Whatever you think of this man, he is one of those Finnish pioneers, who truly wants to pro-actively build bridges with China. You can’t deny that. Alex Stubb and his party have systematically been positively in contact with Chinese key decision makers and managed to arrange historical occasions, such as bringing Chinese vice-premier Wang Yang to a first ever non-governmental event abroad of China. That was Slush 2014. I remember well the speech. Was super epic. That also paved the way for us to do Slush China in Beijing the year after. When criticising politicians it’s always good to remember that there’s a lot of very meaningful national and global work that doesn’t always get the credit and headlines. Alex Stubb has for many years realised the credit and potential of China for Finns and Europeans and at a time, when everyone’s looking away, he’s been part of a team building meaningful bridges with the Chinese leaders. Credit to that!

Was very fascinating to talk with him about China and Slush. He clearly gets it and is proactively pushing that forward.

Was happy to introduce also my girlfriend, Chloe to him. Alex was hanging around with Peter Vesterbacka (Angry-Birds co-founder and Slush founder), who obviously is like a Godfather to Slush folks. We also had very nice Espoo ladies, who by the way do the best city cooperation with China of probably most of the European cities. They’ve created great connections with Shanghai, from bottom to the top and keep doing it. Added also Caloom members Kustaa and Timea, who are building the revolution in coworking spaces on offline and digital means, and Allen Lau, whose obviously the Colony Capital APAC head and WE+ coworking space CEO. Allen is great guy too and was happy to see him presenting his idea to the Premier. More of him soon.

One of those sudden moments. Slush is though not made by politicians or government – it’s a student-run non-profit community effort. It’s good that the high people are there, to get inspired and influenced, true heroes are though the 2000 volunteers making the event, let’s never forget that.