AVANTO - Conversations on Finland's Global Ambition

Geoffroy Van Humbeeck

Finland has world-class engineers, trusted institutions, and a growing startup ecosystem. And yet it still struggles to build companies that shape the world on its own terms. AVANTO asks why — and what it would take to change that. Through long-form conversations with founders, investors, policymakers and international observers, it builds a structured, honest account of what Finland's ecosystem actually looks like from the inside.

Episodes

  1. 5h ago

    Linda Liukas - On Legibility, Permission and the Audacity to Dream Big

    In this tenth episode of AVANTO, Linda Liukas speaks from Paris, where she has lived for the past five years. For more than a decade, she has been making computing legible to children.She is the author and illustrator of the Hello Ruby books, published in close to forty languages, and the co-founder of Rails Girls. She now builds playgrounds: public infrastructure that makes technology physical and is designed to last for twenty years. Across books, workshops and public spaces, her work returns to the same question: what makes people feel that a subject belongs to them, and that they are allowed to touch it, question it and build with it? The conversation asks whether the same applies to a country. Finland can be excellent and still hard to read from the outside, because much of what defines it is carried in context that outsiders do not automatically share. It moves from why adults answer a curious child with “it’s magic” or “it’s too complicated”, to the permission Linda found at Stanford to aim higher, and to the deliberate choices Finland made in the 1960s to raise its own ceiling. She names Finnish assets that rarely appear in any pitch, including an openness of access that a large country cannot afford: “In Finland you're always one email away from someone.” She also examines what Finland may have lost or undervalued along the way: an education that does not always teach people to articulate and trust their own judgement, an engineering culture built on dependability that may have lost some of its audacity, and the difficulty of making a complex country legible without flattening it into one thing. It closes on a proposition Finland has never put on the table, and on what Linda hopes for the children who first discovered Hello Ruby more than a decade ago. A long-form conversation about Finland's global ambition. Why a country with world-class technology, trusted institutions and exceptional talent still struggles to build companies that shape the world on its own terms.

    Linda Liukas - On Legibility, Permission and the Audacity to Dream Big

  2. 23h ago

    Kirsti Laasio - On Storytelling, Brand and the Courage to Scale

    In this ninth episode of AVANTO, Kirsti Laasio speaks from the operator's seat. She helped build two product categories out of Finland: the wristop computer at Suunto in 2000, and the wearable activity tracker at Polar a few years later. Those experiences taught her that being early does not automatically translate into lasting global category leadership. Kirsti is CEO of Omnigym Group and Chair of the Board of Boardman Grow, and has spent two decades scaling technology companies internationally, advising others and sitting on their boards. She takes the season's diagnosis inside the company, where ambition stops being a posture and becomes a budget line, a hiring decision and a board agenda. The conversation moves from how a category is actually created, to why Finnish modesty builds trust at home and invisibility abroad, to what a company's split between R&D, sales and marketing reveals about its real intentions. It covers brand as the most valuable asset a company holds rather than a marketing activity, why cutting marketing and customer experience first is the biggest mistake a company can make, what boards fail to challenge when a company says it wants to go global, and why the nearest market is not the easiest one. It closes on the test Kirsti applies to any founder claiming global ambition, and on the single question she would put to a Finnish CEO before investing. A long-form conversation about Finland's global ambition. Why a country with world-class technology, trusted institutions and exceptional talent still struggles to build companies that shape the world on its own terms.

    Kirsti Laasio - On Storytelling, Brand and the Courage to Scale

  3. Jun 29

    Philip Aminoff - On Openness, Exports and the Will to Prosper

    Episode 8 of AVANTO with Philip Aminoff, Chairman of Helvar Merca and Helectron. Finland is often described as cautious, inward-looking and modest in its relationship with growth. Yet in the decades before independence, it was a strikingly international economy, shaped by foreign-born professionals, entrepreneurs, investors and a strong export orientation. In this conversation, Philip Aminoff takes a long historical view of Finland’s development. We discuss the international Helsinki of a hundred and forty years ago, the role of foreign-born professionals in building parts of Finland’s industrial backbone, the culture of reinvesting profits for the long term, why Finnish listed companies often protect stable earnings instead of investing in growth, how export promotion moved from the private sector to the state, the commercial skill that was lost along the way, the disconnect between leaders and customers, over-regulation, and what it would take for Finland to want to prosper again. A conversation about openness, exports, long-term ownership and the will to recover a capacity Finland once had.

    Philip Aminoff - On Openness, Exports and the Will to Prosper

  4. Jun 21

    Atte Jääskeläinen - On Renewal, Courage and Turning Knowledge into Action

    Episode 7 of AVANTO with Atte Jääskeläinen, President of Sitra. Finland has talent, technology, strong institutions and promising companies. Yet the country has struggled to create economic growth for a long time. In this conversation, Atte Jääskeläinen explains why renewal is difficult even in a capable society. We discuss institutional change, the role of crisis, Finland’s public finances, incentives, demography, capital, distributed decision-making, and what it takes to act before change becomes unavoidable. A conversation about diagnosis, courage and the mechanisms that turn understanding into action.

    Atte Jääskeläinen - On Renewal, Courage and Turning Knowledge into Action

  5. May 7

    Ari Tulla - On Scale, Focus and Finland’s AI Bet

    In this sixth episode of AVANTO, Ari Tulla speaks from San Francisco. Ari is Co-founder and CEO of Elo Health, formerly at Nokia in Silicon Valley, founder of BetterDoctor, early investor in Oura, Verda, Donut Lab, and Verge, and LP in Lifeline Ventures and ByFounders. He brings a perspective no previous guest in the series could: he left Finland, built in Silicon Valley, and invested back into the Nordic ecosystem. The conversation starts inside Nokia. For Ari, Nokia was not beaten by lack of intelligence. It had extraordinary engineers, deep talent, and global reach. What it lacked was focus. “If you don’t focus, you will never win.” From there, the episode moves to Silicon Valley, BetterDoctor, Oura, Finnish growth capital, scale-up leadership, visibility, Donut Lab, Linear, Singapore, the Finnish Long Drink, and Ari’s boldest idea: making every Finnish citizen native with AI. His diagnosis is direct, sometimes uncomfortable, but ultimately optimistic. Finland’s problem is not that nothing works. Much of the ecosystem now works far better than Finns often admit. Capital exists at the beginning. International capital can be reached later. The country has talent, examples, institutions, and technical credibility. The problem is what comes next. Finland must build more people capable of scaling companies globally. It must become more visible. It must focus. And it must make bold national choices before other countries do. Episode 6 — Ari Tulla On Scale, Focus and Finland’s AI Bet

    Ari Tulla - On Scale, Focus and Finland’s AI Bet

  6. May 2

    Jarmo Sareva - On Reputation, Boldness and Finland Seen from New York

    Jarmo Sareva is the Consul General of Finland in New York and former Ambassador for Innovation. From New York — the city where global capital decides what to look at and what to overlook — he describes how Finland is read from the outside, and what that view reveals about the country itself. Reputation is real, but limited. Finnish modesty has a cost in the global market. Reliability is a virtue at home and a liability abroad. Finland is now behind Estonia in per capita exports. The reasons, in Jarmo's words, are multifaceted: cultural, structural, and "between the ears of so many people." Episode 5 of AVANTO. Following Pauli Heikkilä, Mikko Suonenlahti, Johannes Korpela and Petri Lahesmaa.

    Jarmo Sareva - On Reputation, Boldness and Finland Seen from New York

  7. Apr 17

    Petri Lahesmaa - On Brussels, Power and Finland's Place in Europe

    Most people assume Brussels is a closed system. That the big countries set the rules, and everyone else follows. Petri Lahesmaa has spent more than 25 years inside those institutions. And his view is different. Small countries can move faster. Alliances matter more than size. And the door is open — if you walk through it with data, with solutions, and with something to show. The problem is that Finland doesn't always walk through it. In this conversation, we talk about how power actually works in Brussels, what Finland gets right, what it gets wrong, and what it would take for Finland to stop hiding what it has.

    Petri Lahesmaa - On Brussels, Power and Finland's Place in Europe

  8. Apr 3

    Johannes Korpela - The Builder's View

    Johannes Korpela sees it every day. The talent is there. The founders are there. The ambition is there. But if you work as hard as a top athlete to build a company, it isn't always recognized. He is CEO of Wave Ventures and co-founder of Founders House Helsinki. He spends his days with founders trying to build global companies — and sees how things actuallyplay out in practice. Not in theory. On the ground. And what he sees is not a lack of ambition — but an environment that doesn't always fully support it.

    Johannes Korpela - The Builder's View

  9. Mar 17

    Mikko Suonenlahti - On Capital, Governance and the Scaling Problem

    In Episode 1, Pauli Heikkilä argued that Finland’s difficulty building globally dominant companies may be largely cultural. In this second conversation, venture capitalist Mikko Suonenlahti offers a different perspective. After five decades inside companies, venture funds and boardrooms, his diagnosis is more structural. Finland produces excellent engineers. Early-stage capital exists. But the system starts to break when companies try to scale. “When companies need a €10–20–50 million round, that capital is not available in Finland.” We discuss what happens at that moment, how capital shapes strategy, how companies evolve when international investors enter, and why some ecosystems scale more aggressively than others. The conversation moves from venture capital to boardroom dynamics, from M-Files to Estonia’s ecosystem, and even back to the 17th century, to understand how capital accumulation shaped Nordic economies.

    Mikko Suonenlahti - On Capital, Governance and the Scaling Problem

  10. Mar 2

    Pauli Heikkilä - On Sales, Risk and Finland’s Global Competitiveness

    In this first episode of AVANTO, a podcast on Finland’s global competitiveness, Geoffroy Van Humbeeck speaks with Pauli Heikkilä, former CEO of Finnvera — Finland’s national promotional bank and export credit agency. Drawing on more than two decades at the heart of Finland’s innovation and financing ecosystem, Heikkilä reflects on the structural and cultural factors that shape how Finnish companies grow — and why strong technical excellence has not always translated into global influence. The conversation explores: Why engineering strength alone is not enough for Finnish companies to scaleThe persistent undervaluation of sales and marketing in FinlandHow historical attitudes toward risk still influence Finnish business cultureWhy Finland needs more €100 million and €1 billion companiesAnd what must change if Finland wants to shape global markets, not just participate in themAVANTO is a long-form conversation series examining ambition, capital and global competitiveness in Finland.

    Pauli Heikkilä - On Sales, Risk and Finland’s Global Competitiveness
  • 10 Episodes

About

Finland has world-class engineers, trusted institutions, and a growing startup ecosystem. And yet it still struggles to build companies that shape the world on its own terms. AVANTO asks why — and what it would take to change that. Through long-form conversations with founders, investors, policymakers and international observers, it builds a structured, honest account of what Finland's ecosystem actually looks like from the inside.

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