News & blog

In starting new, you need only three things: good business idea, competence to execute and funding. In Finland, the last condition is particularly tricky one. Investors, particularly angel capitalist, are far and few between.

Tero Ojanperä, former Nokia executive, has done a great thing by having created vision+ fund, who invest in new digital business ready-to market-initiatives by bringing money and also support for business strategy implementation. The return of the investment comes in revenue -share basis, without diluting the existing equity value.

This kind of activity helps to build  new critical grassroot level companies that our economy is so much in need of. And of course we know that finnish game industry is in a hot phase now, and major thrust of funding in digital business seem to go in that direction.

It is my strong belief that in the next decades – when the 6th wave of development builds our world anew – the really new new thing will be the way we share and use more smartly our resources. This is because scarcity in terms of non-renewable materials and also with such key commodities such as foodstuffs or fuels are becoming more expensive. On the other hand, as pollution, deforestration and deepening water problems are becoming all the more evident, there is a growing pressure to really do something about it.

Now in Finland, as far as I know there is no fund focussing on sustainability business. This is shame, since the greatest potential for long-term success, I believe, would come from nurturing the ideas of how to make the world a better place. And I am sure there are quite a few ideas around this theme, who just might never have had the chance to really fly

Here in California there are some good examples of these sort of initiatives:

http://www.givesomethingback.com/CustomLandingPage.aspx?cpi=Founders

http://www.shareable.net/users/neal-gorenflo

The idea is that they are based on idea of sharing, which is one of the most effective means to drive society into sustainable direction.

In Finland, we would need a same sort of fund as Vision+, focussing on sustainability business/economy. I would be ready to build it up, once I found a investor who believes in this kind of business and is willing to place 10 million (50 million would be ideal) to establish the fund.