Helsinki — a booming startup environment but not without its issues
By: Chinara Hollen
Tags: Business, Entrepreneurship, Stories, Startup

Photo credit: Pexels.com

When thinking about the best ecosystem for startups, the first thing that often comes to mind is Silicon Valley and the vast opportunities it holds for aspiring entrepreneurs. Let’s be frank, rarely is Helsinki the first thing people think of when they consider the most prominent startup scenes. But they definitely should.

Helsinki startup environment is not only doing well, in fact, is booming. Helsinki hosts the largest startup cluster in Nordics, called Maria 01, which is currently expanding to become one of Europe’s biggest growth company campuses. Moreover, Helsinki is ranked the second most appealing ecosystem for startups in the world, surpassing San Francisco. The ecosystems that are performing especially well in Greater Helsinki and among the top most important in the world are global artificial intelligence, health & life sciences and gaming ecosystems.

Photo credit: Maria 01

Furthermore, Helsinki is ranked number one in Local Connectedness by The Global Startup Ecosystem Report 2018. The metric signifies the degree the startup community is integrated. It is about establishing close relationships with other founders, including seeking and receiving help from others; the relationships that are strongly linked with higher startup performance.

There are about four thousand startups being opened in Finland every year, however, only about 2% of them are scalable (which equals to around 100) and have big potential (Research Institute of the Finnish Economy-ETLA). This number is rather low. In fact, Finland is in need of a higher number of growth companies and skilled entrepreneurs, especially in the IT field.

Several actions are taken to address the problem of Finland’s dependency ratio (the ratio of non-employed to employed people) and to attract more work migration. For example, Finland introduced a startup resident permit for entrepreneurs coming outside of EU countries. In addition, Helsinki Business Hub in cooperation with the public and private sector, launched The Talent Attraction Project to attract professionals in the IT field.

While those actions are aimed at attracting talent from outside of the country, we should not forget that Finland already has a high number of qualified foreigners inside the country who are struggling to find a job. High unemployment among foreigners in Finland signalizes that this workforce group might be ignored by employers. The mentality and the attitude towards foreign workforce should be changed as they represent unreleased potential.

The issue lies not only in the high unemployment among the foreigners but also in the low percentage of immigrants who decide to open their businesses in Finland. Foreigners might feel overwhelmed and lost in Finnish regulations, taxation, laws, and practicalities when it comes to establishing a new enterprise.

Startup Genome 2017

To improve the current situation and increase the number of founders among foreigners and immigrants, more actions should be taken aimed at promoting entrepreneurship among foreigners and helping them navigate in this unknown environment.

The Shortcut believes that diversity is an engine for growth and everybody should be given equal opportunities to learn and develop. Through their workshops, programmes, and sessions, everybody can familiarise themselves with the startup scene, gain essential knowledge about running a business and develop useful skills which can bring them a step closer to becoming entrepreneurs.

Moreover, The Shortcut created the ever-growing Talent Pool to showcase and nurture the talent, where we have professionals from different fields ready to be hired!

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