
Web business/production professional with over 14 years of experience.
Finland

Web business/production professional with over 14 years of experience.
Finland
I have a versatile career in the Finnish internet industry since 1995. Among many other things I've been leading the creation of numerous internet content/media businesses in the country and abroad. In total I've been involved (either as a designer, project manager, producer or CEO) in building hundreds of different web sites / web campaigns.
I have a strong entrepreneur background through co-founding Apaja in 2001 and later its gaming spinoff company Apaja Online Entertainment.
I possess quite a wide understanding of internet, its technologies and design, as well as of the creation of online community services with business acumen. In addition, my core competencies consist of strong HR skills due to the various manager positions now and in the past.
(Public Company; Newspapers industry)
September 2009 — Present (3 months)
Business Director at Iltalehti, the number one web property in Finland. My area of responsibility includes Iltalehti.fi (#1 web site in Finland at the TNS Metrix measurement) and also Telkku.com (#12) and Vuodatus.net (#23).
(Privately Held; Internet industry)
August 2009 — Present (4 months)
Onedidit.com is an ecological platform aiding you to live a sustainable and enviromentally conscious, yet viable life.
(Entertainment industry)
March 2009 — Present (9 months)
www.huikea.com
(Internet industry)
February 2009 — Present (10 months)
My own Sole Proprietorship for some consulting affairs et cetera - www.halaus.fi.
(Privately Held; Venture Capital & Private Equity industry)
January 2009 — Present (11 months)
Magnifier is a Finnish startup accelator and seed fund. We are specialized in social media, gaming and other consumer related businesses.
(Internet industry)
November 2008 — Present (1 year 1 month)
www.greyarealabs.com
(Internet industry)
October 2008 — Present (1 year 2 months)
Advisor for a company behind the #1 restaurant review service in Finland - Eat.fi.
(Media Production industry)
January 2006 — Present (3 years 11 months)
Founder and one of the contributors at Vierityspalkki.fi, a widely followed publication following the Finnish digital media sector.
(Internet industry)
January 2009 — August 2009 (8 months)
Onedidit.com is an ecological platform aiding you to live a sustainable and enviromentally conscious, yet viable life.
(Privately Held; Information Technology and Services industry)
January 2009 — August 2009 (8 months)
The largest PHP-specialized programming house in Finland - www.brainalliance.com. At the end of my Board period Soprano (a publicly listed company in the Nasdaq OMX market) acquired 51% of Brain Alliance.
(Internet industry)
October 2008 — December 2008 (3 months)
After seven years in Apaja - the company I co-founded in 2001 - I decided to move forward, though I’ll naturally still be involved in the company on the background and as a co-owner. The decision to take this step had been maturing for a long time. The past 7 years in the company had been great, but I just got an urge for something completely new!
After announcing my decision I got numerous interesting contacts - it was great to see that 13 years of experience on internet businesses brought interest as much as one could expect. I took a little, well earned break, first - and didn't sign up for anything new right away.
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Internet industry)
March 2008 — September 2008 (7 months)
For the last year I focused on service development and B2C marketing/sales of the company. I was also involved on Apaja's first VC financing round as the company raised 1.75 mill euros from Martinson Trigon Venture Partners at the end of 2007.
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Internet industry)
August 2007 — March 2008 (8 months)
(See above.)
(Public Company; 11-50 employees; Internet industry)
October 2005 — July 2007 (1 year 10 months)
In October 2005 I left the CEO position and general operational management responsibilities. As a Co-Founder and former CEO of the company I was naturally still involved in varied things at Apaja after that, but my main focus was leading our internationalization process: among other issues I closed strategical partnership deals with local companies for example in Germany, Spain and the Netherlands.
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Internet industry)
March 2004 — October 2005 (1 year 8 months)
Apaja Online Entertainment started officially in 2004 when old Apaja Creative Solutions Oy was divided into two individual companies: Apaja Online Entertainment Oy (online gaming community services) and Apaja Creative Solutions Oy (digital marketing communication agency, which later changed its name to Creapaja Oy).
I was the CEO of both Apaja companies until autumn 2004: at that time the companies moved to separate offices. I hired Henry Lehto as the new CEO of ACS and continued myself as the CEO of AOE.
(Internet industry)
September 2001 — October 2004 (3 years 2 months)
In 2001 I felt it was time to start something completely new: I founded digital marketing agency Apaja (Apaja Creative Solutions Oy) together with my two old friends/colleagues, AD Janne Matilainen and Java guru Pasi Laaksonen.
Managing internet startup right after the Dot-com bubble was challenging but extremely rewarding. Apaja Creative Solutions was a profitable company from the first fiscal period and ever since. I proved my selling skills by establishing client relationships with leading Finnish companies from various fields, e.g. Finnair, Yhtyneet Kuvalehdet, and Nokia.
(Public Company; 201-500 employees; Internet industry)
February 1999 — September 2001 (2 years 8 months)
I started in Saunalahti as a Producer for the Portal Department. In the very beginning there was just a two of us: me and my superior (Portal Director). We managed to gather a great team of skillful employees and created the number one portal (according to Web Traffic Monitor ran by Taloustutkimus Oy) service in the country during that time (Saunalahti.fi). Our department was also responsible of launching Saunalahti's (later known as Jippii Group) international Jippii mobile portal operations in many European countries and in the North America.
In October 2000, my superior was promoted to Vice President of the whole company, and I was named as Portal Director, leading a group of more than 40 professionals.
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Internet industry)
August 1998 — February 1999 (7 months)
As a Project Manager at Noventum I was responsible of running all the web projects of the company, which focused on serving Finnish sport organizations' web needs. I was in charge of many interesting web projects with customers like Finnish Ice Hockey Association, Finnish Basketball Association and Finnish Sports Federation.
(Internet industry)
November 1997 — August 1998 (10 months)
In Nettihansa my official title was 'designer' in the company's new media department, but in practice I did a lot more than only created web sites for our customer companies. I was a joint salesman, web designer and customer instructor.
One of my special projects during this time was a producer work with Kiekkopesa.com - the most popular online sports community of its time in Finland.
(Self-Employed; Myself Only; Internet industry)
September 1995 — November 1997 (2 years 3 months)
During these two years I did many kind of web projects on freelance base.
Among many other things I created and maintained the first official web site for Ässät, an ice hockey club playing in the SM-Liiga (major ice hockey league of Finland).
1995
running,music,movies,floorball,badminton,tennis,football