There was the $1 billion exit of MySQL to Sun, as well as Dopplr and Jaiku (the Finnish Twitter that was bought by Google and used as a basis for Google Buzz). Star Wreck was started by a group of friends from Tampere, and ended up having thousands of contributors and 8 million viewers, making it the most successful Finnish movie ever and the first major crowdsourced movie production.

The Finnish ecosystem is facing many of the same challenges as other small European countries (I've made a list of the 10 major ones here). There is a lack of entrepreneurs. Only 3% of the population wants to become entrepreneurs, and only a fraction of them want to create startups. Joining or starting a new venture is seen as a very risky thing, and there is still a strong stigma that people who are self-employed probably couldn't find a "real" job in the first place.
RWW's Never Mind the Valley series:

* Austin
* Bangalore
* Beijing
* Boston
* Boulder
* Israel
* London
* Los Angeles
* New York
* Portland

As is often the case in Europe, failure is perceived as extremely negative, rather than a learning opportunity. There is also a lack of visibility for Finnish startups. The local press and TV mostly ignore them, and blog coverage mainly comes from Arcticstartup, as well Nerdstalker.

Venture investments are fewer and comparatively smaller than with U.S. companies. However, there is strong government support to improve things. For example, Tekes provides grants and low interest loans to tech companies. Vera venture is a "government VC" that will follow investments made by others. There is also a program called Tuli, which gives "free money" to students to explore ideas that could become startups.

Despite the hurdles, there is still a vibrant, creative startup community in Finland. During the past year, there has been a growing number of entrepreneurship societies in the major cities. Their goal is to get students excited about startups, have them meet role models, hear stories and help them get off the ground with their ideas - and even give seed funding through government support.

The leading group is called Aalto Entrepreneurship Society, which has 5,000 members, has helped with the creation of 40 startups last year and organized excursions to Silicon Valley.

Other entrepreneurship societies include HUES, Hankenes, Boost Turku and Stream Tampere. Together, they're organizing a program similar to Y-Combinator this summer called Summer of Startups where students can receive seed money to create a startup, rather than getting a summer job.