I think people here who look at Finland and Europe in general and see these social programs to help you get ahead are rather blinded by the reality that they only exist for Europeans. As a US citizen who lived in Europe for 5 years, I can assure you that it's a 100% closed game. If you are not from the EU, you can only work for a European. It makes no difference if you have a great idea, or even your own funding, you won't get the legal permission to found a business in Europe unless you basically got a European to found it for you and then you can be their employee. This is basically why the tech scene in Europe is more smoke than heat, it only allows the local talent to be successful, which we all know leads to subpar results. It is also why you really don't see any actual innovation come out of Europe.
I am also an American who lived in Finland, Austria, and Denmark for, cumulatively, over 5 years. I now own and run a small but successful bootstrapped American SaaS.
What bothered me is that in all the above countries, they try to encourage entrepreneurship through rigged government programs. These programs offer grants and other benefits to 'the right kind of startups' - usually ones that are fashionable because the subject is currently hyped - ai, climate change, etc. Bureaucrats who know nothing about business pick whom to award grants through bullshit means. I imagine there's a lot of 'who you know' going on, too.
That wouldn't be so bad but, because these countries have such high taxes and other restrictions, the only benefit to starting a business there are these programs.
With these countries, it's not important that your startup is actually making money as long as you can brag about how you're changing the world at parties.
Finland's startup culture is especially bad in this department. It was disappointing as Finland is otherwise awesome.
I agree. I think that a problem in the EU is the wide abundance of government subsidies. The intentions are good but in fact it messes up the mechanism of natural selection in startups. Companies that haven't managed to raise money from private investors because they shouldn't really be funded (for various reasons e.g. their business model isn't viable, not a good team, or have exterior obligations and aren't fully committed,...) manage to keep their business running for 2-3 years because they're being held in life support through a government subdidy. In the end, they still have to shut down when the funding runs out, resulting in a net loss for everyone.
Don't get me wrong, subsidies are generally still important, for instance for initiatives that have a positive societal impact but that are hard to monetize. It's crucial that these organizations can still exist (not everything needs to be able to generate shareholder value to have a right to exist) and if subsidies allow them to do their thing, then that's great. But for the private sector, I think that there are other mechanisms that achieve the same goal but that maintain the much-needed Darwinism of startups, e.g. by offering tax breaks for angel investors.
"Companies that haven't managed to raise money from private investors"
This comment is a bit off topic for Finland. It does not have large capital markets looking for a good investment. It's a capital poor country.
Which is a good thing to know, if you come here looking for startup funding. The reason you don't find strong local seed funding is not because government blocks them. The reason is there is no capital for seeding, so to speak.
Well, you do need capital markets, even small ones. For cultural reasons Finland really does not have them. For example, there are no local banks. The whole country has only a few large banks which all require collateral. And here, you don't really go asking for an investment from friends and families.
The main cultural difference here that failure is seemed extremely shamefull. And taking loans from friends and family more or less dubious. And if you failed, and had asked loans from friends and families, would be crushingly shamefull. Hence this creates fear, hence it's not really done.
This is also my experience. In Denmark they have a startup scene of sorts, but they literally only fund startups that are by the "right" people or are trendy. I never saw anything get funded on merit, just if you are Danish and in particular, if you came from the elite socioeconomic strata. I never saw any interest in if the idea was sound, if the kid applying for the money actually knows anything about it, etc. It always seemed like if you were a rich white guy, they had cash to throw your way. And yes, its 100% a case of winners being picked, which is why almost none of these companies actually works. They think that just because the kid is Danish that the market wants his idea. They are usually wrong.
Your experiences match mine exactly. There's a reason why the country doesn't have any anti-corruption agencies. Finland is a great country to be lower middle class in, but if you have a bit of ambition or talent, you'll probably find the environment quite demotivational.
> These programs offer grants and other benefits to 'the right kind of startups' - usually ones that are fashionable because the subject is currently hyped - ai, climate change, etc.
> I imagine there's a lot of 'who you know' going on, too.
Isn't this pretty much everywhere? US/India/China? And it's probably not limited to just government programs but even Angels/VCs/press are prone to hype?
The current product I'm building[1] doesn't excite a lot of people in my immediate vicinity but people thousands of miles away from me are looking forward to the launch. It's a question of positioning and product-market fit at the right place, right time with the right idea.
If the mom-test book and building this saas has taught me anything, you should always be evaluating the intent/point of view of the person you are talking to.
In this case, if it's a bureaucrat or a politician, it is all about optics. They have to justify every decision made, so implicitly their aim is to gain brownie points with the population and an average population does not really evaluate ideas based on pure merit but on what feels good which is, almost always, hype.
No. In the United States, the majority of businesses get funding because the founders have a good business plan. It's sometimes easier if you know the right people, but only if you seek capital from those types of people.
Finland really does not have it. This may feel odd, but really, Finland is capital-poor country.
Unless government invested, nobody would.
In places like England with lots of private capital it makes sense to leave investment to the markets. But like I said... that market of capital just trying to find the best investment, does not exist in Finland in massive scale.
You do realize our way of life was built from investment? Scientific revolution gave us ideas but industrialization gave us the means the realize those ideas to the benefit of all mankind. To not to invest means no creative destruction, and stagnation.
You were responding to a specific complaint, and I was responding to your response.
European governments are throwing money at questionable startups in the hope of replicating SV. Being opposed to that is not the same as not believing in investment as a general principle (?!).
Ah, sorry. Your comment was just that "It's OK if nobody invests". I was responding to that in general principle.
European governments are throwing money at all sorts of dubious things. I don't think being inept about how to create new business value is the worst thing they do. At least there is funding available.
I suppose the thing that ires you is - is this funding inclusive or is it only supplied to cronies. Knowing european systems, I think, like everywhere, having connections of course helps, but in general the systems are built with some level of inclusivity in mind.
I believe the programs are actually harmful, because they filter for different things than what it actually takes to make a startup work. You're teaching people to play games and jump through arbitrary hoops, rather than connect with customers and identify problems to solve.
And that's before you take in to account corruption and inclusivity. I do believe Europe (at least based on my experience living in Germany) makes effort towards inclusivity, but if you looked at where this money is going, it would be vastly weighted to the middle and upper class (though I concede I may be wrong on this point).
Given that you can easily bootstrap a tech company on the side with some contract work, my belief can be summed up as the practice is: 1) actively harmful 2) unfair 3) wasteful 4) unnecessary
It sounds your argument is based on claims of hypothetical second order systems effects. I think that systems thinking is important - but makes it very hard to discuss further if the other party (me) is not deeply familiar with the domain (german economic life and people) which I'm not.
I.e. 'actively harmfull' -> but just dropping state investment won't magically teach peoples how to do business in a customer oriented way. So you need some second order effects to kick in (i.e. people would then focus on market needs more etc).
I can't really comment on that. I don't know the german psyche enough to postulate on the second order effects.
Most of german industry has been grown historically in a corporative manner, so I'm a bit skeptical you could drive US style individual entrepreunship in just by dropping this or that government program.
So only Americans can make these sort of companies? This is a deliberate investment by their government, and yes they shouldn't be handing out to Americans who can go to SV and get their handout from their VCs.
> These programs offer grants and other benefits to 'the right kind of startups' - usually ones that are fashionable because the subject is currently hyped - ai, climate change, etc.
As opposed to the American VC model currently driving such vital innovations as "how do we make middle class people use a jitney cab service?", "what if short term office leases came with free beer?", "will lazy people pay to have food delivered?" and "oh will they pay to have other stuff delivered, too?"
Look, I kind of get what you're saying, but it's not as if US startups are immune from bragging about "changing the world" and I'm more willing to put up with that bragging if you're at least trying to solve an actual hard problem.
The government should be funding crazy blue-sky long shots like small-scale fusion reactors and surgical nanobots because nobody else will. It's hard to make money on that kind of thing in the short- to medium-term but if it came to fruition, it really would be transformative.
> With these countries, it's not important that your startup is actually making money
Wow. I always thought that's a SF VC thing. If anything EU businesses focus much much earlier on profitability. That's the reason why they are much more risk averse and rarely (if ever) create some really ludicrous startups.
"these countries have such high taxes and other restrictions, the only benefit to starting a business there are these programs"
Well, that's not true. You also have a good safety net if it doesn't work out.
Quality of life, happiness, health care and education is also good or among the best.
I feel that a lot of comments from US folks here are a bit hypocritical:
> It makes no difference if you have a great idea, or even your own funding
Most european countries (most countries in the world, actually) have some kind of entrepreneur/investor visa, but most importantly:
You might be able to start a company in the US while officially traveling for tourism/business, but that's actually a flaw and not an advantage: If you're lucky you might be able to regularise your position, but you might just get denied entry back in the US the next time that you'll travel. Good luck running your business in the US, then.
If you want to move to the US and start your own business, something like the O-1 visa won't cut it, since unlike any European work visa, it won't give you a path to permanent residency. You want the EB-1, EB-2 or EB-5 visas. The first 2 are much harder to obtain (even if you got a O-1), and the EB-5 is not open to all nationalities. Finally, you'll need way more than 100.000$ (probably at least 500.000$) to be able to be approved for an EB-5.
US requirements are steep, and even if you have a great idea and funding that's probably not going to be enough. Getting to work for an established local company, owned by natives, is the most straightforward way to get a work visa. That's true in the US just like in most other rich countries (but obviously it requires finding a company willing to sponsor you, like a FAAMG, but those have a famously selective interview process. And on top of that you have H1-B caps.)
Just as a couple of counter examples, in case you weren't aware of them
- Spain has an entrepeneurship visa, that any founder from anywhere can apply for. To apply I think you need to produce a credible business plan which shows it'll employ a certain number of citizens (I don't know if EU or Spanish specifically) eventually.
- France similarly has an entrepeneurship visa for founders from anywhere. I believe one of the requirements is to raise a certain amount of seed from specifically French accredited investors.
But, while I think it's better than you're implying, I definitely agree with your general thrust that visas need to adapt to embrace the growing popularity of people moving country not necessarily for employment, but to create new companies, jobs and growth.
It's unnecessarily cumbersome to do that basically everywhere (particularly in strong economies) right now, not just the EU, and that's a net loss for the citizens of the respective countries.
I've been a US expat in Europe for almost 20 years now.
I spent a lot of time in Belgium (to the point I became a citizen) and am now in Barcelona starting a FinTech.
Europe lacks both a risk-taking mentality and the framework to foster real entrepreneurship.
Spain was able to become much more competitive thanks to the austerity they were forced to go through post-crisis, but there are still way more bureaucratic hoops I have to jump through compared to what I would need to do to start my business in the US.
Incorporating an LLC alone (the equivalent of a c-corp is rarely used by startups over here) requires 3,000 EUR in the bank plus about the same amount in legal fees. In many other countries, it's a five-figure deposit to get a company set up. As the director of the company, I'm required to register as a freelancer so that I "can't fire myself and claim unemployment" which is ridiculous within itself.
Stock options don't really exist in Europe either, meaning I can't really issue them to attract talent. In otherwords, I need to access more capital at an earlier stage to grow my business in comparison to US competitors.
Finally, there is no such thing as chapter 11 bankruptcy within the EU, which limits risk-taking by businesses.
As for France, it's great that they have a visa. However, the legal and labor system is similar to Belgium, making founding and scaling a company a royal PITA. Belgium is a great place to work in a giant company (usually a bank or an insurer) but an absolutely lousy place to start a business, visa program or otherwise.
Europe needs to get this figured out. The continent has too much talent and too large of a market to not be able to be a global innovation force.
Funny how there's tons of companies in Europe still.
What it actually lacks is the silly money of SV VC.
It's got the entrepreneurs, and it's got the risk taking, it's just not got the massive VCs. So Europeans make different kinds of companies.
It costs £19 to start a business in the UK, and you can do it in 5 minutes online, so again, you're wrong on the causes. If you want to talk about crazy bureacracy just raise the subject of what state/s corp/c corp/state taxes/lawyers fees/craziness you have to do in America.
It's just that the money willing to invest in startups has all congregated in SV.
The vibe I got from his post was that the formalities starting a company aren't the bottleneck, perhaps more of a symptom instead. Just about everything he said applies to Finland too. Registering a company means putting ~3000 € on the table but sure, you can do it fairly quickly online.
When I registered mine the minimum required amount of stock capital was 2500 €. That cash needed to be on the company's bank account before the registration was formalized. The notice to trade register to formally incorporate the company was 450 €.
Looks like the first rule was abolished last year. The notice to trade register now costs 275 € electronically, or 380 € in paper form.
Incorporating an LLC alone (the equivalent of a c-corp is rarely used by startups over here) requires 3,000 EUR in the bank plus about the same amount in legal fees.
At least when I did start a Sociedad Limitada (LLC) around 8 years ago these 3,000 euro did not need to be provided in cash. Most -all? I cannot remember- of them could be the value of things you owned, like a computer (serial number provided). The valuation of the computer or similar was taken at face value. In case of debt from your company they would take these goods used as capital.
There are initiatives in some cities, like Barcelona Activa, so make it easier to start a company (simpler forms too) but overall I agree it is still a bit bureaucratic.
> It is also why you really don't see any actual innovation come out of Europe.
There's actually quite a lot of incremental innovation happening in Europe, but they're in non-consumer spaces so they're less visible.
But you're right, a lot of European innovation is in the area of refining and improving proven ideas. The pool of technical expertise in Europe is vast and strong so it makes sense to leverage the competitive advantage there.
The U.S. on the other hand is much stronger at defying norms and inventing completely new categories.
U.S. companies know this, so the joke in industry is: invent in the U.S., perfect in Europe (setup R&D labs etc.), and manufacture in China.
The requirements are pretty basic - "have something resembling a business and €4500" if I remember right.
I'm an American in Europe (Ireland myself) and once I got stamp 4 (takes two years) I become every bit as eligible for state grants and supports as a citizen.
That's certainly not the case in Finland, where you just need to have one Finnish resident on your board in order to incorporate. There's also the startup permit (https://www.businessfinland.fi/en/do-business-with-finland/s...), which lets you get that residence permit in the first place.
Coming back to the topic of the original post though, in order to work as a freelancer in Finland, you do not need to incorporate to begin with and you certainly don't need to set up an LTD right away as the guide suggests. In fact doing so, can be counter productive, since while setting up a company is easy, shutting own down and becoming an employee again is not simple around here.
I'm running Toughbyte (https://www.toughbyte.com/) and we act as one of the brokers for freelancers in Finland such as the ones mentioned in the guide. What I've been recommending to those wanting to go freelance is that they first try to become employed by a broker on a fixed term contract or work through a cooperative (osuuskunta in Finnish). After that, they can set up an individual entrepreneurship (toiminimi) and only once they've had consistent revenue for about a year, consider setting up an LTD (OY). The limited liability that an LTD provides isn't strictly speaking necessary when working as part of a team on a times and materials basis.
That's not true. American entrepreneurs can acquire Dutch residency for the purpose of starting a business in Netherlands. Access to Dutch social services is a different thing.
I am confused by this comment. Finland and other EU countries offer startup visas and the requirements for them require minimal capital. Recruiting outside of EU is also relatively easy since there is no artificial cap and no significant salary requirements like with H1B. It's a cakewalk compared to the monsterity that is the US visa system.
It's not super hard to do in Finland actually, especially if you engage a local to help you. If you want to, you can become an e-resident and run a business in Estonia completely online.
Estonian e-residency doesn’t magically make you a tax resident of there and absolve you of your tax obligations to your country of residence. Some countries still require you to pay local tax on any income from foreign companies as long as you’re considered a tax resident.
Yeah, there are definitely shortcomings to that approach. I was just trying to address the:
"I can assure you that it's a 100% closed game. If you are not from the EU, you can only work for a European... you won't get the legal permission to found a business in Europe unless you basically got a European to found it for you"
Besides whatever other EU countries people here might mention, I know that Romania offers residency permits to US citizens who want to start a business, and the fees and taxes are fairly low. (If I understand correctly, you have to renew the residency annually, but you can still transition to permanent residency after five years like any other temporary residency class.) If you have a great idea, then you can start in Romania and enjoy the same access to the single market as anywhere else in the EU.
Not only this, but all of the taxes and regulations will only impede your growing business.
Yes, you might be able take a risk because your healthcare is covered in the beginning..but once you want to grow to an actual thriving company, it becomes very difficult.
This is why almost all of the moderately large companies in places like Finland, Denmark, or Sweden are incorporated elsewhere.
I’m pretty sure a lot of EU countries make it easy to get temporary resident status if you start a business though? And some require <$100k investment
For the ones I looked into becoming a permanent resident after X years was also not that challenging and IIRC (might be wrong) that gives you basically full work permissions for all EU countries
US citizens in Austria are generally treated similar to the way Austrian citizens would be treated in the US. Reciprocation is a basis of international relations.
Also, its entirely possible to get residency in "Europe", if you understand that "Europe" is not just London or Paris.
(Disclaimer: non-european citizen with 20 years residency and legal work/founder status, lived)
I have no idea about Finland, but in Europe in general, you can't open a business cleanly without a permanent residence permit, which takes usually 5+ years to get. In Denmark where I've lived, it's about 9+ years last I checked, but Danes are super xenophobic, so they don't want you there period. The link you sent describes being forced to be approved by some board they have, so it also sounds like Finland has hurdles too. In my experience, Europe is happy to skip out on the next Google if it means only the local get to play and win.
I know for Slovenia that you can start a company there as a foreigner, and then get a work visa simply by employing yourself, it's a fairly simple procedure. After 5 years you qualify for permanent residency (I believe that's the same everywhere in EU).
afaik, if you are EU/EEA or Swiss citizen, you can do it online in no time.
If you're from outside, then you need to get a startup permit from a panel of experts (and fulfill a couple more conditions), which quite difficult I guess.
So if I am rich or can convince the people that I have the right sort of idea, I can try there? I don't think that's quite the same thing as letting a person succeed on their own merit in the free market. It sounds like much the same as what I saw elsewhere in Europe - the state or a group of rich people picking winners, who more often than not don't win.
Estonian e-residency is not a true residency. It's mostly just marketing.
> Please be aware that e-Residency does not confer citizenship, tax residency, residence or right of entry to Estonia or to the European Union. It is not a visa or residence permit.
via: https://apply.gov.ee/
So while you can start a company in Estonia, you can't legally work there or stay in the EU as far as I know.
> It is also why you really don't see any actual innovation come out of Europe.
...as opposed to I suppose the amazing 'innovations' coming out of the US, such as shiny overpriced phones with overpriced proprietary cables, a taxi service with an app, some media-streaming services grown large based on their media content rather than innovation per se, and a plethora of disguised surveillance programmes? Wow thanks America, life is so much better in this emerging dystopia!
Amazon I'll grant you does deserve praise for amazing logistics.
Can you name a single thing that you would consider innovative from Europe? I'm serious, I just can't think of anything. These are good people for making a slightly better Mercedes than last year's model, but they won't be cooking up the next iPhone anytime soon. The system there does not reward risk takers, the smart move is incremental updates to well established existing products.
Minecraft was Swedish. Nokia is Finnish. VLC is French. ARM is British. Sinclair was British. The entire demo scene is Nordic.
Israel is technically in Asia, but for most practical purposes (legal system, healthcare system, taxes, sport leagues, broadcast rights, dvd regions) it is considered to be in Europe. And it produced Checkpoint (firewalls...), Teva (largest generic drug manufacturer, but also original drugs like copaxon for MS), CAR-T for cancer treatment, and a couple of other things you’ve heard about.
> but they won't be cooking up the next iPhone anytime soon.
It's funny you say this since Nokia, who are a Finnish company, were the globally dominant mobile phone company for years before the iPhone due to their innovations e.g. doing camera phones well. The 3310 is one of the best selling mobile phones ever. Yes they ultimately fell from that position, but to suggest Europe is some desert of mediocrity seems foolish.
I think you misunderstand. I mean an innovation on par with the iPhone, where it basically changed how people live their lives. I'm quite sure Europeans can make a phone, the problem is they can't hit an innovative home run to save their lives.
HN is a community and we want it to remain one. For that, users need some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
I misunderstand your vague handwavey definition then. What is the data or metric that you're basing your opinion off exactly? 7 of the top 10 best selling mobile devices of all time are made by Nokia [0]. How is that not changing how people live their lives?
Your hyperbole is burying any realistic point you are trying to make, I think.
WWW had far bigger impact that iPhone, and is european innovation.
For that matter, the entire system of democratic capitalism and relatively free markets you are espousing was invented there. Fair to argue who's done the best job of "perfecting" it, but it's European ideas originally :)
I think it is very interesting to compare entrepreneurial approaches and success rates (to the degree it's meaningful) across jurisdictions, for what it's worth. But "Europe can't do this at all" is a silly line to draw.
But the iPhone was only commercially innovative really - as I understand there was prior art for all the critical parts of it including adding a touchscreen to a phone, going back quite a long way. American automotive engineering has until very recently been laughably backward; Tesla is an exception. Formula 1 is almost exclusively European (in fact largely British). Rolls-Royce are at the forefront of jet engine manufacturing. If you don't think these examples involve innovation, well...
Few foss projects and authors that started in this god forsaken country, Finland:
Linux - Linus Torvalds. Finn
Ssh - Tatu Ylönen. Finn
IRC - Jarkko Oikarinen. Finn.
Dovecot - Timo Sirainen. Finn.
Robot Framework - Pekka Klarck. Finn.
And maybe not fortune100 or even 500 companies but companies like Nokia, F-secure, Futuremark have had their global impact. And Yeah. These are old tech already but saying that no innovations came out out of Finland or Europe is just plain bullsh*t.
I'm a bit familiar with finnish industrial history. Finland has a history of massively innovative companies that were decades ahead of their competition in several sectors. The thing that they did not have, was capital funding, so they could not grow, and experience of global markets to have the know how to grow. So they remained small shops, with one or two big industrial clients who did not care to help them grow, and the world caught up with them.
The ones that managed to grow, are exceptions. Nokia and Kone are probably the more familiar ones (look at the next elevator you ride, there's a 50/50 chance it's made by Kone).
Finland is a capital poor country but rich in ideas.
>Finland is a capital poor country but rich in ideas
You can replace Finland with pretty much any non US country on Earth. I've met brilliant hard working people all over the world. The only thing they lacked to make it big was capital.
Well, depends what you compare with. Most european countries have a rich history of industrialization and colonization and hence quite a lot of private capital. Unlike Finland. Of course, there are lots of other dirt poor areas, but if you compare Finland to the segment where it's usually included, i.e. non-iron-curtain-enclosed European states, then in that category it stands out.
well, you could see Finland as halfway between the iron curtain and not-iron-curtain states. They split off the Russian empire just after WWI and barely avoided being taken back in the winter war. The Baltic states were less fortunate
I’ve been a freelance in Finland for some time and was surprised by how easy setting everything up electronically was and how little I had to pay if my income was low in the beginning. I was also very surprised to see how helpful the tax office (Vero in finnish) is, even for questions that could be answered with “hire an accountant” but thanks to their help, I was able to do it on my own. I even made a mistake once and they let me know and fix it without consequences.
Compare this to my home country (Spain) where you have to pay a rather high fixed fee every month despite having no income (a typical situation at the beginning of any business), the amount of paperwork and unreadable legalese together with the unwillingness of the tax office to help you out with most of the stuff.
On a side note this guide looks great and wish I had such thing when I started out!
It's incredible that Finland gives you a monthly grant to become an entrepreneur. Definitely wish something like that existed in the US, even if only possible at the state level.
It's not automatically granted, it depends on whether your local office has any budget left, and on your business plan and such. It's a somewhat bureaucratic process.
It is indeed. Makes taking the risk of going from employee with lots of protections in Finland to freelance with no protection whatsoever much less dangerous financial wise.
If I read it well, this grant is personal income though.
If the company has to pay 2-5k in monthly taxes, that will be on its revenue. If you have no revenue yet, then I don't imagine you will have to pay that much in taxes
Anybody have experience as to whether this applies to an American living in Finland?
Due to FATCA and the US's draconian tax laws around ownership of foreign investment assets...I'm wondering if it wouldn't make any sense to try to start a Finnish company while holding American citizenship. Assuming it would be a tax nightmare if you start producing any real income.
The requireMenus start on day one, regardless of producing any income. What follows related to the US tax code in general, the us/Finland tax treaty might make exceptions about some of them:
You will be unable to hold any financial asset other than cash or deposit (no broker will let you do stocks for example - or an ETF)
You will have to report and pay taxes on the fantasy gains on your locally accumulating pension funds, even though you will not have access to them until retirement (if then).
You will have to file your company paperwork locally, but also as if it was American - with requirements that become more onerous with your ownership percentage (starting at 10% or 25%, can’t remember - luckily for me in that respect, I was below the reporting threshold most years - but I did have to translate and file financials at some point)
I had done all of these for many years. If you don’t enjoy the bureaucracy, you might be better off NOT owning a non-US company.
I don't see why not. In fact, it would be "cheaper" for them because they do not need to pay the value added tax to your non-EU company. Sure they'd get that eventually back from the tax office if they were paying just another Finnish company, but it would still take a bit of time.
This is really great, thank you. Maybe I missed this bit but I noticed the guide doesn't touch on language issues at all, how hard is the transition for someone who doesn't speak Finnish?
In professional contexts as a software developer you will manage just fine with just English. Free time context and true integration to society will require learning Finnish. But you can take your time with that.
I think the challenge with going freelancer will be with the things that are required of you as a corporate entity. Such as, reading up on legislation, accounting rules, dialog with tax office etc.
Not everything is in English. Prime example of that is establishing a limited liability online. Nothing impossible to tackle, but just that if things were in English and smooth, maybe I wouldn't have bothered with writing the guide :) It is troubling at times, which is why I wanted to smoothen it out as much as possible.
Finnish is an absolutely atrocious language to learn for most people (unless you are already familiar with learning a language with a completely different root, and even then). That part will be hard.
I can't comment on the practicality of surviving with only English (or even Swedish, which most of them speak due to historical factors that I will politely gloss over), because I haven't tried.
I just want to underline that, unlike most European languages, Finnish grammar is highly systematic, and so is Finnish pronunciation. Very few exceptions, it feels almost mathematical in nature.
There's quite a lot of grammar, putting off non-nerds who think "cases" are hard because after all, they are hard in eg German and Latin (they're peanuts in Finnish). But for a geek with mathy tendencies, Finnish grammar is a warm shower compared to eg Polish or French or, for that matter, English. It's all so super consistent, it's as if it's a designed language.
A fun exercise when learning Finnish is writing a tool that can conjugate verbs or nouns, which is totally feasible in an evening or two, showing just how straight forward the grammar is.
The pronunciation is also super consistent and phonetic, which means that if someone teaches you a word or a name, you can simply hear how it's spelled. This makes it much easier to remember the word, since you can store the sound and the letters visually in memory, even if nobody writes it down for you.
Another fun hobby project is coding a Finnish speech synthesizer. You could just have it concatenate audio fragments for each letter. It'll sound like shit but it'll actually be understandable.
The real challenge with Finnish is the vocabulary.
(source: I'm Dutch, lived in Finland for a year half a life ago, tried to learn the language, walked away speaking it close to accent-free and knowing all the grammar but still not able to understand shit because seriously not a single word is anything like anything else I knew) (except appelsiini)
> A fun exercise when learning Finnish is writing a tool that can conjugate verbs or nouns, which is totally feasible in an evening or two, showing just how straight forward the grammar is.
Only if you provide the tool with the stems of the words. For example, the genitive ending is -n, but the genitive stem of käsi is käde- and the stem of aasi is aasi- and figuring that out might not be within the reach of a two-evening tool.
I don't agree that the Finnish grammar is highly systematic. Take instance, the partitive case. It seems to be applicable to a mixed bag of situations with all kinds of exceptions. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partitive_case)
Yeah that was badly worded. I meant context the way parsers/lexers use the term, not the common language speaker's definition of "the meaning of the surrounding words".
It is possible to survive in Helsinki with only minimal Finnish, and work in the IT-industry. In smaller places it might be more difficult, but certainly people here are willing and able to converse in English.
Of course I would like to learn more Finnish, but daily life and childcare interferes with regular lessons. (Of course being able to work in English also means that speaking Finnish at work is also difficult.)
Since moving to Finland four years ago I've bought a couple of flats, found a job, filed taxes, visited doctors, dentists, and similar things all in English.
I understand a lot of Finnish, I just speak less. Ordering food, etc, is something I'd usually do in Finnish although it has to be said a lot of people will either initially greet me in English, or reply to me in English which is a bit frustrating.
>Ordering food, etc, is something I'd usually do in Finnish although it has to be said a lot of people will either initially greet me in English, or reply to me in English which is a bit frustrating.
I have noticed some establishments to quickly make a judgement call on what kind of language skills you have. I was once in a restaurant, reading over the Finnish menu and the waiter came and asked me if I needed any help translating the menu. I am 100% Finnish (some branch of my family tree extends to the 1700s at least), so I didn't really need it.
I know British IT consultants living and working in cities with ~100,000 inhabitants in Finland, working in high profile IT consultant agencies. Knowing no Finnish whatsoever. It seems definitely doable.
> Finnish is an absolutely atrocious language to learn for most people
Things have changed a lot in recent years. In the 1970s, or even the 1990s, then sure, learning the language would have been very difficult due to the limited selection of learning material and dearth of social opportunities to practice (the Finns being so famously taciturn). Today, however, there are so many different textbooks for Finnish that a foreigner can find one that matches his or her particular approach to language-learning, and there are lots of meetups now in Helsinki for foreigners to practice.
I learned Finnish many years ago when things were rather more difficult, and I envy the opportunities that immigrants to Finland today have.
I have lots of non-finns at my work who speak very little finnish. They seem to do fine. On the other hand integration to finnish society might be bit of a challenge unless you happen to find a sweetheart here.
"or even Swedish, which most of them speak due to historical factors that I will politely gloss over"
Most finns _don't_ speak Swedish, or it's very limited. It's a second language in law only because Finland was part of sweden from 1300 - 1800. There is nothing too politically awkward to gloss over. Finland was not conquered by sweden. We basically were swedes for 500 years, with a weird local language that no civilized person spoke.
Historically Finland could have been part of either a feudal society that became inclusive (Sweden) or that became stereotypically exclusive (Russia). As part of Sweden Finland was among the forerunners of countries that got a modern legislation and administration in the 1600's and strong cultural ties to the rest of europe. During this time the elite spoke Swedish.
The political interaction with Russia during this time was handled mostly by military means.
Finland's population rose from 50,000 to 800,000. The population of the entire country was less than the population in global biggest cities (a trend that continues to this day).
There was not much input to scientific or cultural development of the world as most energies were spent in surviving winters without famine and evading capture into slavery by invading various eastern entrepreneurs. Industrialism took it's first faltering steps, but there was not much capital to invest (a trend that continues to this day).
Then came Napoleon, who wanted to pressure Sweden to join into an embargo against England. At this point France was allied with Russia (this would change eventually) but for now Czar Alexander in 1808 was happy to oblige.
The initial plan was not to take control of Finland, just to occupy it until Sweden acquiesced. Things happened, and Alexander decided to keep it. But what to do with it?
As it turned out, there were two trends working to the benefit of the finnish polity. First, the czar was pretty sure sweden would eventually like their dominion back. Secondly, this idea of small nation states as buffers between big players was taking hold among the great nations (Belgium was one of these as well a few decades later). And there were no resources that the czar would really like. The country was foreign, there were no feudal lords the czar could command, the whole area was controlled in a totally unrussian way. Sure, he could put his boot down and russify the lot, but all of the things discussed above lead to the fact that instead Alexander accepted a plan that Finland would become a semi-autonomous duchy with it's own constitution and money. This would have been quite an impossible idea a century later but now it felt as an excellent idea.
There was only one problem.
There was no finnish national sentiment to speak of. And you can't have a strong autonomous nation state without a sense of nationality. At this point all educated people spoke swedish. Basically, it was an area ripe to return to sweden.
So, czar happily supported and encouraged the few individuals that thought that Finland should have it's own national spirit (the sentiment of nationalities was already spreading in europe and was not totally foreign in finland). So, in effect, they machined a campaign that it was effectively _cool_ to be finnish. Swedes changes their names to finnish in droves.
At this time, finnish language as a written tongue started to develop as well. It had more or less stagnated until now, but as finnishness was becoming a thing, surely something should be written in it as well.
So that is the reason there are no great literary works in Finnish before the early 19th century. There was no literary tradition, and everyone who would have been capable of producing great works wrote in swedish and other european languages any way.
So now we have a country with more or less modern administration, a national sentiment and a language. But it's still dirt poor.
This would be remedied eventually. The russian governors recognized that their domain was mostly unindustrialized backwater, and they heavily supported industrialization efforts. The funny thing is, that on the other side of the border the russian state did not support extensive industrialization, but on the finnish side it actually supported it quite a lot.
In effect, russian domination gave finland it's national identity, it's governing body, it's industry and supported it's literary and artistic efforts. Finland effectively was a dominion under czar's direct authority, and finn's loved their czar.
This love changed to something else in the late 19th century as the russian state started a strong russification push in all of it's dominions. But finns were still more or less content as their life went on. The finnish elite is strongly part of the russian high life - St. Petersburg has a large finnish population and finnish artisans produce goods for the wealthy. For example more than few of the Faberge eggs were made by Finnish artisans.
Come 1917, the czar dies, the house of Romanoff is no more, and the finns discover to their horror that legally they are no longer a duchy under russia as the way it was legally written was that finland was under czar's domain and not part of the russian state. Legally, it seems they are now on their own. Horror changes to realizing a possibility of an actual nationhood. So, a few politicians travel to Lenin to kindly point out that legally they are no longer part of russia, and, ahem, they would be very greatfull if the bolsheviks could awknowledge this. Lenin can do whatever he likes with them, but frankly, he has bigger political problems at hand (he will have for a while as the russian civil war will rage for years) and so for some reason or other he let's the silly finnish bourgeoise have their cute little state. The communists will anyway take over soon as the masses will rise in rebellion.
Except, they won't. There's a bloody civil war in 1918, finns settle it, continue existence as a parlamentarian state and... that's where it all comes from.
In II. world war they block soviet invasion with strong support from Nazi germany (yes, they were basically in league with the nazis but the alternative would have ranged from soviet opression to total annihilation - had he won Stalin could have basically destroyed every finn if he felt like it. He killed ten times more soviet people as an afterthought as there were finns in total.).
So, basically, Finland is country filled with people who for the most of civilized world history have died of starvation and have been hunted as slaves. Only in the last 150 years the country emerged from a rural backwater into a fairly succesfull nation state.
This history explains quite a lot of the typical finnish egalitarian sentiment. We've died of starvation. We've been sold as slaves. There's been no rich local lords since everyone has been equally miserable. There's been no big cities. Most of the urbanization has happened in the last 50 years. So, we're a bunch of people who's families are mostly country yokels, who's families have been quite poor, but who really like to read and write, do maths and enjoy cool gadgets.
I think the main reason Finland is pretty successful is it's centuries long history of inclusive institutions, and intentional investment into human capital (i.e. education). This history is very strongly linked with the swedish state and language, in one way or another, hence, there is nothing impolite about it.
As a Finn, this is great. I would just like to downgrade "strong support from Nazi Germany" just to support, and later a nuisance.
Initially Germany and Soviets made the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact to divide the Europe. Nazis would get Poland and Soviets would get Finland etc. They were agreement at first, so Nazis stayed away for the Winter War (1939-1940) and Finland had to block attack on their own since most of the Europe was allied with Soviets or Nazis.
Later in the following Continuation War (1941-1944), Finland asked for Germany's support when they tried to reclaim some of the areas Soviets had previously taken, including the city of Vyborg. German sent some arsenal and troops from Norway. I think the number was 40,000 compared to 500,000 Finnish troops.
So I think it wasn't that much of a "strong support". Also the German troops didn't have the tactical skills or right equipment for long lasting forest/winter warfare, so they weren't that effective either. They were used to Blitzkrieging everything.
Most of the German troops were stationed in the Northern Finland and once the peace was found with Soviets, Finland had to fight the Germans to get them out of the country. Along the way, the German troops scorched everything they came across on their retreat to Norway.
Thanks, it's good to point out to an international audience that Finland was not enamoured with national socialism, but rather it was driven by the will to survive by any means necessary.
Strong or not, given the situation, I don't think Finland could have survived without german support. If we look this from a very high granularity level (like in a board game of Diplomacy) I think you also have to factor in the fact that the bulk of the red army was tied to battles against the axis powers elsewhere. So it's not just how much the germans actually poured material and men to finland, it's also about how much they tied the enemy forces elsewhere.
It's gone semi viral I guess.. cuz it's now trending on github and it was #1 on /Finland subreddit when I posted it 3 days ago. I'd personally love to see this for other countries, maybe specially Nordics ones cuz that's easier to implement cuz of the similarities I think.
This is great. How many people have solved similar problems to this and not written anything down? How often are the same problems solved, over and over again? You did a great service and I hope it catches on.
I'm just wondering, will the people who would benefit the most from your guide actually find it?
I have to be explicit as I have been in my guide [1] that I did it for both selfish and selfless reasons. So it has not been done in pure good will :), but I think it can be thought of as maybe a good sweet spot of serving the community and benefitting from it at the same time.
About finding it, yes. It's gotten #1 on /Finland subreddit, I myself have an extensive network in Finland, and it's gone relatively big on twitter and linkedin. So given the size of Finland and the software dev community, I think word of the mouth will eventually spread it to most people who are interested in freelancing.
I got different answers from the people I talked to, the lawyer, accountant and insurance broker all told me different things, i.e. if I was to start a GmbH, a Gewerbe or be Selbständig/Freiberufler. In the end I went the Selbständig-route and it has been good so far.
Also since I have been 100% working for US based companies remotely I needed to figure out tax implications and there most of the time I had to research things own and explain to my accountant due to the the accountant not knowing English. I guess I could find a better accountant but now after a year the accountant knows how things work and I'm too lazy to switch now.
Other than that getting the insurances in place and bank accounts took some time, but not too bad in the end. But a guide would have helped. :)
