The following is StartupDigest‘s third edition of “Your Guide to the Startup World” with Linda Lukas, who organized the Aalto Goes to Silicon Valley trip bringing out 50+ Finland startups and entrepreneurs on a tour of Silicon Valley.

Why should a startup thinking about moving to a new place choose Helsinki?

Finland is the epicenter of early open source: companies like MySQL and Linux originate from these northern latitudes. The startup culture here is as transparent and honest as the Finns themselves. For a founder, it’s easy to look for help and resources: Finnish taxpayers gladly support the public funding system and we have a stellar education system with an emphasis on R&D, providing talent-base from cleantech to hightech.

The long holidays, miserable weather and good flight connections to Russia and Asia might also be among the reasons why startups arise from the slush.

What are some examples of successful companies that were started here?

What are some of the organizations that are big supporters of the Helsinki startup community?

Aalto Venture Garage is the hub for entrepreneurs and startups throughout the Baltic Rim.Located on Aalto University’s campus near Helsinki, this 700 sq meter industry hall is an open workspace where entrepreneurs get support from experiences coaches. Bootcamp, run four times ayear, gathers up the best early stage startup founders to learn from the best serial entrepreneursand investors from the region.

ArcticStartup is the journalistic hub for all things entrepreneurial in the Nordic region. It’s thebiggest technology website reviewing and reporting on tech startups and growth entrepreneurs inthe Nordic and Baltic countries.

Vigo is a new type of acceleration programme designed for high-growth startups. The backbone ofthe programme is formed by the Vigo Accelerators, carefully selected independent companies runby internationally proven entrepreneurs and executives. The Accelerators are not consultants –they are co-entrepreneurs who invest in the companies they work with to guarantee common goalsand passionate development effort.

What are the best startup events in Helsinki?

Slush is the number one event of the year. Organised for the third time Slush gathers entrepreneurs around Europe to experience the cold weather, cool keynotes and crazy can-do spirit.

Other events can be found in ArcticStartup – Finland sports an impressive array of meetups rangingfrom Garage DemoDay to Ruby on Rails meetups, MobileDevCamp to Summer of Startups programme. The student entrepreneurship societies are especially active in organising events and nowadays there’s something happening weekly.

If a group of founders moved to Helsinki tomorrow, who are the first 5 people they should meet?

If you could wave a magic wand and change one specific part about your startup community, what would it be?

The most talented students still see a career in a big corporation such as Nokia or public sectorfar more tempting than a one in startup. This is what the Helsinki startup ecosystem is fighting to change.