Building The Next Chapter For The Maria Hospital

Early Days — The beginning of a startup house

In early Spring 2016, the world looked bleak looking out through an old smudged hospital window in central Helsinki. Construction trucks and helmet wearing workers hustled around the yard. We had just started a project taking over the 130-year old Maria hospital with the aim of populating it with tech startups and other tech community people.

Things didn’t look good for the newly founded not-for-profit operator company. The renovation budget was tight at around 20€/sqm, while the only proper business profit & loss excel sheet, built by a venture capitalist being supportive of the baby project, showed the operator company that it would be out of money within the first 6 months.

The goal was to build a home base for the startup community in which to gather. A mass of tech startups, venture capital funds and other startup community players had been ushered for past 3 months to release their offices and move to the old hospital.

We were still optimistic. The expectation from the building owner City of Helsinki was for Maria 01 startup hub to take over 3300 sqm of the old main building and pay rent. We wanted it all.

The mission was simple:

Step 1: Attract a critical mass of startups and local venture capital companies to bring the place to live.

Step 2: Make the environment enjoyable and supportive.

Step 3: Establish activities for tech talent, investors and corporations to network when looking for the next new in tech.

January 2016. A snippet from the first powerpoint, used to explain the Maria “Startup hospital” idea to the Startup Foundation board. We’ve had to rethink the member pricing twice after realising how ineffective rental unit a former hospital is.

Summer 2016. Maria before startups moved in. Empty hospital spaces reminded people of Silent Hill. Early cleaners and startup employees were scared to walk around alone. Luckily, Ghostbusters visited during fall of 2016 to negotiate with the ghosts.

Summer 2016. A stack of used chairs waiting to be sat by startup people. We had forgot to budget for furniture. Luckily, Business Finland organisations were being moved to a new Team Finland building and had to renew all their furniture. We set to scavenge and bought empty the old Tekes, Finnvera, and Finpro offices. 8 truckloads of used furniture kept rolling to Maria during the summer.

Recent estimation says around 100 promising startups are founded in Finland yearly with the total population being 2300–5000 companies depending how you define the category.

The existing old Maria hospital held roughly 20 000 sqm of space, meaning 200–300 early-stage startups could fit perfectly. Some of it was pending full renovation. It still sounds doable, we said to ourselves:

“A weird and funky tech club for people who build software businesses was born. A kind of hands-off incubator where founding teams want to start their companies at. A sort of poor-man’s Sand Hill Road.”

Maria hospital was re-birthed in a short time. Yet we have never been more busy.

Looking at the past 2,5 years, both the failures and successes, we can proudly say something went right. We have seen funding come together for the Maria companies. We have been there for company shutdowns. The first alumni have moved on from Maria to larger fields to roam. The old main building still has a lot to work on, while the recently opened Building 5, allocates the Games Factory, and Maki.vc is finding its foot on the campus.

Summer 2016. One of the first companies Soundshade enjoying the terrace view. The chairs were donated by Maria’s early supporter Inventure MD Sami Lampinen from his summer cottage.

Fall 2016. Maria restaurant Starter Helsinki version 0.1, reminded us of youth summer camp cafeteria.

There’s a lot of room to improve on all aspects, so we are staying hungry, both questioning our incubator model and practice. After our first year and a half of operations, it still feels a bit fuzzy. We were learning everything from scratch. Renovation was a constant burden and companies kept moving in all the time. The first website launch for Maria 01 was built by stealing and smashing together tag-lines from our dear old Nordic colleagues Founders House and Sup46. We still owe them for showing us the way.

2019 means for us an expansion year. All the existing old Maria hospital buildings will be put into use. We’re also getting better at interior design and hacking together old property infrastructure. Slowly.

Summer 2016. Blooming taking a break. Later the company came to be known as Meru Health and joined YCombinator Summer 2018 batch. Julius (right) worked for the Maria project during the summer to help smoothen the takeover, while Blooming was redone. He’s now at Smartly — a fast growth ad-tech scaleup.

Fall 2016. Opening party had 1400 attendees. The main building renovation was still a construction site with 30% done. Cabling and construction dust was all over, but first floor looked kind of okay. 14 startups had moved in.

The Next chapter: From a house to a campus

Today feels like the beginning of the next chapter for the historical project.

While working on operations, the City of Helsinki worked on the wider city area development and background work was moving forward building by building to the land area below the old Maria hospital buildings.

In the fall of 2017, the City of Helsinki opened a search for a consortium — that would be able to build new on the southern part of the campus. The search was concluded for now, with YIT — a major property developer & Keva — a Finnish public pension fund, proposed by the City to explore constructing an expansion part to the existing home base for startups.

Fall 2017. Maria 1st birthday celebration. Team Singa hiding from the crowds. We’ve always loved a good party and will continue to. Parties help spark new companies, employees and friends.

The announced development project, if successfully put to action, will mean that Maria hospital will remain a construction yard for the next 4 years. It’s a big undertaking.

Yes, it will take a while, until the whole campus is ready.

Yes, we’ve never been more excited about the progress. We’re starting to work together with the project to make the campus whole. It will also mean we’re able to fulfill our original dream. The mission just got a bit larger.

Spring 2017. A snippet of the startup campus’ ‘vision deck’ that was drawn by an unknown architect (thank you) to explain what we dreamed. The new drawn buildings had no base in reality and still don’t.

Summer 2018. Demo Day at the recently launched Games Factory. Quicksave presents.

Out of the thousands of startups in Finland, only a few hundreds have built their company to 30+ employees and achieved later stage growth, yet international capital continues to come in. We want the future campus to be a home for tech companies both in their early-stage and later-stage to form a network of talent fueled by proximity and common culture.

The Maria tribe can build bridges globally, change careers for professionals and build the new generation of technology.

Capital, customers, development teams all follow, if the core is solid. The whole campus allows room for approximately 5000 talented people. There is a very long trip ahead to make all this happen.

Finland continues leading the charts in European venture capital investments in startups and early-stage growth companies as percentage of GDP between the years 2013 and 2017. (Finnish Venture Capital Association)

Fall 2018. Maria Demo Day replaces the birthday tradition. Klevu pitches to the crowd during the official program.

Maria exists to provide the best environment for young tech companies

With this new development, I believe it’s time to affirm the old focus we started with. Maria hospital, both old and new, is built by the community for the startups.

The view of the world behind this, is simple:

1. All growth companies are built by entrepreneurial founders: Everything starts from there. There is no other path to innovation, new products and services. New companies entering to the market start with the right incentives to make something happen and distribute it wherever they think their customers are.
2. Founders are dependent on their early team: A good growth environment requires only talent. Everything else is secondary for a working startup campus. The future Maria hospital should be an area that attracts the right talent and where that talent can do their best work.
3. Building a tech growth company requires a dynamic set of skills and mindset: It is a career choice. There is no direct pipeline for picking the talent straight out of universities and large incumbent organizations. Thus, in a forming startup ecosystem, the right talent is valuable. Maria campus needs to be an institution, where talent can build networks, spread knowledge and move fast.
4. Entrepreneurship is contagious: Successful startups are built by generations of companies that preceded them, especially in areas where technology is not yet mature and timing is not there. The future Maria should stay accessible for people to get that spark and founders to be initiated.

Spring 2018. Starter Helsinki. The restaurant is the heart of the old main building with hundreds of visitors each day and private junctions weekly. Photo by Laura Nissinen.

Summer 2018. Maria inner courtyard. A little village has formed.