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The word ”Start Up” is probably just a buzzword trending at the moment.
There's entrepreneurs, startups, growth companies.
I look at entrepreneurship and companies in terms of being micro-companies that are essential for our society.
93 percent of Finnish companies being micro-companies.
For me, growth companies on the other hand, means that regardless of the field of business, they aim to take
their business outside of the Finnish market, pursuing a global market.
The current media-topics in Finland regarding businesses are mostly about redundancy and domestic industries being moved abroad -
- not a lot of positive news.
From time to time, we forget our great success stories such as Rovio and Supercell,
not to mention the dozens of small Finnish companies that attract global investments.
They are growing strongly here in Finland employing a lot of Finns, as well as foreign workers and attracting new talent to Finland.
Our current situation for new businesses is good compared to other countries.
Our innovation networks and systems for upcoming companies are solid.
There's always those who say that there should be changes but compared to other countries things work overall.
There are more opportunities now than ever: Startup Sauna and Aalto University being the momentum.
Thousands of young people today view entrepreneurship as a main choice after college.
Back in the day, when I was a student at the university, people looked at independent entrepreneurship being an odd choice.
Today, it is even more encouraging to be an entrepreneur.
If there was something I would change after the companies have matured it would be the corporate taxation.
The model in Estonia where profit tax is 0 % encourages companies to invest all their retained profits to gain growth.
They are taxed only after the money is transferred out of the company.
What I would change in the Finnish startup scene would be the society's stance.
I would start with raising the youth, and women, to be more ambitious: encouraging them to take responsibility and try their wings.
That's what it's all about. Having a society with pro-entrepreneur attitude -
- where parents regard it as a valid option -
- where teachers understand what coding is and -
- angel investors understand how to make the initial small investments.
We should be thinking more in the way that the time of big corporations is over.
In the past, our telecom industry was growing strong and -
we had other industries boosting the economy: forest and shipping.
Now we need to think about the driving force for a small population of 5 million people and what does the future behold.
Maybe the driving force for our population lies in industries like: telecom, health care, education or innovation.
There's a lot of important R&D work done in other industries as well.
Technology itself, doesn’t make us omnipotent.
We are ordinary people, we wake up, drink coffee and eat – we do not need technology for that.