With 15,000 attendees from around the world, Slush is an annual mega event rarely seen in Finland, a country with an economy in steep decline. While Slush’s youthful enthusiasm was contagious, it’s clear that the startup craze was confined to the walls of Messukeskus, a large event venue situated in the outskirts of central Helsinki.

Finland, widely regarded as the sick man of Europe, is divided into two camps. One camp has its spiritual home in Silicon Valley — embracing its forward-looking culture — and in other startup hubs around the world, while the other camp — stuck in the pre-digital era — is utterly unprepared to comprehend or facilitate the rise of new industries.

Luckily, there are locals who believe that attitudes are changing.

“The sentiment towards Slush and startups as a whole have clearly shifted in the last two years in Finland. Only two years ago I had a chat with the national public media company YLE, whose business journalist had a hard time creating a story as ‘startups don’t even show as a blimp’ on the GDP or export statistics. Last year however, the gaming company Supercell’s taxable profit was larger than any of the publicly listed companies in Finland,” said Juhani Polkko the founder of San Francisco, a marketing agency for startups.

As a Helsinki-native, I know the city and the country well, but wanted to improve my understanding of the Finnish startup scene. To prepare for Slush, I decided to deepen my knowledge by speaking to local VC’s, startup founders and fellow journalists.

The locals I spoke with were optimistic about Finns having the skills needed to succeed, but the country’s labor market is often unable to meet the demands of the local startups for highly skilled labor.

“The gaming companies have started to recruit people abroad to fill the needed positions but this process needs is pretty time consuming. Also the other graphical, like UI/UX companies are recruiting the same people that the gaming companies are after. There are over 200 hundred active gaming studios in Finland currently, difficult to find the world-class head designers/coders to all of them,” said Tuomas Kosonen, a partner at Inventure, a Helsinki based early-stage venture capital company.

Israel recently announced a startup visa in order to make hiring from abroad easier. The so-called innovation visa is valid for two years and granted to foreign professionals employed by a select group of Israeli companies.

Some believe that Finland should follow suit.

“Overall, to make the movement of people and companies around the world would make life easier. There is just too much politics still involved in the labour market. There would definitely a need inside EU for such entrepreneur visa. Smaller countries, like Finland, have a tough time to sell the idea why startups should move to Finland and start their business here — less bureaucracy would definitely help. Even if the visa was temporary that would make a difference,” Kosonen said.

Life after Nokia

I wrote some weeks ago that Nokia’s decline, while initially a national tragedy, might also function as a necessary wake up call for the lethargic Nordic country. Finns, however, are still unsure what the post-Nokia Finland will look like.

“I would say the fall was neither a blessing nor a deathblow, it forced both individuals and companies look for opportunities beyond Nokia. However, as a country we would need similar success stories to keep up with the global competition and wealth. There have been few companies transforming themselves to the right format in the post-Nokia era, while some weren’t able to do it. The best thing to come out of it has been the change in the mindset. Instead of dreaming of landing a comfortable career at Nokia, graduates are starting their own businesses, hoping that some of them will reach the same heights as Nokia once did,” Kosonen concluded.

Talking to Finnish entrepreneurs

During the two-day event I was introduced to a number of entrepreneurs from Finland and abroad.

A Helsinki-based Leadfeeder is a tool that helps companies understand the behavior of website visitors and convert visitors into sales leads. Leadfeeder connects to Google Analytics and shows the user a list of companies that visited your website. Leadfeeder was founded by Pekka Koskinen, the CEO of the company. Koskinen, who’s also behind Solinor and Fraktio, believes that Finland still has a long way to go.

“The startup tech sector in Finland is still very small. The only big successes have been Supercell and Rovio. Still they are only a tiny fraction of Finland GDP. In many cases the promising Finnish tech startups get acquired by foreign buyer and the companies don’t grow to be major employers or export revenue sources for Finland,” Koskinen said.

Other fascinating Finnish startups I came across were Enevo, a company looking to transform waste-management, 10monkeys, a gamification startup looking to make learning math fun and Epic Foods, a Helsinki based gourmet delivery startup.

Although Finland, a slow-moving nation, is often hesitant to change, many local companies are aspiring to change industries that have been stagnating for decades.

Startups such as Tabletkoulu and Keeduu aim to change education, while Wellmo operates in occupational health and Oppex looks to make the public sector procurement more transparent and efficient.

In light of the many disruption-oriented startups, Finns are starting to believe that startups might eventually help lift Finland out of economic malaise.

“Startups affect the economy and everyday life in many ways. Not only jobs and foreign direct investments, the startup mentality — calculated risks, appraisal and acceptance for failure, and highly positive attitude towards growth, internationalization, liberal job markets and constant learning have already affected some major companies and also preparing new legislation,” Polkko said.

Only time will tell if the unbridled energy and enthusiasm of the Slush crowd will rub off on the rest of the country.