This article was first published in the September 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online
You can read the complete WIRED 100 here "When I started university, the top three career choices for a young graduate were to work for McKinsey, work for Nokia or work as an investment banker in London," Miki Kuusi says ruefully. "In the early 2000s, an entrepreneur was looked down on -- an entrepreneur was a car mechanic who couldn't get a job because he was such a bad mechanic that he had to start his own company."
Kuusi, 25, didn't quite change that single-handedly, but the Helsinki startup scene would look very different without him. Noticing the number of talented tech students at the city's Aalto University, he became president of the student-led non-profit Entrepreneurship Society, which morphed into the Startup Sauna accelerator programme when he graduated in 2011. Soon afterwards he co-founded Slush, a bi-annual conference. The combination of these elements means that Kuusi has a hand in almost every aspect of Helsinki's startup scene, connecting first-time and serial entrepreneurs, investors, Silicon Valley mentors and the wider international scene. "All the best startup scenes have community at their core," he says. "The CEO of one company can call the CEO of another company to ask for help. So we facilitated that with Startup Sauna. But the biggest issue for startup companies in Europe in general is that everyone's doing something inside of their own country's borders. They're not thinking big enough. So we launched Slush."
As CEO, he spent 2011 to 2014 leading Slush's growth from a local, 150-person conference to a global event, attracting 14,000 delegates from 79 countries. Although the next Slush is scheduled for November 2015, Miki Kuusi is no longer in charge. In 2014 he stepped down to launch his own startup, the fledgling food-payments app Wolt, with $500,000 (£320,000) in seed funding led by Inventure. A pilot programme in Helsinki led to a Nordic and German roll-out in spring 2015.
"I could have stayed with Slush, but at heart I'm not an event organiser," he says. "I wanted to do something more. Helsinki has a great gaming scene so I'm combining gaming, seamless mobile payments and the restaurant experience."
Wolt's users, Kuusi explains, can open the app, order a meal at a nearby restaurant, get a waiting time and arrive to eat just as the meal is served. As the meal is paid for at the time they order, there's no need to wait for the bill -- they can simply leave. "Mobile commerce has only really affected the takeaway side of catering so far," Kuusi explains. "But people eat out sometimes two or three times a day. It saves time for not only customers but also restaurants to receive orders that are already paid for. There's no risk that the person won't show up or won't be able to pay."
That's not to say Kuusi has abandoned the city's startup community. With Slush now run as a charity by the Slush Foundation, he can still remain involved, albeit less hands-on. "I've spent a lot of time being a part of building a better tech ecosystem. I love where the event is being taken now; I still sit on the board and I'm very actively involved," he says. "I mean, I hate taking credit; it's always very much a group effort. We have a saying: it's always up to the entrepreneur."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
