Nordicum - Real Estate Annual Finland 2013 | Page 11

D

uring his visit, Blank found a whole lot
of smart, passionate entrepreneurs in
Helsinki who are serious about building a start-up hub in the pocket-size metropolis.
“The biggest strength of Finland is
the tremendous enthusiasm of the entrepreneurs,” he says.
“I met a lot of very smart, talented,
creative people – in fact, some of the finest
start-up entrepreneurs in the world are to be
found in Finland.”

The Customer Development
Manifesto
by Steve Blank
What is a start-up? A start-up is a temporary organisation designed to search
for a repeatable and scalable business model. Here’s how you do it:

Despite the Best of Intentions
One of the challenges they face, Blank says,
comes from the Finnish government, which
is trying to help, but gets in the way.
“We have a situation here, where government bureaucrats – who couldn’t run a
lemonade stand in the real world – make investments on companies, trying to pick winners with absolutely no competence.”
Blank points out that it is hard enough
to pick which existing companies with
known business models you’re supposed to
aid. Yet Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency
for Technology and Innovation, does that –
and is trying to act like a government-run
Venture Capital firm, directing considerable
funds to the chosen ones.
“Tekes is the elephant in the room no
one is talking about,” he says.

Product of the Environment
According to Blank, Tekes has ended up
competing with – and pretty much stifling
– the nascent Finnish VC industry, indiscriminately handing out checks to entrepreneurs as an entitlement. (Blank acknowledges that Tekes is very much a product of its
environment: the government plays a similar role in all aspects of Finnish life.)
“Trying to create a successful startup ecosystem with this type of policy is of
no use. This government experiment where
you try to build from top down is failing,”
Blank says.
Blank is convinced that Tekes lacks a
long-term plan of what the Finnish government’s role should be in funding start-ups.
Blank’s suggestion is simple enough: the
government might want to consider putting
themselves out of the public funding business by using public capital to kick-start private venture capital firms, incubators and
accelerators. This transition should be carried out in five to ten years, Blank believes.

Wanted: A Fighting Chance
Blank sees great potential