Interview with Pekka Viljakainen, adviser to the President of the Skolkovo Foundation, who talks on the SLUSH, a major European conference for startups, to take place in November in Helsinki, as well as on the role of Finland in development of international relations between Russia and Europe in the sphere of innovations.
Pekka, a Skolkovo community delegation is to take part in SLUSH-2013, a major startup conference to take place in the Finnish capital in November. What is the prime importance of this event for the Skolkovo Innovation Center and its residents, to your mind?
The purpose in general, and this is why I am pushing heavily startups to participate in international events like this, is to learn, it’s the key. They have to see the benchmarking level. And not only startups, by the way, but also for our Skolkovo staff members. We should go there to see, what is the level, which foreign investors, foreign partners, are searching from the companies. So, when we see the best companies of Europe in Slush, then everybody can see how we should develop ourselves, and how we can learn fast. And, of course, there are also a lot of big investors there. I think that quite many Russian startups have some kind of a failure in thinking that you do research first, for one, two, three years and then start thinking of commercialization, hire sales managers, try to find partner and so on. I think it’s an old fashion of thinking, you should from the very beginning try to “smell the air”, start getting to know, what investors, customers, consumers want. I call it “start coming out from your R&D cave”. Secondly, the same investors, who will be in November in Helsinki, will come to Moscow in June for our key event the Startup Village.
How this year’s SLUSH is different from the SLUSH-2012?
First of all, it’s much bigger this time, there will be more than five thousand people there, and much less “hang-arounds”. Startups only and nobody else. Also, last year it was very focused on IT and entertainment. Now there will be a cleantech session there for companies from all over Europe, as wells as events and pitches of pharmaceuticals companies.
And how significant will be the number of Russian companies there?
We will have close to 250 Russians overall at the venue, meaning that the participation of Russians doubles this time. Skolkovo will bring roughly 130-140 companies. And there will also be companies, brought by the Russian Venture Company, and quite many startups from the regions of Russia. As far as I know, there will be at least ten companies from Novosibirsk and St. Petersburg.
Pekka, Finland and Russia have signed lately a number of bilateral agreements to cooperate in the innovation sphere, including the Skolkovo-Tekes agreement. Do these steps mean that Finland as a country turns into some kind of gateway for Russia into the technological Europe?
Russia and Finland have had trade relations for a long time, not mentioning that we’ve been the same nation. And Finland was called recently by the Forbes magazine as a European “Singapore for startups”. In fact, last week the Supercell company (second largest gaming company in Finland) got $1.5 bln. from a Japanese investor for a 51% percent stake in the company. The capital of Finland is just 200 kilometers away from the Russian border, and there you have the biggest European event. Also Finland has very good policy for visas, working permits, etc. So, if a startup wants to open an office in the EU, the easiest way to do it is through Finland. All the practical issues work extremely well between Russia and Finland. Some cynical reader might say here that I just promote my homeland. No, I promote a pragmatic approach. And when I was in Vladivostok, for example, I advised there go to the South Korea, or to China, first, at least on initial stage.