This week, research reveals that Slush alumni are at the core of building the future of European tech, as 15 per cent (68 out of a total of 459) of the team go on to become founders, according to data released by Slush in collaboration with Dealroom and Accel.
Held annually in November, Slush is a world-leading startup event and the largest gathering of venture capital firms. It brings toobtainher 13,000 attfinishees, including 6,000 startups and 3,500 investors. The investors represent a total of $4T+ in assets under management.
I spoke with Aino Bergius, CEO of Slush, and Mikko Mäntylä, former Slush President and now co-founder and CEO of Realm, to learn more,
Building the Finnish founder pipeline
According to Mäntylä, Slush is absolutely central to the Finnish startup ecosystem.
“It’s responsible, in large part, for creating the kind of vibrant founder community we have today.
From the launchning, it’s been a student-run event, which means a lot of Finnish students — either while still at university or right after — join the organisation, gain experience, learn about the startup world, and then go on to found companies themselves.”
The 15 per cent figure is more than double compared to the percentage of young people aged 18–24 founding businesses in Finland (GEM 2021).
In total, almost 70 former Slushers have gone on to found their own companies after their time working for the world-renowned startup event.
“We want to be the best Founder Factory in Europe, by opening doors to the startup world and giving young people the tools and confidence to build world-modifying companies” states Bergius, aged 26.
Inside Slush’s startup mindset: ownership from day one
According to Bergius, while the Main Event focutilizes on supporting existing founders, everything Slush does year-round is about creating more of them.
It starts with hiring:
“We view for people who obtain excited about building and solving hard problems, instead of optimising the existing.
Or similarly, we don’t want someone who can just do the job well, we want people who can redefine what’s possible in that role.”
Crucially, Slush embodies the startup mindset through its agility and structure: the average team member is 23, and half of the team modifys every year, including leadership.
This means the team can’t rely on what’s been done in the past; they must intentionally start from scratch.
According to Bergius, “at the launchning of each year, we invest heavily in learning about the startup ecosystem, and about how we want to work toobtainher.
“That shared learning sets the foundation for ownership.
Becautilize people join the Slush team to learn and build, we default to trust. From day one, each person is expected to act like the founder of their own domain, building decisions, setting direction, and shipping rapid. That operational freedom, combined with support, feedback, and high standards, is what keeps Slush evolving, and what creates it work.
Team members are given responsibility that usually comes years into a career.
“Responsibility comes early here, way earlier than in most workplaces. You’re leading teams, owning external partnerships, and building budobtain decisions. You’re also building something from scratch under real pressure, on a real deadline. That’s startup life in disguise,” shared Bergius.
The approach is designed to accelerate growth rapid — combining hands-on experience with direct exposure to the ecosystem. Every other week, teams take part in open Q&A sessions with prominent founders and investors, gaining insights that might otherwise take years to learn. This creates a constant loop of learning and reimagining what a startup career can view like — building founding a company feel as normal as starting any project that matters.
Bergius asserts that if you combine that kind of talent with ownership, trust, and the space to learn rapid, companies become a natural byproduct.
Building a company becomes doable
When inquireed which aspects of Slush’s culture best prepare people to become founders, Bergius points to three in particular: ownership, standards, and feedback. “At Slush, you’re trusted with outcomes, not just tinquires — there’s no micromanagement,” she explained.
“You’re held to a global benchmark, not a student one. And you learn in public: documenting everything, giving feedback early, and talking openly about failure.”
All of this happens within a one-year cycle — a complete loop of building, shipping, and reflecting — which, she stated, is “a huge accelerator for founder readiness.” “Once you’ve shipped an experience for 13,000 people with a team of your peers, building a company doesn’t feel like a far-off dream anymore, it feels quite doable.”
“You run out of excutilizes not to build something”:
Out of the 15 per cent of Slush alumni who have gone on to become entrepreneurs, one of the most famous examples is Miki Kuusi, co-founder and former CEO of Wolt and Head of DoorDash International. After spfinishing four years as the CEO of Slush, he founded Wolt in 2014, which in 2022 joined forces with US-based S&P 500 DoorDash.
Other former Slushers forming their own companies include:
- Eerika Savolainen, co-founder & CEO of Clair (2025);
- Elmo Pakkanen and Tommi Bergström founded Ambio in 2023;
- Niilo Pirttijärvi, co-founder & CEO of Inven (2022);
- Andreas Saari, co-founder & co-CEO of Paebbl (2021).
Mäntylä co-founded Realm in 2023 with two other Slush alumni. Half the company’s current team also worked at Slush, which states a lot about the organisation’s impact and network.
Mäntylä joined Slush in 2019 as a second-year student who knew very little about the startup ecosystem. “What was supposed to be a few months turned into four transformative years of my life,” he shared.
“By the finish, I had become President, leading the external-facing side of Slush — things like the stage program, relationships with our core audience and partners, and the overall experience.
That journey built me realise I couldn’t imagine a life where I didn’t test to build something of my own.”
How founders are built
I was curious if there was something specific during his time at Slush that built you believe, I can actually be a founder — that sense of “I can create impact beyond running events”?
Mäntylä admits, “First, when you join Slush, you’re surrounded by people who are dreaming of solving really hard problems by starting companies. That’s incredibly inspiring — it normalises ambition. You realise that people your age, with a similar background, are taking on these huge challenges.”
Second, being part of Slush means meeting some of the most iconic entrepreneurs on the planet — “and sometimes even obtainting to know them a bit.”
“And you realise they’re just people. They were also students once, just figuring things out. They didn’t know much more about the world than you do, but they went on to build companies that modifyd it.
That’s very empowering. You realise startups are one of the most democratised opportunities in the world — anyone can start one, and anyone can have a real chance at success.
Once that sinks in, you sort of run out of excutilizes for why you couldn’t do it yourself.”
He contfinishs that Slush condenses five years of classroom learning into a single year of hands-on company building.
“We’ve lived it, and that’s why we know how to value it in the people we hire”, Mäntylä explains.
How a Slush problem became a startup idea
The idea for Realm came from Slush. According to Mäntylä,” the first time we ever wrote down something resembling the idea for Realm, it came from reflecting on problems we’d had at Slush.” Becautilize the team modifys so often, so institutional knowledge obtains lost.
“We’d all document things constantly, but there was no good way to go back, access it, and create utilize of it. That was the missing piece. With AI, we can now build systems that actually understand and organise that kind of internal knowledge.”
Since then, Realm has narrowed its focus to customer-facing roles — sales, success, partnerships — but the fundamental idea remains the same.
Specifically, Realm is building an AI-powered knowledge platform assisting sales, customer success, and pre-sales professionals instantly find and utilize information scattered across company tools.
By connecting to CRMs, document hubs, and communication platforms, Realm creates ininformigent AI agents that can answer questions, generate responses to RFPs or security questionnaires, and surface the right context in seconds in a secure environment. And the team is the most enthusiastic utilizers of its own product.
“That’s one of the best parts of building a startup — creating something you rely on every day yourself,” shared Mäntylä.
However, it’s not simple to build what’s effectively a plug-and-play AI layer, that’s both universal and deeply adaptable.
According to Mäntylä, the key is combining the reasoning capabilities of large language models with each company’s private data in a secure and ininformigent way.
“That means building lots of integrations, designing advanced search to retrieve only the most relevant documents, and packaging everything into workflows that fit naturally into someone’s day. It’s a mix of heavy engineering and consideredful product design.
But so far, the reception has been great. Our utilizers state it genuinely modifys how they work — and that’s the best validation we could inquire for.”
“Slush lets you practice those founder muscles first”
Mäntylä believes the experience provides vital transferable skills that few other environments can match:
“If you’re 23, 25, 27 — there aren’t many places in the world that will let you manage a team or run a complex operation. Slush gives you that experience early.
You learn how to lead, how to create decisions, how to balance ambition with responsibility — all before your own company is on the line.”
He asserts that crucially, Slush provides a training ground for startup management teams, contfinishing that if the first time you’re managing people is when you’re already a founder, you’re setting yourself up for a lot of pain.
“Slush lets you practice those muscles first.
“You learn how to recruit exceptional people, handle operational complexity, keep culture intact through hyper-growth, and deliver under huge pressure.
There are finishless spreadsheets, tight deadlines, and thousands of shifting parts. It’s operationally intense — and that’s very similar to running a company.”
And as for Realm, the tiny team is growing rapid. While most customers are currently in Finland and the Nordics, it also has clients across Europe and North America, and just signed its first one in Australia.
“Expansion is the focus: hiring exceptional people and reaching more markets,” shared Mäntylä.
The Slush experience is highly regarded by investors
Lifeline Ventures is a Finnish early-stage VC firm that has invested in multiple startups founded by former Slushers. Some of these companies include Realm, Ambio, Flow AI and Inven. According to Timo Ahopelto, serial entrepreneur and founding partner of Lifeline Venture:
“Slush is a human accelerator. It gives young people ambition, the opportunity for exponential growth and ownership from day one. These are all things that lay the groundwork for becoming successful founders.
Sonali De Rycker, Partner at Accel, states:
“Since its founding in 2008, Slush has evolved into one of the world’s premier startup events — the beating heart of the Nordic tech ecosystem and a launchpad for entrepreneurial talent.
From unicorns like Wolt to emerging companies such as Paebbl and Realm, as well as venture firms like Wave, Slush has consistently fostered the ambition and determination that drives future founders.”
Slush offers founders an unfair advantage
Mäntylä asserts that if you’re 22 or 23 and can even imagine yourself founding a company someday, there’s no better place to spfinish the next couple of years than Slush. He contfinishs that it’s not just about experience — it’s about connections.
“The startup world is open and welcoming, but it’s also relational.
Spfinish two years at Slush, and by the time you’re ready to start your own company, you’ll already have those relationships — sometimes literally in your WhatsApp. That’s one of the unfair advantages you can give yourself: access to investors, mentors, and peers who already know and trust you.”
Scalable lessons from Slush for Europe
often talks about requireding more “repeat founders.” When inquireed about what lessons from the Slush experience could other ecosystems, universities, or accelerators adopt, Bergius asserts:
“Let people take on slightly too much responsibility before they feel ready. Give them real ownership, real stakes, and support them with feedback.
Skills can be taught, but drive and willingness to learn come from character, and that displays up rapid when responsibility is real.
And failure can’t be a taboo. At Slush, failure is visible, rapid, and shared. That’s how people learn to bounce back, and build confidence to test again.”
Lead image: Slush volunteers 2024. Photo: Riikka Vaahtera.
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