The story of Maria 01 starts from the year 2016. It mirrors the evolution of the entire Helsinki metropolitan area into a startup hub of international significance. Two city blocks have been turned into a pulsating campus with nearly 150 startups, 20 venture capital funds and a large number of other pieces of the ecosystem puzzle. They all work together in earnest towards a common goal, which is to create big and meaningful things. And this is only the beginning, Ville Simola assures.
“If we take a look at the big picture of the Finnish startup phenomenon, it’s obvious that we have travelled light-years in just 10 years. When our national pride Nokia started to falter years ago, its shining success story dimming, we luckily realized that we needed something to replace that story.”
The fundamental idea in Helsinki was to support startups. With enough budding entrepreneurs, with everything possible done to help them grow, some of them would become new success stories and feed even more success.
At the same time, the area universities fostered a new vanguard excited about entrepreneurship. This gave rise to Slush, which is today one of the world’s foremost startup events and has evolved into a global movement.
Fierce but fair competition for resources
“It goes without saying that all countries – and especially their capitals – compete for talent, capital and everything needed for a successful startup culture,” Simola asserts.
“Helsinki has been practically forced to focus operations and to create something truly remarkable in order to be noticed and thereby to attract capital and expertise. One answer from the City of Helsinki has been to offer former hospital facilities in central Helsinki for use by Maria 01.”
Helsinki competes with all European metropolises. For example, London, Berlin and Barcelona are strong startup hubs.
“However, the Nordic capitals Stockholm and Copenhagen are naturally our dearest enemies,” Simola remarks jokingly and adds that they are benchmarks for Helsinki.
“When I speak with leaders of international firms, one thing always comes up: they are amazed with the ‘Finnish entrepreneurship miracle’ – the foundation of our current startup ecosystem.”
The startup culture of Finland and Helsinki is younger than that in many other places. According to Simola, the Finnish startup culture is distinguished from the rest by a number of important elements, such as student involvement, a genuine sense of community, and how venture capitalists cooperate closely both with each other and with startups.
“The roots of the Finnish startup culture lie in high technological know-how. This owes to the success of Nokia and many other similar companies. We’re known as a technology and engineering country, and this is certainly not a mere cliché. It’s just as well.”
Although entrepreneurship can sometimes be hard, life doesn’t need to be so
“The quality of life can be quite different here from what you find in other metropolises of the world. The basic infrastructure of our society is largely good, ranging from transport to housing. You don’t need to hire a nanny, because daycare is available to all children. The children of the international workforce can reap the rewards of our school system, which is first-rate by international standards. Our healthcare is excellent, and you don’t need expensive insurances to benefit from it.”
But work is associated with much more than the tasks involved. Many workers combine work with family. There are leisure activities, and there are many other matters of life to take care of.
“We enjoy a good work-life balance, which is a sum of many parts. Our workplace culture is based on the conviction that if the day’s tasks can’t be completed within regular working hours, we’re doing something wrong, and the problem must be fixed in a smart manner.”
Simola considers it a plus that hierarchies are low in Finnish organizations, and leadership is seen as a task like any other. Further, Finnish organizations invest a great deal in good leadership.
“There’s truly time for other things than work, also because everything is close by in this compact city, and everything works. Another plus here is the incredible Finnish nature around us.
“If it’s necessary to make a longer business trip, one should keep in mind that flight connections from Helsinki to Asia – and many other places – are excellent. Direct and fast flights to China, Japan and South Korea ease business with these countries tremendously.”
Maria 01 gives encouragement and points the way
“The existence of Maria 01 has a highly encouraging effect on new entrepreneurs. One of our goals is to enable enterprises to grow faster here than elsewhere, thanks to the benefit that all necessary expertise and investors can be found in one place. Maria 01 is like a magnet that attracts expertise, money and attention.”
The uncompromised values of Maria 01 are openness, a community culture, and respect for differences and diversity.
“This should be a place where people want to come and where everyone feels good. We witness every day the value of having people from diverse backgrounds working together. Maria 01’s mission is to offer people opportunities for working together and to support the channeling of new energy for the best of the economy, people and the environment.”
Maria 01 grows almost as fast as the startups it hosts. The Maria 01 of 2026 will have nearly three times the space of today’s Maria 01. The campus will then accommodate 650 enterprises and more than 4,000 workers.
“In the future, the campus will have more enterprises of different sizes and in different phases of development. It will remain important to have a physical place, especially for the ecosystem. A physical place enables things at a completely different level compared with a virtual operation.
“It’s important that we and the City of Helsinki possess a consistent vision of what Maria 01 should be in the future. Both parties have equally high ambitions and goals for the operation. However, Maria 01 is fully autonomous in terms of what happens inside the campus walls.”
Would anything else be possible? After all, we’re dealing with a place slated to create unicorns!
If it’s necessary to make a longer business trip, one should keep in mind that flight connections from Helsinki to Asia – and many other places – are excellent. Direct and fast flights to China, Japan and South Korea ease business with these countries tremendously.
Maria 01 in a nutshell
• Maria 01 is the leading startup campus in the Nordics.
• Connects and brings together the most relevant players in the startup ecosystem.
• Hosts startups, venture capital firms, investor networks, corporates and other ecosystem players under the same roof.
• Taking a huge leap with the forthcoming expansion, which will almost triple the campus premises.
• In numbers (2019):
o 1 190 members
o 38 nationalities
o 141 startups
o 20 venture funds
o 64 partners & ecosystem supporters
o 1 202 startup events & workshops
o 14 534 booked meetings
o 172 M€ money raised by member companies
• 2026: over 650 companies and 4 000 members