Last November I wrote about how to find and build fantastic teams in terms of which behaviors and mindsets to cultivate in yourself and to watch for in others. Now, I was invited to give a talk on how to do this more concretely in the Finnish startup ecosystem and so I decided to write this as supporting material for preparation.

I have had the entrepreneurial impulse for as long as I can remember, but I didn’t really know where to find other similar people. Also, unlike nowadays with initiatives like STUHI in Helsinki, there weren’t quite as many obvious destinations as visibly present for young and hungry minds such as myself in Tampere. I got lucky, however, and such people found me.

In middle school we were scheming to build marketing and web agencies with a friend at the Youth Culture Center Monitoimitalo 13 and in high school I got pulled in to participate in the American Entrepreneurial Challenge with mentorship from Tommi Uitti through Tribe Tampere, and the Finnish national science competition TuKoKe (which has since been replaced by Kipinä), as well as the European Union Competition for Young Scientists EUCYS. Apart from Tribe, these would not be typically considered a part of the core startup ecosystem, but they were gateways to meet other young, high agency people, some of whom I have later got to greet as founders at their companies’ launch parties.

Often the most typical and natural way to get into the startup ecosystem is during your studies through your university’s entrepreneurship society. Almost every university has its own: Aaltoes, TRES, OuluES, Helsinki Think Company, LUTES, Boost Turku, JES, HankenES, Patteri ES, PoriES, AES, VES, SeiES, XES and LahtiES, the list including a few city-specific ones as well, many but not all of which are also student-run. All of them are easily approachable and all can point you to the right direction if you just ask. The one goldmine resource mapping out and supporting most of the ecosystem is the Startup Foundation Ecosystem Map, which is something I wish I would have known about much earlier. They even have a section for high schoolers, which essentially just points at the ecosystem map and gives you permission to go for it, which I can corroborate.

The entrepreneurship societies are some of the most welcoming communities out there and you definitely do not need to be a student to participate. Your age, ethnicity, nationality, education, affiliation or gender is not of interest. The only thing that matters is that you are interested in building something. I have met people building anything from an ice cream brand to autonomous drones and asteroid mining, so even the sky isn’t a limit. Join those Telegram channels and go to every event you find interesting and talk to everybody there. In Helsinki, by far the best place to start is the Explore Aaltoes event in autumn and the Explore Startup Sauna event in the spring, which are open to everybody, including people from other universities or even entirely outside of the university circles.

While it is genuinely true that your demographics do not really matter, women are still significantly underrepresented in the ecosystem at only 11% of founders, which I imagine can feel intimidating. wednesday. helps women curious about the ecosystem get inspired and involved on every level all the way up to founders, for which they also have a collection of resources. They also have a youth program and a mentorship program under development. While many communities try to build brands of exclusivity for marketing purposes, even if in reality they really aren’t such, wednesday. is one of the most openly welcoming.

I personally am a little shocked that I wasn’t formally all that involved in any of the entrepreneurship societies during my Bachelor’s Degree studies, honestly probably because I didn’t feel quite ready for it yet in terms of hard skills and concrete experience which to share. Instead, my path went through building startups first and only then getting exposed to the support structures when they became relevant for growth, funding and fun - it’s not quite unlike student life in general, only the parties get bigger. Since then I have learned that this approach was entirely backwards.

You don’t need ideas, connections or even many skills to get started on your journey into the startup ecosystem. Student-run initiatives are not about inexperienced impostors trying to instruct others how to build their startups, but rather about resourceful people taking ownership over providing their peers opportunities, focus and resources to try out their ideas and curating connections that have the relevant experience, understanding and knowhow to really teach them a thing or two.

If you have no idea about what you want to do, but are interested in the ecosystem, volunteer at your local entrepreneurship society, one of their projects or one of the giants. Many of the largest events in the country from Slush to hackathons like Junction and Dash are largely volunteer-run and so directly contributing is a great way to enable the existence of the ecosystem and meet the people actively running it. Slush is among the largest startup events on the planet and as such, a central pillar of the Finnish startup ecosystem with an annual need of up to 2000 volunteers. Many of its CEOs have risen through the ranks starting as volunteers and have naturally ended up quite well connected, which most people in the team share in, given that it is their job to talk to many of the most sought-after founders. Depending on how deep you want to get, there are paid roles as well.

When you’re ready to start building, the startup world opens up to its fullest. For exploring your interests and ideas, you can attend hackathons ranging from stupid hacks and personal project building sprints like Spark to Dash, Junction main event or the exclusive Sunstead hack. Dash is very beginner friendly with often no coding needed and multidisciplinary team matchmaking that you cannot affect, while Junction events are where you will want to go try out your team under pressure.

You should also attend all events relevant to the domains you are interested in. As you build your network you will start getting private invitations, but luma is a popular event platform, particularly in the startup circles and the tech scene, with a lot of public events, especially in Helsinki, which is the heart of the Finnish startup ecosystem. In tech, there are frequently Cursor and Claude Code workshops where people share insights and demo what they have built. This is a great place to find and spar with fellow developers and builders, whom you can then convince to become technical co-founders or hire as founding engineers. When deciding which events to go to for potential team building, think about what are the people like that would find such an event interesting and attractive.

When building your vision, the environment has a key role in determining how much it helps you focus, what frequency of serendipitous productive collisions with other builders it offers and what resources and networks are at your disposal. There are various accelerators, residencies and startup hubs that aim to provide the best possible environment for different types of ideas and people with various different approaches. Ignite is a 10-week summer accelerator for turning early ideas into companies, Antler gets companies funded in 8 weeks up to 500k pre-seed rounds, Silta takes Finnish founders to scale their companies to San Francisco, Startup Sauna, Founder’s House, Kiuas, Maria 01 and Platform6 are startup hubs with office spaces and various events, while FR8 is in a league of its own, building the highly selective institution for the post-AGI world where absolute focus meets unparalleled ambition and produces genuine black magic in deep-tech. I have heard a comment about a US investor saying that they don’t typically invest in Finland, but if one of those FR8 guys is looking for funding, he is definitely interested. If you get an invitation to their demo day, you reschedule your wedding, baby shower or grandma’s funeral, whatever it might be, around it.

If you are looking to work for a startup as an operator, the same networking principles apply. Go to hackathons, demo days, luma events of interest and other physical events and talk to everybody. Additionally, join the Clarvo talent pool and apply to Harbor and Null Fellows and consult their startup map as well as the other startup map. Utilize maker spaces and FabLabs, build a portfolio and showcase it on LinkedIn - the main social media of choice for most entities in the Finnish startup ecosystem -, start physically demanding social hobbies and reach out to people you are interested in. In Finland, almost everybody is reachable and people like to be helpful, especially if you buy them the coffee at wherever it is the most convenient for them. This applies to founders, investors and others with something relevant to say or ask as well.

Remember also that in the startup world creativity and boldness are rewarded. This applies for founders, operators and investors alike. Grabbing each other’s attention must sometimes be done in unconventional ways and thinking outside of the box along with a bias to action is appreciated.

This is merely the tip of the iceberg and highly reflective of my own experiences looking out from the Aalto campus and Clarvo, as well as the experiences of those around me inside many of the entities mentioned above, but I hope to have provided some surface area for a foothold onto the iceberg from where to start digging deeper. Bottom line is that there are a lot of cool opportunities out there for each stage and you should not wait to explore them!