The Riot Years in memoriam
@ 4:33 pm One small piece of news in the Iltalehti today struck me as a reminder of a past era. I guess it was the so-called “IT boom” in the late 1990′s in Finland that drew me along, so much I decided to change careers. Of course those guys who were in the forefront starting it went much higher up catching the stars – but they also burned in re-entry. According to the IL Jaakko Rytsölä was sentenced for more or less for “deliberately misallocating money from his debtors – read: tax office” to a year and six months in jail (probational) and 50 hours of community service.
Now you might ask “who”, but the Rytsölä brothers, Antti and Jaakko especially were branded as the icons of the new success story Finland was launching in the late 1990′s. Two brothers from a regular family had started from scratch in 1995 establishing DLC, one of the first ISP’s. Jaakko had started his own IT business when he was 16 selling computer parts, and when his little brother Antti joined him in Helsinki, he was selling hotdogs at the Helsinki Railway station to make the ends meet while the ISP business was in its fledgling state. A few mergers later the Saunalahti was formed and the young men in their twenties were all of a sudden millionaires, remembering that in 1992 the whole country had been more or less bankrupt. Of course the press hounded the new IT millionaires – after all a Lamborghini Diablo as a “company car”? The two young men were favorites in the tabloid headlines. Finnish envy nonwithstanding the flamboyant lifestyle annoyed some, so the police found a red Ferrari in Helsinki traffic a red flag and Jaakko Rytsölä was fined a whopping 100 000 euros for speeding in his Ferrari (oh, he had about seven cars at one time).
The laws of physics say what goes up must come down, unless the escape velocity is fast enough. A Lamborghini is too slow in Finland. When the “IT-boom” as the “dot.com bubble” was called in Finland turned into the bubble that burst, Jaakko Rytsölä lost overnight a record 6 million euros of his calculated wealth of 10 million in the autumn of 2001 when the Jippii group stock crashed 90%. By the spring of 2002 the tax office had filed him bankrupt, but the tax office was still after money, and the result of the trials that followed was handed out today. Jaakko Rytsölä has claimed innocence and stated that the money wasn’t hidden anywhere but was invested and thus was lost in the stock crashes.
The boom/bubble era had a lot of similar from rags-to riches-to rags stories. Many of the people were young and maybe perhaps been hearing from their parents the “no money” saga growing up so once money was coming from the doors and windows the “crazy years” of the 1980′s came back overnight. It was an era to seize the moment – but there were other people running away with the money. As the dot.com bubble burst in the USA, the flash downed several Finnish companies who had gone venturing to Europe such as Jippii and Sonera which lost huge investments in Germany. And the aftermath was bankrupcy trials, insider trading suits… USA had Enron but we had our own scandals we remember the 2000′s for.
Comparing to the “crazy years” of the 1980′s the dot.com bubble years in the 1990′s could be called “riot years”. If you haven’t seen it before, try to find the documentary Riot On!, its about a small Finnish gaming company Riot-E which got 20 million dollars of venture capital… and ” where the f*ck did it all go?”.
But at the end of the day – regardless of how far the frontier is – the tax office is the last man standing.
