
Finland: The early stage nation in need of late stage money - neilpeel
http://www.thenordicweb.com/blog/finland-the-early-stage-nation-in-need-of-late-stage-money
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yazr
Here is a contrarian view:

Finland early-stage money is mostly government money.

So mostly "I am an unemployed Nokia ex-manager, here is my form, please give
me 1M euros"

This is probably the WORST group to start startups, but the easy initial
financing will mask this (possibly for years).

Worse, artificial traction will crowd out the true outliers which deserve
funding.

Late stage money will have a ton of leads, and will completely squeeze out the
founders.

Leading (eventually) to large-ish but zombie-like companies which will retain
talent but not grow.

Contrast this with seed funding in the US (and Israel which the article
mentions positively) :

i am a technical developer who hates bureaucracy - give me some ramen money

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vlehto
I think the biggest problem in Finland right now is that if you wish to do
anything, you start by filing a form to the government.

TEKES and Sitra both evaluate everything they put money into. That evaluation
is more likely to be aligned with political climate than business prospects.
(There is hardly any difference with big business, but big difference with
small ones. Sort of "Nobody got fired buying IBM" -effect is at play.
Currently shown in the "strategic areas" in TEKES funding. Which happen to be
local current tech hype words.)

The Social security office hands out "Start money" which amounts ~1000e/month
to starting business, given that you employ yourself and the accept your
application. No slow bootstrapping allowed.

Practically these programs don't enable anybody to start a business. You can't
plan on getting anything form govermnet, because they might always just fail
your application for whatever reason. Which means your businessplan has to
work wihtout goverment assistance for you to start it. If you then get
assistance, that's just lucky, but unfair advantage. Especially the "start
money" seems completely wasted.

The Finnish goverment budget has deficit, but their revenue is huge and credit
rating still very good. The smart way IMO would be a government loan guarantee
to _every_ business. Let's say SBA style, 75% of total summ guaranteed up to
100 000 thousand. That's peanuts to big companies, but would help immensely
any startup. No government evaluation needed, as the lender would retain some
risk. Gov would actually spend little money while doing a lot. Win-win, but
seems like no politician allows ceding power from government institutions to
markets.

>The government’s investment arm Tekes is behind almost every Finnish startup.

Local Finnish private investors are less than thrilled by startups completely
hand picked by government office? Color me suprized.

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gpvos
TIL decacorn is a word now.

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SixSigma
Finland isn't just Helsinki

~~~
dhfromkorea
True that. There are Turku, Tampere, Jyväskylä, and so on.

~~~
SixSigma
Lapland starts at Kehä I

