These words from now-retired venture capitalist, Andy Rachleff, stayed with me throughout his lecture on early-stage venture capital at the Stanford Graduate School of Business on Tuesday. Whilst the rest of the Finnish group was attending FailCon in San Francisco, Rohit and I took the chance to attend a lecture at one of the most intensive entrepreneurial courses offered at Stanford. The difference from here to the current state of Aalto University was like night and day.
There is a distinct difference caused by the presence of 40 highly motivated and interactive students, when compared to an overcrowded lecture of more than 150 with a relatively quiet and held back Finnish audience. One can probably attribute a lot of the motivation at Stanford to three things:
- Everyone is extremely smart and competitive
- Everyone pays tens of thousands of dollars a year for their education
- Lectures are held by current or previous experts in their respective fields
The lecture was well-structured, held in a highly interesting and interactive fashion, and backed by real-life examples of billion dollar VC deals and exits. That the lecturer had participated in himself. The constant link to reality was highly visible, also as visiting lecturer Ann Miura-Ko from Maple’s Investments used her background in the Silicon Valley ecosystem to back up her statements on acquiring early-stage finance.
At the end of the day, it almost felt as if there was no hope for Aalto to be able to reach anything resembling the course. But then again, a quick reality-check reminded us that we are visiting a whole different world when it comes to an entrepreneurial ecosystem, which strongly facilitates teaching related subjects. A long and fulfilling discussion after the lecture with Michael Lyons, course organizer and investor from Paladin, shed light on this fact and reminded us that nothing on this scale could be organized anywhere else in the world.
His final comments, which took the better portion of the last fifteen minutes of our discussion, were the most amazing to us. Mr. Lyons was highly knowledgeable of the Finnish entrepreneurial scene, and was completely convinced that all the required pieces for a Valley-style entrepreneurial ecosystem exist in Finland.
All that’s missing is the right culture, and I guess that’s what Aaltoes is set to change.
- Jens Sørensen
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Nice recap, Jens!