Advice from AmCham FutureMoney: Sisu and Networking

The inaugural AmCham FutureMoney event, held last week at the event sponsor Finnvera’s premises turned out to be a success. The auditorium was buzzing with some seventy members of the venture capital ecosystem. Many agreed that this type of an event is sorely needed and has been lacking so far. Never before have PricewaterhouseCoopers and Dow Jones presented their data in the same event in Finland. Although the numbers had been public for a couple of weeks, the analysis given by the experts provided the added value to the attendees.
 

The event kicked off with Finnvera’s Veijo Ojala, who gave an overview of Finnvera’s activities and welcomed the guest speakers. Matthew Littlewood from PricewaterhouseCoopers presented the 2009 MoneyTree Report. As an extra treat to the attendees, Matthew also presented the Israeli data. Overall, he concluded that the last quarter of 2009 in the US provided some positive signs with first sequence financing being up. This could indicate good things for 2010.  Guido Schenk from Dow Jones could not fully join in with Matthew’s optimism. Guido presented the European data and unfortunately Europe doesn’t yet show signs of an uptick. Both presenters agreed that entrepreneurs must work harder than before to make their case to investors. As the activity is lower than before, investors have more time to focus on each case.

Mikko Suonenlahti from Growth Management International provided the analysis of the combined data sets and draw conclusion for the audience to ponder upon. He pointed out that perhaps the US leads the way for things picking up. He reminded the audience that as long as the public policy in Finland does not support VC activity, no amount of innovation will save Finland.

Finally, when asked what advice our experts had for Finnish entrepreneurs, the simple answer was: Sisu and Networking!