Not at all. We understand the challenges of finding the right idea you’re passionate about. You should have an entrepreneurial spirit and drive. With this mindset and surrounding yourself with people who share it, finding a startup idea will come naturally.

We welcome every student regardless of their study background, as long as you have the entrepreneurial spirit and drive. Your skills can be from diverse areas and don’t need to be restricted to business skills.

We like to keep our semesters active with a variety of smaller and bigger events, workshops, sprints, hackathons, community gatherings and ecosystem trips organized throughout the semester.

We are a diverse community with members from all over the world. That’s why our main language of communication is English.

We have a two step application process. The first step in your written application. The written application consists of open questions that help us get a sense of who you are, what are your skills and why you’re passionate about entrepreneurship. After screening and evaluating all the applications, the selected applicants are invited to an interview in which we want to get to know you and better understand your motivation for entrepreneurship and why you want to join our community.

We don’t have a fixed hour rate you need to invest. We lay a big emphasis on an active and lively community and that the projects you do at START Helsinki help you gain new skills for your entrepreneurial journey. We like to say, you get as much out of your time at START Helsinki as much as you invest in it.

We have 5 departments in which you can be active and undertake projects to practice and gain new skills. Some projects even span across multiple departments or even organizations. You’ll be able to realize your ideas regardless of the department you decide to join.

Our departments are: People department, Events department, Marketing department, Partnerships department and Finance department. You will have time during your onboarding to get to know the departments and choose the right one for you.

No. Being part of START Helsinki is free of charge.