I founded VCC as my part-time investment company, while serving Panostaja Plc, in 1989, but I soon started to also practice a bit of consulting. VCC’s first customer was CapMan for assignments in the US, in 1990-1991. I was employed by Panostaja plc until 1993, then a full-time VC entrepreneur until 2000. In 2001-2011, I led growth venture creation experiments at universities in Tampere and Jyväskylä with strategic partners from India and the US. I made, for example, five knowledge investments via VCC as part of the university experiments.
VCC was my full-time business in 2012-2022. I led the creation of a global knowledge investment community, helped founders raise growth funding, organised runways to growth in Silicon Valley, helped boost startup ecosystem in Vietnam, and developed with my team a prototype for a new breed investor readiness tool. Since 2023, I’ve focused on launching HippoMeter as CEO of VCC’s portfolio company Hippo Enabler Oy.
I’m grateful to the serial entrepreneurs who founded Panostaja Plc, one Finland’s pioneering private equity groups, and apprenticed me as a professional venture capitalist. I got to launch their international venture capital arm FVC as founding CEO and serve as Member of the Group Board. As a fresh entrepreneur, I led FVC through a management-buy-out, global fund raising, cross-border growth and, finally, Trade Sale and exit phase, in 1993-2000.
After personally serving several years as entrepreneur in cross-border VC business, I defended PhD on the strategy logic of the venture capitalist. I then built e-Business Research Center eBRC as part of eTampere, a local pilot of eEurope, and served as Invited Professor of Growth Venture Creation at JYU. To conclude my intense and most rewarding university tenure, I created Kasvu Open for the chamber of commerce. I’ve been pleased to see it grow and win multiple significant awards.
Looking back, having advised entrepreneurs, financiers, and enablers for over 30 years, I realise how much I’ve learned from every engagement. To have helped the EU allocate over 1B€ to innovative businesses and projects has been a great privilege. For example, I have since 2018 been invited to interview over 160 startup teams to select the best of them for 200M€ in growth funding as Jury Member of EIC Accelerator. My own greatest take-away from all my work is a multitude of close relationships with superb fellow professionals from across Europe and the world.
Business creation and growth comprise a demanding domain of competence
