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Try to pinpoint the location of Europe’s biggest tech event and its biggest hackathon and the likelihood is that Helsinki, the Finnish capital, wouldn’t be top of your list. But the city is full of surprises, and the country is booming. 2017 was a record-breaking year for Finnish startups, with companies earning €349 million in funding. Foreign cash is flowing into the country, too: the amount of international funding has increased tenfold since 2010. “There is really something happening in the north,” says Pauliina Martikainen, co-founder of Wave Ventures, a pre-seed funding agency.
Sulapac
Eco-friendly startups are becoming increasingly prevalent, and Sulapac is one of the frontrunners. Using renewable and sustainable raw materials, the company, which won the Green Alley Award for startups in the circular economy, is creating fully biodegradable packaging material that can be used to package watches or create tubs for makeup. The Finnish co-founders were inspired by the grand woodland that surrounds them – though the wood for Sulapac’s material comes from nearby Nordic forests. A number of different cosmetic and jewellery companies have started to use Sulapac’s greener, cleaner packaging materials. sulapac.com
Blok
Founded last year, this startup helps to smooth the rigmarole of selling your home by using AI to take away many of the complications – including pesky real estate brokers. Co-founders Rudi Skogman and Olli Gunst have raised €1.6 million from investors to develop the company. Blok is still in its earliest stages of development, but the first signs are promising: in its first year of existence, the company’s AI helped sell 70 apartments. With the company taking a 0.75 per cent of all sales – and the average property selling in just over a week – it’s a smart business with firm foundations. blok.ai
Blueprint Genetics
Healthtech continues to be a growing sector, and Blueprint Genetics, founded in 2012, is taking full advantage of that increasing interest. The company provides clinicians and their patients with comprehensive, high-quality tools and resources that help diagnose genetic conditions from its bases in Helsinki, San Francisco and Dubai. With more than 220 different diagnostic tests available, searching through our genome to sniff out everything from hereditary cancers to the potential for heart problems using nothing more than a DNA sample, it’s a one-stop diagnosis shop. Last summer it raised €14m in a funding round that’s allowed it to tweak its tech further. blueprintgenetics.com
Canatu
Named after carbon nanotube, one of the materials first studied at Aalto University’s nanomaterials lab (to which the firm owes its inspiration), Canatu is one of Finland’s biggest physical tech success stories. The company, founded in 2004, has more than 100 patents, and supplies conductive films and touch sensors to touch module vendors and manufacturers working in the consumer electronics and automotive industries. Its main development is an all-new material it called Carbon NanoBud, which can be formed into almost any shape without breaking, thanks to a high stretch rate and small bending radius. canatu.com
WHERE TO VISIT: Teurastamo was once a working abattoir, but since 2012 has been an arty haven for culture and fantastic food. More than a dozen businesses have set up shop here, including restaurants and roasteries.
WHERE TO PLAY: Kuudes Linja is the place to catch live music in Helsinki. And if you can’t get in, hop next door to Kaiku or Siltanen – both equally excellent.
Carbo Culture
Turning methane-spewing biomass into high-carbon charcoal might not seem like the cleanest process in the world, but Helsinki startup Carbo Culture – co-founded by a Californian, a Belgian and a Finn – is a green company. Its patented technology transfers waste into charcoal in a carbon neutral way, allowing a cleaner, more efficient way to make charcoal and charcoal products. Miraculously, the process also permanently sequesters carbon – one of the biggest pollutants in the process – so that it doesn’t harm the planet. The tech managed to lure the likes of Rovio chairman Mika Ihamuotila to stump up €550,000 of seed funding earlier this year. carboculture.com
HappyOrNot
One of Finland’s biggest success stories, HappyOrNot is the company behind the real-time mood sensor stands that you see at the end of airport security checks, on shop floors and by office doorways. The company started out with a single terminal in a small supermarket and now has countless terminals logging hundreds of millions of responses at airports – including Heathrow – and businesses across the world. They’ve also secured €13.2 million in investment. With that success, co-founders Heikki Väänänen and Ville Levaniemi will be hitting the big green smiley face button. happy-or-not.com
ICEYE
Finland’s first-ever commercial satellite – and the world’s first synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite under 100 kilograms – was launched into orbit from India earlier this year. The payload that went up into space was the ICEYE-X1, which provides a bird’s-eye view of the planet, even in darkness and through cloud cover, using the SAR technology. The ICEYE-X1 launch was just the first of many: using $13 million of investment raised last August, ICEYE plan to launch 18 microsatellites into orbit, which will beam back data the company can then sell to maritime operators, insurance firms, and agriculture businesses. iceye.com
Oura
The quantified-self movement continues apace, with Helsinki startup Oura taking it in an altogether more fashionable direction. Its healthtech wearables aren’t rubbery plastic bands that slip around your wrist but sleek, stripped-back rings. More than 15,000 Oura rings were pre-ordered in the first two months they were available to reserve, with more than half of orders coming from the health-conscious United States. The ring tracks sleep patterns, making suggestions for users to change their lifestyles to restore their sleep to a more healthy routine. Big things are expected from the company, which was named one of Finland’s most promising startups earlier this year. ouraring.com
Varjo
Virtual reality tech has never fully lived up to its promise. Whether it’s the dizzy spells some people feel after donning a headset or the slight unreality as a result of fuzzy graphics, something feels amiss. Varjo aims to counteract both problems by increasing the resolution on VR displays, including the Rift and Vive by 17 times – taking it up to the same resolution we see through our eyes. In the two short years the company has been in existence, it’s managed to bring VR forwards leaps and bounds – and raised nearly €13 million in the process. varjo.com
Wolt
Uber Eats and Deliveroo may have a dominant hand in many of the world’s markets, but food delivery service Wolt is making major inroads across the Nordics and Baltics. It claims more than 1,400 restaurants are signed up to the service in over 20 cities, while backers including Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen and Skype founder Niklas Zennström have helped the company raise €13.3 million to date, with plans for future funding rounds on the horizon. Convenience is king for modern-day consumers, and Wolt – founded in 2014 – recognised that earlier than most. wolt.com
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
