Today I want to talk about something that caught my eye whilst browsing through the website of the largest newspaper in Finland.
First of all, I will say a few words as a reply to an article in Helsingin Sanomat. For those who don’t speak/read Finnish, the article talks about the current trend among young people in Finland to experiment with start-up companies. Across Finland students are coming together and spending their summers as the writer sais “sitting in meeting rooms and creating business plans rather than going to rock festivals and partying”. Instead of looking up to guitar smashing rock stars, young people in Finland have found new idols in the likes of Peter Vesterbacka and other entrepreneurs. Where is the fun and what has happened to our youth, asks the writer..
Well what has happened to our youth is actually a response to the current situation is Finnish society. Young people have realized the crumbling state of the Finnish economy and corporate ecosystem. Instead of taking to the streets, causing havoc and sitting on our butts, students have decided to respond by having fun, playing and experimenting with friends, ideas and new ventures. Sure, a lot of these experiments will never end up as new startups and a lot of the stuff will be forgotten in time, but for those few ideas that turn out to be successful and interesting, the people involved will look back at the early days and say “I was there, I was part of creating that and I’m proud of it!” In stead of complaining, we are actually creating something. Oh and, yes, it is pretty cool to hop on a plane and go pitch your ideas to people in Silicon Valley. Something, you will surely look back to after the years have passed.
And the fun fact of the day is that all this experimenting, fun and playing with ideas and startups doesn’t exclude any of the “more traditional” fun and play of forming rock bands, partying through the night and causing havoc in the eyes of others. We just came up with a way to have fun with friends all the time doing the exact stuff we like. I’m not so sure if this is worth the criticism. Another fun fact is that a lot of the startups that are being created are actually directly related to music, arts and pop culture.
Related to this I want to share a TED talk (click here) I found rather brilliant. Check it out and tell me what you think.
start-up explorer 