antti.vilpponen.net

Back in January I helped a man called Saul Singer on some facts regarding Finnish entrepreneurship and the ecosystem we have. He told me he was writing a book about Israel and its startup ecosystem, thus I was glad to help the man in his project. Today I saw a tweet from Saul Singer that his book was #11 on New York Times Political Bestsellers list! Not only is the book doing well on NYT, but it’s also enjoying its third week on the Wall Street Journal business book list as well as on the Washington Post non-fiction/hardcover list. Well done!

Israel has been an inspiration to the Finnish startup ecosystem in a way that not many know. The current Vigo accelerators we have in this country are partly a result of the learnings from Israel and their ecosystem. The efforts being put across by our government are also a result of certain individuals hard work towards marketing growth entrepreneurship in Finland. So in summary, Israel has been somewhat of a benchmark for us Finns.

I managed to query the book with Amazon and in the end he did include a comment from me comparing Israeli and Finnish startup ecosystems. Mr Singer was kind enough to send me a copy of the book so I’m thrilled to read more about the reasons why Israel is doing so well compared to other parts of the world.

If you want your copy of the book, Amazon has Start-up Nation on sale for a mere $15.78 USD.

There’s something I’ve been thinking about regarding online banking that just doesn’t make any sense. It’s the logic that they have copied from their offices to the interface of their website. You can see it in the image on the right. The bank in the example is Nordea by the way.

The logic is that why on earth do I have to choose whether I’m a personal customer or corporate customer. This is the logic that you have to apply in regular street level offices, because you have specific people serving specific needs. However, this does not need to be the case in online banking. Why is this?

Everyone’s heading to the their own dashboard based on their customer id. When I enter mine, the bank knows that I’m Antti Vilpponen and he is a customer in the consumer banking business. When I sign in with my company bank id the bank knows that it’s a company signing in. Why make it difficult for the person to choose the way the desk where they want to be serviced at when there isn’t one?

Just a simple example and the world is full of these.