My First Slush (2025) — And What Startups Are Really Struggling With
I'm just back from my first Slush experience in Helsinki, Finland 🇫🇮, the world’s leading startup event:
- 6,000 startups
- 3,500 investors and the largest gathering of venture capital (over $4 trillion in assets)
- 20,000+ meetings, mostly between startups & investors
- 600+ side events everywhere in Helsinki for one week: sauna & ice dipping, investor day, industry-specific events (AI, deep tech, ...), country-specific events (Belgian beer night, ...), networking night at Epic Games, etc
So if you're an early-stage startup, Slush definitely is THE place to be!
It is hard to capture with one blog post everything that happened there, between the very intense and interesting networking events, the very insightful talks from startup & scale-up founders sharing their experience on go-to-market, product-market fit, deciding which features to pursue and when to pivot, navigating co-founder relationships and breakups, keeping a good mental health as a founder, tips on how to find the right investors and raise money, etc, so I'll focus on insights related to what startups struggle with in 2025, in this post-AI era, from the discussions I've had with 40+ founders.
Insights From the Ground with 40+ Founders
1. The Fundraising Paradox: Money Is There — But the Pressure Is Higher Than Ever
Across dozens of conversations, one theme kept coming back: founders are stressed about fundraising, but even more stressed about what comes after.
Many teams feel caught between two pressures:
- Investors expecting traction earlier than ever
- Internal systems that aren’t ready to scale once the money arrives
Several founders told me they raised a first round… only to discover that their velocity actually dropped after hiring.
Why?
Because execution was fragile. The idea was strong — the operating system wasn’t.
My recommendation:
Before chasing the next round, build a 90-day execution narrative:
- What you’ll ship
- Why it matters for growth
- And who owns what
Fundraising becomes easier when you look like a team that knows exactly how to use capital.
2. Acquisition vs Conversion: Where Early-Stage Momentum Quietly Dies
One of the most surprising patterns from my conversations: Nearly every founder felt confident about finding prospects, but very few felt confident about converting them.
The interest is there.
The traffic is there.
The calls are there.
The follow-through… not so much.
Typical reasons I heard:
- Unclear product story
- Weak onboarding
- No consistent tracking
- A funnel built “on instinct”
It’s not a marketing problem.
It’s a systems problem.
My recommendation:
Run a conversion audit before increasing acquisition.
Map the journey from first touch → closed customer, and fix the single biggest point of friction.
Improving conversion by even 10–20% is often more impactful than tripling reach.
3. Talent Isn’t the Hard Part — Alignment Is
Founders kept telling me:
“Hiring devs is hard.”
But after digging deeper, the real issue was almost always different:
It’s not finding developers — it’s finding developers who align.
The best engineers want:
- Ownership
- Clarity
- A mission they understand
- And a product direction that doesn’t change every 72 hours
Misalignment slows everything down:
PRs drag, features bounce around, priorities shift without explanation.
Velocity suffers even when the team is technically strong.
My recommendation:
Create a simple alignment ritual each week:
- What we’re shipping
- Why it matters this week (not last quarter)
- What “done” means
- What trade-offs we accept
It’s the cheapest productivity booster you’ll ever implement.
4. Architecture Is the Silent Killer of Startup Speed
This was perhaps the strongest pattern across the conversations:
Startups with momentum had simple, boring, reliable architecture.
Startups struggling had complex, modern, over-engineered architecture.
I heard stories of:
- Microservices with teams of 4–6 people
- Over-designed schemas
- Deployment pipelines stitched together like patchwork
- Frameworks chosen because they were “cool”
Complexity slowed them down.
Morale dropped.
Throughput tanked.
My recommendation:
Run a 30-day tech simplification sprint:
- Remove complexity
- Unify naming and data patterns
- Automate one thing that slows the team down
- Fix the 3 workflows that devs complain about
Simple architecture → fast execution.
Always.
5. Europe Has World-Class Talent — But Scaling Still Feels Slow
Talking with founders from all across Europe, a unique tension emerged: They feel they have the talent, the ambition, the engineering culture... but scaling beyond their home country feels like navigating a maze.
Regulations vary, purchasing processes differ, constraints pop up everywhere. This creates a situation where teams move fast internally, but slow down externally.
And yet, the upside is clear: The startups who manage to stay fast despite these obstacles often outpace their competitors dramatically.
My recommendation:
Design for cross-border readiness early:
- Modular features
- Flexible data structures
- Compliance-aware product decisions
- And a roadmap that anticipates friction instead of reacting to it
What slows other founders down becomes your advantage.
6. Founders Are More Resilient Than Ever — But Burnout Is Real
One of the most human insights from Slush:
Founders love what they do. They wouldn’t change paths. They’re energized by the chaos.
But they’re also exhausted.
Late nights, constant context switching, pressure from investors, pressure from themselves — it adds up.
And the dangerous part?
Most founders only notice burnout after it hits the team’s ability to execute.
My recommendation:
Introduce a monthly health retro:
not about KPIs, not about roadmap, but about:
- Focus
- Workload
- Morale
- Clarity
A healthier founder → a faster company.
Conclusion — In 2025, Execution Beats Everything
If Slush 2025 taught me anything, it’s this: the strongest founders don’t win by thinking bigger — they win by removing friction.
When the team, the product, and the tech move in the same direction, speed becomes natural.
If you’re a founder and want to talk about your team’s velocity, architecture, or execution patterns, I’m happy to share what I’ve seen inside fast-moving startups.
