Shadow Karma

Ramine Darabiha wrote a great guest blog on ReadWrite Start with the topic Never Mind the Valley: Here’s Finland. The blog post was about how Finland is becoming the Silicon Valley of Europe, mentioning several great starups, such as Wreckamovie, which I’m always happy to give coverage. Even though the post was focusing on the technology startups, I started thinking I haven’t written anything about why I decided to set up KaroKaro and what do I wish to accomplish with it. As the official date of establishment for KaroKaro is next Monday, June 7th 2010, I think it’s time to write a little about the company itself.

Finland isn’t the most supportive country for entrepreneurs. You can get money from the government but not too much and if you manage to get any money of your own you are denied the “start money” as the call it. This country seems to hate people who might get rich and might do well in business. However, they love people who already are rich and do well as they pay a lot of taxes. The Finnish mentality is traditionally against succeeding or having more than others. “Who is happy should hide the happiness” goes the old saying. People are way too jealous and way too scared to let others know if they’re doing well. People in Finland are mostly modest, which means most Finnish people wouldn’t be good entrepreneurs, without proper education on how to express themselves. This is why great startups can come out of nowhere and surprise people – the Finnish people just don’t make noise when they’ve got a great idea. To top if all up, all the business teaching in this country seems to aim to one goal: if you’ve got an idea, keep it to yourself and make sure the thing (whatever it is) is completely ready until you publish it. Luckily people are learning this is not the way to do business related to the Internet and have learned the value of beta releases, too.

The idea for setting up a company came last year when I was talking with some friends and co-workers about wanting to do more stuff related to the development of eLearning and less Moodle administration. Of course, at this level it was all fictional. I didn’t think I’d really set up a company and thought I would be willing to work for a small company but I didn’t see myself as an entrepreneur. As the year ended and I realized I didn’t have any more work from the university of applied sciences, I thought: heck, why now? I had realized I actually knew quite a lot about this and that and started thinking myself more in the lines of an entrepreneur than an employee. Maybe it was there all the time, I just needed to find it.

I got onto the entrepreneur course on January. Out of 44 people 16 were selected and I was one of the lucky ones. The group was great and the best thing about the whole course was the discussions with the group. The course itself was quite lame, teaching old ways to do business (with “you must know your competitors and stay away from them” instead of “you must work together with other companies in the industry”). The good thing about having such a poor quality teaching was I learned a lot about how I don’t want to conduct my business and realized ways I want to conduct my business. In the end of April, the course was over and I graduated (if that’s even the right word for that). The people evaluating me in the end said they had no choise but the let me pass as I was so into the company and was so excited. I already knew what I wanted and was ready to work for it. A thing which is still true.

Before applying all the things from the government (which helps starting entrepreneurs by providing some 600 euros per months for “living expenses”, if you’re lucky), I had to pay a visit to Ensimetri – the place for new companies to get help on all the important things. They had to write a statement saying I’m entitled to get the money from the government. Unfortunately the person at Ensimetri wasn’t too great and it took him two weeks to get the statement done (it should’ve been more like two hours). At that time I had hurt my ankle and couldn’t walk much for nearly two months. When I finally managed to do all the stuff needed, the decision itself took one day. After that I was ready to register my company and so I did. I decided it might be easier for me if the date of establishment was on Monday, especially with all the stuff I had to take care.

So, now I’ve got a company, which will start on Monday and I’m more excited as ever! What I wish to gain from a company of my own, then? First of all, I wish to do interesting stuff with inspiring and new and different things and people. I wish to feel I’m actually doing something good, making an effort on promoting the use of social media and eLearning in general. I wish to learn more about the field and expand to other fields, too. I wish to get to know great and interesting people and perhaps even be part of making their dreams come true. And of course, I wish to make a living.

If I had to say things I wouldn’t want to do, the list would be something like: I wouldn’t like to be part of projects doing things as they’ve always done before. I want to change the world and change business and at least be part of the change, which is happening all the time. I wish companies would understand what “community business management” means to me and how I think that’s the only way to do business. I wouldn’t want to be working in a project, which meant I couldn’t do it in collaboration with other companies. I wouldn’t want to do boring things, either, but I know I will have to do those every now and then, too.

I think leaving this as it is now is a good idea. I will come back to this text after a year or so and see what I feel about it then.