At Maria 01 we want to make sure that every founder and its team has access to the most relevant sources of information to adapt to the existing circumstances.
We hope this guide will help you navigate the new landscape of uncertainty caused by the current outbreak. We encourage you to share this guide forward with someone else.
Funding and support opportunities during COVID-19 💡
Apply for funding, grants or check further information on how to support and protect your business and employees.
📌Business Finland offers funding for all companies under 300M€ in revenue affected by the outbreak. Check it here.
📌Installment free loan periods & more by Finnvera. Check it here.
📌ELY, Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment. Check it here.
📌COVID-19 updates by Vero Hallinto(Finnish Tax Administration). For English content here and Finnish content here.
📌🇫🇮 Kaikki koronasta yrittäjille by Yrittäjät. Check it here.
📌Coronavirus – frequently asked questions and answers for entrepreneurs by the Federation of Finnish Enterprises. Check it here.
📌🇫🇮 Suomen yrittäjien työttömyyskassa SYT, kertoo, miten tulee toimia, jos yrittäjä joutuu karanteeniin tai sairastuu. Check it here.
📌Kela, the Social Insurance Institution of Finland benefits during the coronavirus. Check it here.
📌If you are a startup with a solution that can improve the situation of corona, apply for support by the Norrsken Foundation. Check it here.
Information about COVID-19 in Finland 🇫🇮
Here you will find status updates and resources regarding COVID-19 in Finland.
📌Finnish Institute of Health and Welfare. Check it here.
📌COVID-19 Finland Toolkit. Check it here.
📌The State of COVID-19 in Finland. Check it here.
📌Corona Virus Tech Handbook. Check it here.
Remote Support and Advice for Teams 👨🏽💻
Here you will find advice for remote teams and tips on what to focus on as a startup during COVID-19.
📌COVID-19 Fact Base – Bain Macro Trends Group. Check it here.
📌Productivity in Uncertain Times through the Elastic Digital Workplace by Accenture. Check it here.
📌7 Best Practices to Foster Inclusion in Remote Work by Inklusiiv. Check it here.
📌Remote Work Wiki by Notion. Check it here.
📌How to embrace remote work by Trello. Check it here.
📌A list of all suitable services for remote work by Maria 01 member companies and other Finnish startups. Check them here.
📌Free apps and resources to support distance learning in schools affected by the coronavirus outbreak by Koulu.me. Check them here.
📌100+ Startups offering free products and services in response to coronavirus. Check them here.
📌A quick guide to the business implications of the coronavirus from KPMG. Check it here.
📌🇫🇮 Article in Finnish about the effects of the coronavirus for employers by Lexia. Check it here.
📌🇫🇮 Article in Finnish about the agreements affected by coronavirus from Lexia. Check it here.
📌 COVID-19 crisis: 12 Finnish investors share their advice to startups. Check it here. Check it here.
📌 Coronavirus Print & Social Media Resources to help #StopTheSpread from Canva here.
Webinars and Online-Events by Maria 01 Members, Partners, and Friends
For upcoming sessions check out our events page here and co-hosted event here.
📌March 20th: Nordic Business Forum: Webinar with Risto Siilasmaa: Scenario Planning – Case COVID-19 (for business owners, CEOs, and board members) 20.3, 15-16. Attend here.
📌March 20th-22nd: Hack the crisis in Finland. Register here.
📌March 26th: KPMG: Yrityksen työkalut talouden hallintaan koronaviruksen kurittamassa liiketoimintaympäristössä 26.3. klo 14-15. Attend here.
📌April 3rd: Avoset: How to make remote work as efficient as possible with (free) Atlassian products at 9-9:30. (Followed by Avoset’s Office Hours; details below) Attend here.
📌April 6th-10th: 100-hour online accelerator to address the COVID-19 crisis like a startup by Salto Growth Camp. Attend here.
📌Telia is offering a free service for entrepreneurs, check it out here.
Maria 01 Office Hours Open to the Startup Community
These office hour sessions are free and open to attend for anyone.
For upcoming sessions check out our events page here.
📌March 27th: Lexia Office Hours organized remotely. Sign up here.
📌April 3rd: Avoset Oy & Atlassian Products (Trello, Jira, Confluence) for free (teams under 10 people); FrontApp free for 4 months. Sign up here.
📌April 17th: AWS Solution Architect: How to implement and build solutions on AWS? Specific questions about an AWS service you are using? Do you want to validate & get feedback on your designs and architecture? Sign up here.
📌Choose a Date: San Francisco: How to handle marketing and PR during COVID-19? Sign up here.
Taking Care of Yourself
We understand that the financial impact on companies can be massive during these hard times. People are feeling stressed about their future and worrying about the days after the outbreak.
Do not forget to take care of yourself mentally. Social-distancing and isolation at home may leave you feeling lonely. Here are some tips and links for you to check on yourself while working remotely:
✅ Make a schedule: Not everyone is productive at the same time. Find the right working hours for you. You can always create a nice morning routine to kick-start your day, same as walking to the office normally does for you. Take a stroll, eat a balanced breakfast or start your day with writing morning pages to boost your creativity.
✅ Take breaks with your colleagues: Set up a recurring calendar invite for your team. Take a cup of coffee and chat about anything else than work.
✅ Sometimes it is good to have a moment just for yourself: You can have a meditative moment with different kinds of apps or then just go for a walk in the forest. For tracking your everyday mood you can use the free app called Daylio.
✅ Become part of a community: Leapers is a community that supports the mental health of entrepreneurs, freelancers, and digital nomads. Check out their website with different kinds of podcasts and articles. Here is a guide from Leapers about working well from home under quarantine conditions and for maintaining a good mental health under challenging circumstances.
✅ Reach out for professional help if needed: If you would like to talk with a professional, you can always book an appointment with a psychotherapist from Vastaamo here.
✅ Don’t forget to be social: There are multiple chat services where you can go and chat online with peers. For example, HealthfulChat is an online peer health support community that offers chat rooms for anybody to use. All of the chat rooms can be found here.
✅ Focus and rest: Follow only the news feeds that you trust and need, cut all the rest. Remember to rest, take time off to be with your family (video works best in the current situation), eat healthily, and prioritize your sleep.
Remote Work with Children
Maria 01 team gathered some tips and tricks on how to handle long nights (and days!) with kids in the house. We hope you can find these tips helpful.
✅ Create a daily timetable/schedule for your kid(s): You can make this an arts and crafts activity with your kids; print, paint, and draw. Insert food times, outside breaks, and screen times along with everything else. If you need helpful pictures or templates to use, you will find them here (🇫🇮).
✅ Create surprise boxes: These boxes are perfect for the times you need to concentrate on your work. Kids will love it when they have something to intrigue their curiosity. The box can contain anything from soap bubbles, balloons, playdough or a big box of legos. For older kids, you can create different tasks such as counting the door handles at home, windows or draw a picture of the family, etc.
✅ Help for remote learning: For parents seeking help for kids learning remotely, Facebook has a group in Finnish for parents sharing their concerns, tips, and tricks. Join the group here.
More Activities for Children at Home
📌Free printable coloring pictures can be found here.
📌Finnish children’s books can be found here. Also, many of the audiobook apps offer a two-week free trial period. At the moment, Lukulumo offers one free-month for all its content. The app can be downloaded from the app store and it contains over 100 children’s books in various languages. The username for the app is LUKULUMOKOTI and the password is 987654321.
📌Audible made children books available free of charge! You will find hundreds of titles available. The collection has been handpicked by their editors and is a mix of stories to entertain, engage, and inform young people, ages 0–18. To start listening, just go to their website from here.
📌Even though physical contacts is now cut short, you can always set up a video call or a video conference with your kids’ friends.
Sports and Fun Exercise for Kids and Adults
📌Exercising with kids can be challenging (especially in quarantine) but you can always choose an indoor option from one of these:
- Urbaanit lasten tanssitunnit (urban kids dancing lessons) offer free remote dancing lessons for kids every Monday and Thursday at 6pm.
- Fiilisfitness offer free live sessions suitable for kids and parents on Facebook.
- Elixia gyms offer free live sessions online.
- Herotreeni offers free live lessons on Facebook.
- If you want to exercise with the kids in the living room check out Living Room Circus.
Learning made easy for kids
If you would like to do and learn science with your kids, here are some interesting links to go through:
📌Steve Spangler Science offers science lab experiments you can do at home.
📌The Dad Lab contains a wide variety of videos showing science experiments for toddlers as well as fun things to do with kids at home.
📌Heureka Hetki contains a few minute long science experiment videos. The videos are made to show the joy of learning in a fun way.
📌YLE’s tv-show “Tiedonjyvä” can be found here and the instructions for the experiments can be found here.
Cultural Breaks
Some museums offer virtual rounds. Check here to see which museums around the globe offer virtual tours or visit the Finnish Air Force Museum here.
However, is ballet more your thing? Kids will love this recording of Peppi Pitkätossu from the Finnish Opera. Konserttikeskus is also providing free live concerts for kids. At the moment there are three scheduled concerts and they can all be seen here.
Educational apps for kids
📌Ekapeli Alku: learning letters and pronounciation (Finnish), English version here.
📌Molla ABC: learning letters.
📌Math king/Matikkakunkku: learning maths.
Anything you think is missing, let us know!
