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Nokia’s Losses Fires Up Finland's Start-Up Culture

61 points by pbahra 15y ago

nextparadigms 15y ago
I'm glad Finland doesn't think they should "save jobs" and bailout their big companies. Paradigm shifts and temporarily killing some jobs are the only way to progress. I'm sure Finland will come out better than it was.
- Maakuth 15y ago
  Nokia is way too big compared to the Finnish state to be bailed out by the government anyway. Nevertheless, Nokia gets Finland's biggest subsidies anyway for R&D and such.
- getsat 15y ago
  Finland has successfully brought their economy back from the brink. They definitely did not do it by bailing out failing businesses. I highly recommend reading "The Information Society and the Welfare State" which covers Finland's economic recovery and business/innovation culture.
  - dirtyaura 15y ago
    Actually, we did bail out banks in 90s. However, drawing parallels to current situation is not necessarily relevant as Finland's economic crisis happened in quite unique conditions due to collapse of USSR. There was no Western European (in political sense) country which was as depended in exports to USSR. Situation in Japan in 90s seems much more relevant to situation that US and Europe are currently facing. A few hours ago I HN-posted a link to an interesting video where Mr. Koo explains how Balance Sheet Recession (Japan in 90s, US now) is different than traditional recession (he is in favor of fiscal stimulus) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2846561 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2846561
    - getsat 15y ago
      Ah, interesting. I wasn't aware of a bank bailout. Thanks for the info/link.
latch 15y ago
I went through hundreds of resumes from Nortel employees (and a few interviews) while Nortel was bleeding employees. It was pretty brutal, their skill set was irrelevant and the entitlement high. I felt pretty bad for them. The experience leads me to believe that the sooner someone leaves a sinking ship, the better he or she is. Both because they are able to recognize the problem and because they have options available to them. Can't it be argued that Nokia's losses are due, at least in part, to bad engineering?
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  How do you figure? Have you ever owned a Nokia phone? The software maybe isn't a glittering example of perfection, but my E72 is the best phone hardware I've ever owned or seen.
  - untog 15y ago
    Well, he could have included Software Engineering in that. That said, I don't think the engineered part of Nokia's software was bad. In fact, from what I understand Symbian was/is fanastic. But the UI was absolutely awful.
dirtyaura 15y ago
I think raise of startup culture in Finland is quite independent of Nokia's current fall, but Nokia's earlier success has been an ingredient for the raise of the current movement. The godfathers of this movement started their companies in late 90s in either mobile or gaming sectors and are now acting as angels and mentors or serial entrepreneurs. It's clear that Nokia's success did help mobile startups a lot. Success of gaming companies was independent of Nokia and was due to Finnish demo scene, but also for mobile gaming companies, Nokia's presence was an obvious benefit. However, the raise of the new startup movement in Finland started earlier than Nokia's problems became obvious. I think it's part of the same global startup movement that e.g. Y-combinator has been creating. As it's mostly cultural phenomenon, role models and blogs like Arctic Startup has played very important role. I was part of Jaiku that was acquired by Google, and although it was just a talent acquisition, many people have said afterwards that it really inspired them to become more interested in startups.

61 points by pbahra 15y ago

I'm glad Finland doesn't think they should "save jobs" and bailout their big companies. Paradigm shifts and temporarily killing some jobs are the only way to progress. I'm sure Finland will come out better than it was.

Maakuth 15y ago
Nokia is way too big compared to the Finnish state to be bailed out by the government anyway. Nevertheless, Nokia gets Finland's biggest subsidies anyway for R&D and such.
getsat 15y ago
Finland has successfully brought their economy back from the brink. They definitely did not do it by bailing out failing businesses. I highly recommend reading "The Information Society and the Welfare State" which covers Finland's economic recovery and business/innovation culture.
- dirtyaura 15y ago
  Actually, we did bail out banks in 90s. However, drawing parallels to current situation is not necessarily relevant as Finland's economic crisis happened in quite unique conditions due to collapse of USSR. There was no Western European (in political sense) country which was as depended in exports to USSR. Situation in Japan in 90s seems much more relevant to situation that US and Europe are currently facing. A few hours ago I HN-posted a link to an interesting video where Mr. Koo explains how Balance Sheet Recession (Japan in 90s, US now) is different than traditional recession (he is in favor of fiscal stimulus) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2846561 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2846561
  - getsat 15y ago
    Ah, interesting. I wasn't aware of a bank bailout. Thanks for the info/link.

latch 15y ago

I went through hundreds of resumes from Nortel employees (and a few interviews) while Nortel was bleeding employees. It was pretty brutal, their skill set was irrelevant and the entitlement high. I felt pretty bad for them. The experience leads me to believe that the sooner someone leaves a sinking ship, the better he or she is. Both because they are able to recognize the problem and because they have options available to them. Can't it be argued that Nokia's losses are due, at least in part, to bad engineering?

sliverstorm 15y ago
How do you figure? Have you ever owned a Nokia phone? The software maybe isn't a glittering example of perfection, but my E72 is the best phone hardware I've ever owned or seen.
- untog 15y ago
  Well, he could have included Software Engineering in that. That said, I don't think the engineered part of Nokia's software was bad. In fact, from what I understand Symbian was/is fanastic. But the UI was absolutely awful.

dirtyaura 15y ago

I think raise of startup culture in Finland is quite independent of Nokia's current fall, but Nokia's earlier success has been an ingredient for the raise of the current movement. The godfathers of this movement started their companies in late 90s in either mobile or gaming sectors and are now acting as angels and mentors or serial entrepreneurs. It's clear that Nokia's success did help mobile startups a lot. Success of gaming companies was independent of Nokia and was due to Finnish demo scene, but also for mobile gaming companies, Nokia's presence was an obvious benefit. However, the raise of the new startup movement in Finland started earlier than Nokia's problems became obvious. I think it's part of the same global startup movement that e.g. Y-combinator has been creating. As it's mostly cultural phenomenon, role models and blogs like Arctic Startup has played very important role. I was part of Jaiku that was acquired by Google, and although it was just a talent acquisition, many people have said afterwards that it really inspired them to become more interested in startups.