How to turn the spirit of youth towards entrepreneurship

A new breed of student activism in Finland is making its presence felt on the country’s tech scene. Twenty-somethings are developing a knack for entrepreneurship in advance of their years.

Jaakko Hynynen, a student in software development, runs Startup Sauna, an accelerator for young tech companies just outside of Helsinki. It has sprung from Aalto University’s Entrepreneurship Society, a student-run body that has become a spark plug for Finnish start-ups, and is now rival to the best-known student entrepreneur club in Europe at Cambridge University.

Where does the youthful exuberance coming from? “There’s a history of volunteering here at a young age that’s really making a difference,” said Hynynen.

The same Aalto collective has its fingerprints on Helsinki’s student-powered annual Slush conference, which in the last few years has blossomed from a Finland-focused gathering of 400 people into an international mega-meeting for tech start-ups.

Students go there and have their eyes opened by every kind of business, said Hynynen. The emergence of giant Finnish gaming superstars, such as Rovio and Supercell, has also tapped into a young nerve.

The Finnish government can take some credit for this student revolution, having founded Aalto in 2008 in a deliberate effort to spur more innovation.  

The university has entrepreneurship modules baked into the curriculum, but others paths are open. “I didn’t take any formal entrepreneurial classes, although I’ve heard they’re awesome,” said Hynynen.

Out of the sauna, into the fire

The traditional antidote for wintry days in Finland is to take refuge in the sauna, where people meet, talk, and share ideas until summer comes.

There is no need to change a winning formula, and the Sauna started out fairly modestly as a venue for small keynote speeches and pitching sessions. But it proved so popular that a full time accelerator was created. Hynynen himself got involved after helping to design the website

Today, Sauna occupies a space in a warehouse near Aalto and is run by students like Hynynen. And yes: it has real saunas.

“We also have a meeting room that’s designed like a sauna,” said Hynynen. “It’s a wood-panelled room with benches – all that’s missing is the stove.”

The services of the Sauna are free for start-ups. Any running costs are covered about 50-50 by public money, which includes university support, and private donations. “Serial entrepreneurs work with us pro-bono,” Hynynen said.

The Sauna draws on the expertise of about 60 veteran investors and entrepreneurs who act as coaches. Young business owners apply for several weeks of training, before the subsequent leap into the even hotter business world. Getting accepted to the accelerator can be tough: the acceptance rate was 4.2 per cent last year, less than Stanford University. 

“The network of serial entrepreneurs becomes very valuable to the start-up, even after the coaching has ended,” Hynynen noted. For start-ups, the chance to meet counterparts on the programme is helpful too, and there are also trips to Silicon Valley to meet investors and scope out the US market.

Some 145 companies have graduated from Sauna since 2010. One alumnus that made its mark is Budapest-based enbrite.ly, which tackles hidden fraud in online advertising. It took home €500,000 after winning the 2014 Slush 100 pitching competition. “It was rags to riches in a couple of months,” Hynynen said.  

New ideas needed

Despite enjoying his position as a young CEO, Hynynen does not want to overstay his welcome. “Most likely, I’ll move on to something new,” he said. “We don’t want operations staff hanging around too long: you need new people with new ideas or it stagnates and goes stale.”

Reviving top line management with fresh faces is pretty common at the Sauna. Juho Kokkola, Hynynen’s predecessor and fellow Aalto alumnus, managed the accelerator for a little over a year before upping sticks.