What Finnish Startups Can Learn and Avoid From Silicon Valley’s Founders’ Mindset?
@Aalto Demo Day 2025 by @Aalto Startup Center: SILTA-panel: What Finnish Startups Can Learn and Avoid From Silicon Valley’s Founders’ Mindset.
Panelists: Jyri Engeström, Anton Holmberg, Hanna Castrén-Niemi & Son Chu Hoang
Thank you to all of the panel participants! We are happy to bring the transcript of the panel discussion to those of you who did not attend in person, or to those who want to revisit the panel be it for the jokes, or the honest, no-bullshit insights.
Enjoy!
How does the perception of failure differ between Silicon Valley and Finland?
Jyri:
I sometimes hear people say that it's okay to fail in Silicon Valley and somehow that over in Finland it's not okay. I just don't think that's true at all. I think that typically the difference between Silicon Valley Founders and Finnish Founders is that the Valley founders will iterate through a lot more ideas a lot more quickly. And they will only choose to work on an idea when they realize it has traction. Finnish founders skip this often, and they just decide this is a good idea and start working on it. They then later find out there is no demand for it, and it fails.
So explore the the Silicon Valley style of running ads, and testing demand for an idea before you build a product. People even automate this. They have systems that'll just generate ideas and landing pages and run ads to find out what people want through traffic. As an investor, when I hear a pitch, the Valley Founders will almost always already have traction for the idea. There are already some thousands of people who have signed up or sometimes even prepaid for this product or service that doesn't exist yet. And then they ask for money to build it. The Finnish Founders typically have an idea and have worked on a product and even sometimes raised money from Business Finland, or whatever. They show a product, but they don't have any traction or demand for it. And so it's easier for an investor to believe a founder who says: I have 10,000 people signed up on my landing page, I know what the conversions are, which channels they're coming from, the demand is going through the roof, and now give me some money so I can build a product. So it's easier for the investor.
I think to not have a product and only try to find this myth about a minimum viable product that I really hate. The real Interesting thing is a minimum viable audience, a group of people that actually need something. Then you can begin to think about, what product might I sell to those people. And usually, you have to come up with lots of ideas before you find something that they actually want to buy. So focus on the minimal viable audience and focus on finding traction for your idea before you think about building a product?
Anton:
What Jyri said resonates well with what we did with Robes. We had a lot of stuff we were doing and pivoting until we decided that, okay, let's decide on this audience, with this need. Then we started building, and we launched quite successfully.
But coming back to our approach to failure. With the stories that I heard talking to founders in Silicon Valley, I felt there was really no stigma around it. It was more considered as learning, and they just kind of took those learnings into the next one. They had a very kind of positive attitude towards it in general, so I think that, having that sort of a culture sets kind of the foundation to be able to iterate effectively.
Hanna:
Stanford University Hospital, the highest doctors there, said no, No traction for you. Go home! Then, I went to UCSF, which is another big hospital in SF, California. Again, we don't want your idea. It's not for us. After a couple of rounds, meeting different people, and exposing myself to these rural hospitals, I understood that actually our audience is not in the well-reserved hospitals, but rural hospitals lacking equipment. Those are the ones who are looking for affordable medical devices. I persisted in continuing to ask people for more feedback which helped me to understand there are market for us. Actually, it's like, over 70 of the hospitals are paid for by the government, so our target is the government, hospitals who need cost savings badly.
Son:
I would say that failing in San Francisco is way more bizarre and way more painful than in Finland. Yeah a bit controversial. I have a couple of friends whose stories to share from San Francisco. It sounds insane like they would make millions in a year, and they lost it all the next year. It's very scary because when you see the good stuff of San Francisco on TV, you remember all this other stuff that was left out. The nature of San Francisco is so big. Everybody trying to go big, raise a lot of money, they hire a lot of great people. They go fast, they break things, but they go really, really fast, so that's a lot of risk and sometimes failure. And it's possible to lose it all. I don't think that they are happy to fail. They don't want to fail because it's very painful, financially, and something you know and also on the ego as well.
How are the founders from SF able to grow so fast and dominate globally?
Son:
First of all, like, from the beginning, the team is just very small. They are very, very smart. Their background is just amazing. I met kids of like 18, 20 years old, and they built like a little piece of ads with, like, hundreds of games in it. Like, what? Who are these people? I think they move very very fast. In their mind, they always think of a solution of how can everybody in this world use it. They also know there's a lot of ways how to get attention, and then do anything they can to just go, really, really big. They have the connections to go Global as well. Like, this is something that you can definitely discover, probably only in San Francisco.
Jyri:
I met an Israeli investor who said, um. You know, uh? Finland has only one problem, which is that. We have a friendly, neighboring country, which is Sweden. Obviously, if you're Israel. You might, you might not have any. And I think what he meant was that, for Israeli founders going global, or whatever, like expanding outside of Israel, automatically means going to the United States. Versus here you typically go to Stockholm. And so I think he's probably right. Because if you want to build. The globally dominant company, which, frankly, I wish more people here did. Like, honestly, did. You probably want to go right to the U.S., because you're ultimately always going to have to win in the U.S. market anyway. And then after that, it's easy to conquer Europe. As you can see all of the winning companies in Finland have to do that of Oura. All these companies they have to win in the US to actually get big, so might as well just cut to the chase and start right away.
Anton:
Before we decided to start expansion towards the U.S. market, we actually considered Sweden. We also considered Germany. We decided that definitely we needed to go to the U.S. because if you're able to get traction there, you have so many eyes on on you from all over the world. So, I agree with what Jyri says, that we definitely have like a better foundation for scaling there. Especially for our business because we rely a lot on, uh, influencers, as part of like growth strategy. So, if we're able to secure people like Haley Bieber and sign them up to ropes, then we automatically get all the attention of the world, especially on the fashion scene.
What about the work mentality or drive to succeed differences between Sf and Finland?
Anton:
A good story from the SILTA house. We had Brian Chow founder of Webflow visiting. We started with small talk, how are you doing, etc. And he was, like, good good. I was out there playing tennis today. Then we said, like, yeah, we also played tennis. He asked: “How much do you play?” Oh, we went a couple of times per week. “So, how do you have so much time?” It has so like the mindset there was that, you know, with David's Webflow, they worked hard for many years. Not having time to play tennis or something like that. This was the mindset, and I think that going, through SILTA and being in Silicon Valley breathing in the atmosphere, left behind this sense of search for comfort.
Son:
Their life balance is to benefit work, so I've been to a couple of VC-backed founder's places and their house is just built for work. It's messy. It's, uh. Big screen monitor, and they have two desks there. They have a podcast in between, and maybe there's a bed for the dog and everything is just messy. And of course, like, there's a room where he films content, that part of that corner of the room is looking Dandy and looking nice. But they do work out so that they have the mental capacity to work longer and harder. They devote everything to work. They have a laser focus on what they are doing. They do one thing, and then they go out for a jog, and then they focus on the next one, and they get things done.
Jyri:
Yeah, I think I think it's a good idea to go to SILTA to experience that. They have a nicer house now too than when they (Anton&Hanna) were there. I just went there the day before yesterday, and it's very nice. I remember when, um. I first went to the Google campus, and then I was like what the fuck is this, like they're playing beach volleyball? And then there's like a swimming pool. It's deceptive. Everything seems very friendly and relaxed. Nobody's wearing suits. Like, I always have to do this to finish Founders, like the Iceye founders would show up, 19 years old and dressed in suits. I'd first have to take them to this shop back then called American Apparel, and buy blue jeans and a black T-shirt to blend in. Dress very casually, but there underlies the sharpness.
And maybe that's the difference. The reason you're doing it is so you can perform at your best because there is this idea that you are competing against everyone else. In order to not fail, which can be painful, you need to take care of yourself, and you need to think clearly. You need to have this clarity of thinking and that requires that you take care of your body as well. It's in the service of winning. It's hard to appreciate that unless you immerse yourself enough for a while. It's very easy to be the top of the class here in school. Then suddenly you realize you end up at Stanford and you're like fuck, everyone here is conditioned from childhood to outperform me, and they are crushing me. You oftentimes have to work really hard to catch up a little bit, but it's totally possible.
Undergoing that usually takes like a few years. You have to do like one startup, let it fail. Usually, the finished startup will fail, but then the founders will maybe stay in the valley for a bit and then start a new startup there after working somewhere else. I'll say one more thing about failure. Like, Caterina says, my partner at YES VC says, Fins care too much. It's just one company. The valley mindset is that you're out to build multiple companies over your career, maybe three or four. Big companies. All of the top Founders do this. Do you think about how many companies Elon Musk now has, like seven? So, the idea is that you're not going to just found one Google. You're going to found at least like Amazon, and Google. And Tesla. Like, if you're super ambitious.
Don't fall too in love with your idea. Strong beliefs don’t help that when the data shows differently, then be willing to quickly pivot and drop it when you find something else that's more exciting work on that. Because it's all about winning. If someone else is building a better company, you’ll quickly see founders merge their company with that better company. You're basically just looking for whoever gets the furthest the fastest, and then it's okay to join forces with them. Work for them if you know that you're actually going to lose to them. I made this mistake of not merging with Twitter back then. We had a dinner conversation about it. I couldn't agree on who was going to be the CEO and looking back, maybe I should have taken that offer. I probably would have made a a few billion. You know, at the time, it seemed more important to. You know, kind of, be the founder rather than, sell a company or merge with someone else. So, also, be aware that sometimes success means that you actually merge with someone else who's more successful than you are.
How does pitching and talking to investors differ?
Hanna:
We are still in the R2B process mode, but we had a couple of discussions, but we were too early. So, my advice, don't go there before you have a story and something to tell to VCs and angels.’
Son:
I'll speak from my experience. I’ve raised from a VC here in Finland and couple of angels in the U.S. I don’t notice so much of a difference. I would say that in SF it is a bit more personal and they, at least for the early stage, they invest more in me rather than what's the company. A few investors if I were to ask two weeks after they invested can you tell what I'm doing, they might not recall. But they, heard my execution, they know my story and why I'm doing this. One investor just sent me a voicemail saying "Okay, I believe in you. You really know what you're doing. I know that you can do it. That's why I invested in you." And I have a couple of other investors who are kind of in the same mindset. But yes, in the beginning, we talked a lot about a strategy and about how we grow, vision, and everything like that. And it’s done very quick as well. Like, within a few days and weeks, not gonna drag a drop out to two months. That’s from my experience.
Anton:
Maybe one thing we did notice was that if you approach investors, It's easier for us to have a conversation if we have some traction specifically in the U.S. market. Showcasing how we have done great work here and built a driver community in Finland is also useful, but Finland is still a small market in comparison to the U.S. Now we are in Beverly Hills, and we are present in West Hollywood instead of saying that we are in Töölö, it’s more relatable. They can refer more to like, let's say we have Beyonce's team on board. It says more to them. We decided to go that route. Instead of approaching investors first, we first just wanted to get the traction, and then after that have the conversations.
What are the pros and cons of building specifically in Finland?
Jyri:
I think if you're building a hardware, a deep Tech thing, Finland's a really good place. I've made more money from my investments in Finnish hardware companies than my U.S. hardware companies. It's because you have access to, all these brands, and there's no competition here. And these things take a long time. Oura took 10 years to really take off. Oura’s competitor Motive started by two guys from Apple. They raised a lot more money, and it was very difficult to get anyone to invest in Oura. All my friends that were investors would invest in Motive because obviously, Motive was going to win since it was started by these Apple people. What tends to happen is that the companies raise a lot of capital, and then they also burn that very fast. All of their top engineers, they have to pay them a lot of money and then those engineers get offers from Tesla, Apple,, Amazon, Meta and Google, every day. It's difficult to retain the talent. If you're building something that is small originally, and it takes a really long time to develop, you need to retain your top engineers for many years. It's much easier to do that here. That's a huge benefit for a company developing that kind of product that just naturally takes many, many years to build. On the other hand, if you're building some kind of very fast-moving software thing or a consumer thing. It could be that you really need to build that out of Silicon Valley. It depends a little bit on what kind of company you're building.
Coming back to what Son said, of course, there are no real or very few public grants and shit like that. As you said, it's like people will generally early-stage invest in you as a person if you are smart and you convinced that you can perform. Angel investors with any experience know that whatever company you are pitching them now is unlikely to be the one that you actually build. Because it's so early that if you're smart, you're probably gonna pivot into something better when you discover that. It's actually kind of a negative sign if you stick to your original plan. I think that's also a big difference. Most investors in Europe still expect you and demand you to focus on. Only one company and only one thing, but it's very typical for U.s investors to invest multiple times in the same person, even if their company fails because you are taking a bet on that person and it’s okay if two or three times they miss because this person is special. I've made that mistake before where I'm like, you know fuck that, I'm not gonna keep investing in this guy if he just burned my money, and then damn what was I thinking when they built something amazing the next time.
Yeah, and the last thing, Entrepreneurs also invest. I think that's a big difference between Finland and the US. If you are serious about being a founder, then you are automatically an investor and your first job is to think about your company and everyone else's company through the lens of an investor. Wanting to get on the cap table of all the great companies. That's just the default. Those two, founder and investor, are not separate roles, and you become a better founder by being an investor. When you're on the cap table, you have access to see how other great founders develop their companies, and you learn from them. That's just that core part of building a network.
What are the hardest things about scaling your business year over year?
Son:
There are so many challenges. The first year, is already, second year it's probably gonna be harder. Every year is going to be different. The first year is trying to make a like product or something. Try to go to market in the second year. It's even harder when you are a VC-backed company because growing is not enough, you have to grow fast. Also, there is always the risk of some of the big companies building something that takes you out of business. Unfortunately, I don't know if it's gonna happen to me. You never have any idea.
Jyri:
One thing that's also different, is that you're often doing a service to the investors by killing your company, even if it's doing well. Meaning if it's not becoming an outlier. There are a lot of companies in the U.S., they're called walking zombies. Typically, you have a company that is doing fine, but it's not really growing. Maybe it's only growing like 20% a year, something shitty like that. I just got the report from *a Finnish company and it said “growth”, like four percent. I'm like, oh my God, kill me now, right? So there's just a different metric scale. If you take money from VCs, here's a very different perception. If it's not becoming an outlier, then it becomes a burden for the VC. You stick around in their portfolio forever and that's horrible because they can't cash out, and they can't write it off and get a tax credit for their LPs on the failed investment. So, the worst thing you can do is keep going for five-plus years. I mean, you do a service if you just commit suicide.
Anton:
I think to generalize, not saying, like Silicon Valley or Scandinavian companies, but generally, what you're what you are facing is that you are kind of moving through this fog, and you assume there exists a path that will get you the most growth. That will change as you grow. Whatever worked for you one year ago, might not be enough to get you through the next plateau. So it's kind of a continuous exploration.
Biggest learning from SF?
Son:
The biggest thing that I have learned from SF, take more risks. That's a personal learning for me because I've been growing my current business very safely. I grow it profitably and I just use the money that it makes to fund the growth. But after the trip to San Francisco, I realized if you really believe in your business, you will take more risk for it. If this is a million-dollar company, would you run the company like this? Like, why? Why are you not devoting everything that you have to this? Like, how fast do you want this to grow? So, for me, the biggest learning is to take more risks. I'm literally trying to break my business bank accounts. To take that risk and then put more trust and put more belief in the business I'm running here.
Hanna:
Work hard, but to take care of yourself. And, another learning, 10 seconds is the span of people's attention time there. If you don't tell them within 10 seconds your agenda, they are going to say bye and turn around.
Anton:
One thing I’ve definitely learned, when you are meeting someone you never know who it's gonna be. The serendipity of SF. The experience of being in Silicon Valley was incredible because of this. At one point being in any event, you may start talking to some person that has a surf club. And in that surf club, there are people from OpenAI and Perplexity. Next thing you know, you are at a rock concert with a Norwegian investor. Being open to really network. Also, think about what can you give back to the network. You might be right now the one who needs the help, but someday you might be like the one who's investing and you could be the one providing the help. Thinking about this from the very get-go differently is important.
Jyri:
I think that that also gets misinterpreted. Everyone here is, like, oh, it's because Americans are very superficial, and you talk this small talk. But we think us Finns are somehow profound and honest and give it to you straight. I actually think that is a big misunderstanding Finns have. The reason the attention span is short is this clarity of thinking. Silicon Valley has a very high bullshit detector. The bullshit threshold is super low. And so, and you can see this, particularly if you study the startup school videos of y combinator, sort of like the epitome of this, where really, it's in doctrine. It's like a re-education program for young people who have somehow not learned the first principles thinking. That you kind of build an argument out from the first principles and what you're saying is true. If it's about your startup, particularly, it has to ring true that you have some truth here. And when you explain it to someone, it's easy to understand that. That's why your business works. And if that's not there, then people instantly recognize that and move on. But if you are speaking in the correct way, they will stay and stay for two hours. Like, they'll instantly invest in your company. So, this short attention span is for cutting out the bullshit and it forces you to go back and look in the mirror.
Be kind of self-conscious and don’t stop iterating or working on your thinking or ideas until you find something like that, because then, when you have it, you will recognize how people's eyes light up. Talk because they don't care who you are, but what you're saying makes total sense and gets them excited. So don't stop until you get that feedback or confirmation from people because then you get to know whether you have now found an idea that's worth working on.
And a final note, I have a billionaire friend who has a wonderful place outside of San Francisco. Several times. I've had my Finnish founder friends who hear about this or they've seen it on TV and be, like, hey, can I take my girlfriend or boyfriend there? And I've had this happen a few times. Be like, okay, let me ask. And then, at one point, he said, no more fins. And he said they are not grateful. They never say “Thank you”. And so this is another important thing. Oftentimes Fins will arrive in the SILTA house, or they will arrive as delegations of Finns somewhere. It's like typically some business leaders or politicians. They would come to Google because I was working there and they would like to tour Google and take the whole fucking day for themselves. It’s this idea that somehow people are there to just give you their time and weirdly Fins have this idea that, hey, I've shown up in Silicon Valley. Now, can you please make intros, or can you please come to speak at our SILTA house? So, just thinking about it the other way around where it's what can I offer to you. It can actually be pretty transformative to think that way. For some reason which is the default way that you know typically, Americans think, and we think about it as it's like salesy somehow, but it's a big difference in how you approach the world. So when you spend time there. Just remember to. Look at those kinds of relationships that you have with the Surf club or whatever as, hey, how can I help or what can I offer them?
