How the Finns built their gaming startup hub in Helsinki

Posted byby Dean Takahashi
November 13, 2013
Updated June 18, 2025
4 min

The organizers of Slush paid for my trip to Finland. Our coverage of the event remains objective.

HELSINKI — A decade ago, Finland’s national pride was Nokia, the cellphone company whose products blanketed the world. Now, Nokia is being acquired by Microsoft, and Finns have turned to startups as their new economic engine. Their country is now known in tech as the startup hub that gave the world the popular mobile games Angry Birds and Clash of Clans.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.