developer based in Helsinki. Its first game was Merge Mansion, launched in September 2020. In January 2023, Supercell announced that it was transferring the rights to its Everdale game to Metacore. Supercell is also an investor in Metacore.