The Startup Ecosystem of Finland

In addition, the Finnish business environment is attractive to foreign investment. Finland has a vibrant ecosystem of accelerators, angel investors, and VCs backed by strong government support.
Thanks to all of the above, Finland has a proven record of success stories in multiple industries, despite its small market size.

Historically, Finland has shown its unique ability to create cutting edge global solutions with years of dominance for Nokia in the early Mobile phone Industry. Even since Nokia’s decline, new Finnish innovations have kept emerging. The country has consolidated its stake in gaming and has an increasing number of tech innovations aimed at developing this sector. The gaming industry gave birth to some notable unicorns, such as Supercell and Rovio (the creators of the Angry Birds game) and attracted massive talent to Helsinki. In addition, Finland offers growth opportunities for companies, especially in the fields of bioeconomy, clean and smart technologies, health and wellbeing, ICT and digitalization, and travel and tourism.

We continue to see Finish startups make successful exits. For instance, in 2022, the food delivery startup Wolt was acquired by its US competitor DoorDash for €7 billion. In addition to having talented and successful entrepreneurs, Finland knows the importance of promoting its business environment with global events. Slush, one of the world’s biggest global startup events, attracts tens of thousands of participants, giving the nation a boost in ranking.

As the majority of Finland’s startups are located in the capital, the city is becoming a major startup center in Northern Europe, and organizations such as Helsinki Partners work on attracting and connecting the ecosystem stakeholders.