[vukk]

I'm a student at Aalto. There is promise, there are some communities with really, really smart people. But this article feels like it hypes the government.

Personally I do not agree with the government throwing a bunch of money at things, it creates a loop of nonsense, people milking the cow while the fun lasts. This can be seen and heard on the ground level here. Throwing money at companies is something Tekes has done for ages with established companies in Finland, like Nokia. The startups are just the hot thing now so money is flowing there.

This leads to the fact that the startup scene is hyped in general.

Please note that this comment is quite specific to Finland.

[smcl]

I've heard bad things on HN (possibly from yourself) about government startup funding in Finland - something along the lines of there are a small number of entrepreneurs favoured by the government who receive investments and produce some mediocre product doomed to fail and repeat semi-regularly.

Is this anything close to the truth or did I misunderstand/mis-remember this?

[enra]

As far as I know there is no "favoritism" for goverment grants . Like any fundraising, there are those are better / more experienced with it and those who aren't.

But the real problem is that the government officials are not investors. Steve Blank said this well on his visit:

Ironically one of the things that’s holding back the Finnish cluster is Tekes, the government organization for financing research, development and innovation in Finland. It’s hard enough to pick which existing companies with known business models to aid. Yet Tekes does that and is trying to act like a government-run Venture Capital firm. At Tekes, government employees (and their hired consultants) – with no equity, no risk or reward, no startup or venture capital experience – try to pick startup winners and losers.

http://steveblank.com/2011/10/07/the-helsinki-spring/

[slash-dot]

I'm from Finland, from what I have heard and seen about the government funding companies is that they usually fund companies with a clear plan and with founders with a lot of experience in their field (that is have worked their whole life in the field/phds).