The Finnish school holds back the gifted — what it means for Finland’s next founders

In the 41st episode of Bängeri-podcast, Elias and Joel work through many topics — Eurovision, Doha as a little Dubai, prediction markets — but the latter part of the episode turns to a subject unusually important for the Finnish founder audience. Their question is direct and uncomfortable: why does the Finnish school cripple the most gifted students?

This is an important conversation, even though it does not directly address entrepreneurship. Its consequences show up in full in who builds Finland’s next growth companies — and where they do it. If the school does not allow the top to stand out, the top look for room somewhere else. And if finding that room takes ten years, Finland loses the earlier decade in which growth should have been born.

▶

Source: Bängeri-podcast #41 — Why the Finnish school holds back the gifted, 24 May 2026 (in Finnish)

What Bängeri discusses

Elias and Joel’s framing in the episode is not academic. It is a genuine observation: the Finnish school system is built to serve the average, and where students deviate from the average — both downward and upward — they suffer structurally. Support structures for those deviating downward have, in recent years, been strengthened through special education and individual paths. Support structures for those deviating upward have not strengthened at the same pace, and in many municipalities the alternative for a gifted student becomes self-led progress at home or adapting frustration to the pace of the classroom.

Bängeri’s message is that this is not just a matter for gifted children. It is a matter for Finland’s next generation of founders, because exactly those students who in school ask more, try more and fail more are the same ones who in ten years will build startup companies. If they learn in the classroom that deviating is an uncomfortable state, they will not, ten years later, want to deviate in a new way either — that is, they will not start companies. They choose a safer path that rewards compliance better.

A second important episode theme is business policy, and specifically why Business Finland prefers to support everything rather than the firms that could really return more. This is the other side of the same conversation: if the school slows the gifted, state funding evenly supports the mediocre. The result is a system in which the few exceptional performers must break through the system on their own work — not with its support.

What it means for growth companies

This is a serious structural question. Finland has, over the last ten years, built a small but strong growth-company field — Wolt, Iceye, Supercell, Smartly, Solar Foods, Oura, Aiven — and many of them were founded by people who themselves were, in one way or another, deviant students. Their strength was built on learning already young to take risks and tolerate uncertainty. But if the next generation learns in school that deviating doesn’t pay, where will the founders come from who will build the next ten Finnish-rooted growth companies?

There are at least three answers, and all of them are already visible.

The first is that the gifted move abroad. For a gifted individual graduating from Aalto University, taking the first job in Berlin, London or San Francisco — an environment where their deviation is valued — is more natural than before. This is not new, but its volume has grown. Finland loses these individuals, and the companies they build are born elsewhere.

The second is that the gifted don’t start a company. They do so well in corporations or consulting firms that the risk of entrepreneurship looks disproportionate compared with safe wage work. This is an especially hard loss, because it is invisible — we don’t see the companies that were not founded, and there are no statistics on it.

The third is that the gifted learn outside school. Finland has, over the last decade, seen a strong self-study culture emerge through YouTube, Coursera-type platforms and coding bootcamps. This is a positive development, but it does not replace what structural school could do — because self-study opportunities accumulate to those whose families already have the resources and incentives for it.

What for the founder now

This is one of those structural questions that cannot be solved by a single founder’s decision. But the single founder can do three things that build their part of the answer.

First, if you have yourself built a growth company in Finland and succeeded, mentor young gifted students. You don’t need to start an education company. You only need to keep the door open to high-school-age people who reach out — through class visits, education days or personal conversations. This is time whose input looks small but whose return is disproportionate.

**Second**, if you recruit, favour people with indirect learning paths. A person with a high-school–Aalto–consulting–founder path is often strong — but equally strong is a person with a high-school–gap-year–Berlin–sales–founder path. Especially in the AI era, where the formal degree has stopped being the best evidence of competence, finding and hiring these people is a structural competitive edge. I have written earlier in Innohub about “different shape” hiring being one of the most important strategic choices of the AI era.

Third, if you influence policy — in business associations, education policy, municipal decision-making — raise strengthening support for gifted students as one of Finland’s competitiveness building blocks. This is not “elitism” — it is a growth strategy. Finland was built on the welfare-state principle that everyone should have the chance to reach their potential. That principle is not met if the system cripples potential for those whose potential is largest.

What to take away

Bängeri’s hard question is that the Finnish school slows the most gifted students. The answer is not “abandon the equality ideal” or “build an elitist parallel system”. The answer is structural: school must be able to support each student at their own level, and this does not mean that growing beyond a level should cost the student.

For the Finnish founder the message is twofold. In the short term: if you are building a company, deliberately seek out those gifted people the school overlooked — they often make the best employees, because they have learned to find their own challenges themselves. In the longer term: influence so that the next generation is not overlooked the same way. I have written earlier about how Finland’s structural competitiveness toward 2050 is decided by decisions made now — and education is one of the most central of them.

The Bängeri episode is an hour long, and at the end the conversation is left deliberately open. But its core question deserves to stay in the air: if our school does not allow the top to develop, who will build Finland’s next decade of growth?