Alright, welcome to the Neuvottelija channel. My guest is Mårten Mickos. Welcome. Apparently, you're not coming from Silicon Valley this time directly. Not quite directly. I've been in Finland now this week. Yes. And this is being recorded just before the Slush week, and I've been listening to your book 'Kasvun kaava' (The Growth Formula), and I think it's an excellent book. I've read several similar ones,
such as Jyri and Timo's Lifeline book, and then the story of the Wolt founders, and in all of them there's something good in their own way, but I think this was perhaps the best of those three, if I can say so.
Yeah. So, this was concrete anyway and it answered that question you raised here about what the growth formula is.
Yeah. And then you avoided the kind of thing where one could maybe sense a bit of negativity, but it still went through the positive instead. We looked for the growth formula instead of wallowing too much in why there is no growth. Sometimes you do have to think about why something doesn't work or why there's no growth, but when you start acting, you have to forget those things and just focus on opportunities. Even Peter
Drucker taught that all successful businesswomen and men, businesspeople, they focus on opportunities rather than problems and don't problems. They solve problems, but they focus on opportunities.
Yeah. And then maybe my two, I read Steven Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People a long time ago, and the lesson from that book that stuck with me was that, well, whenever you read a book, try to immediately write down what the interesting insights were. So I think this clock speed was like a very good insight. So, a small ad in between. I also went to Slush myself and
ran into Slush's former CEO Marianne Vikkula there, here's a bit of the atmosphere. She has also visited Futucast. In that episode, the platform economy is discussed. What is the societal impact of the platform economy in this day and age? Where have we come from and where are we going? We can for example, consider that credit cards were the first platforms. What is the platform economy really then, and what all does it include? Do these companies create some new value, or is it just about existing value
redistribution? Go listen to the conversation between Wolt CEO Marianne Vikkula and LUT professor Paavo Ritala on Futucast. And back to the episode. Let's first go through that you noticed that in Silicon Valley there is a completely different clock speed than here in Europe.
Yes, it is. Everything there is nimbler, faster, more immediate.
And sometimes I have said it like this: in Europe, a million is a lot of money, but in Silicon Valley, an hour is a lot of time.
Yeah. And explain why it's like this. You have this kind of exponential well, growth theory in it, that time is not just so when I think about it, that when I've tried to explain or like discuss with acquaintances who are in traditional business but then if you're not an entrepreneur, if we consider society, then of course understand what I mean? And then I realized that of course in many industries and society there's this linear behavior, that what
exists, it might grow a couple of percent a year or 3%, but it grows steadily. There's a straight line that grows or shrinks or whatever, but it like changes linearly. But with digital in sectors and industries, changes are exponential, meaning compounding. And if something starts to rise, it starts to rise very rapidly. If it starts to fall, it falls sharply. And as we know,
pandemics follow this exact same pattern, where they can very quickly start to grow. And when business exhibits this kind of exponential behavior, it means that while in normal business a day's delay isn't visible anywhere because everything is linear, in a digital world like this even a single day's delay can be too much, because then competitors can overtake you, and if
the number of users or customers doubles once a year, for example ...or once every six months, then these effects compound, meaning that that...
the most valuable thing is time, so you have to move forward quickly because...
otherwise these opportunities will have already gone to competitors or elsewhere.
Yeah, I'm an investment banker, so in a way you see this in...
investing, that all of you who haven't already invested, you have...
lost a lot of time starting that accumulation from the beginning, where it is...
like, really valuable, that you invest with, say, an 8% stock market...
yield in your portfolio. Yeah. So start today, so that even if...
the cycle feels bad, you will then thank your maybe 10-year-older self...
that the compounding effect, interest on interest, is like incredible.
This same phenomenon, like in business, maybe I also started in IT, my career in computer science, so maybe this bit comparison is, I think, quite good, that if you have a linear series that increases by one, then well, the derivative then is like that one there, so it grows like one—from one comes two, which becomes three, then four, but then a binary series is 1, 2, 4, 8... and in a way, if you miss that
one at the beginning, then that doubling gets delayed.
Yeah. Like there's this saying or a riddle where there's a pond filling up with water lily leaves or something, and then it says that every day, uh, the number of these leaves doubles in 50 days the whole pond fills up. And then it's asked, how much is there after 49 days and it's like a one-day difference. It takes 50 days, but with a one-day difference, it
is half of that whole pond. Exactly. And it's, well, and another comparison is the inventor of the chessboard, who placed that one, like, well, grain of rice, and it then became like an impossible series. And these compounding things are such that you don't see them in everyday life, like in the kitchen when you're making food, it's not exponential but linear. We are all so used to linear formulas and and these, like,
trends, that it's hard to remember that the digital world is exponential and compounding, and that's why speed is so valuable, or like, moving fast is so valuable, even so valuable that it's better to do things faster with mistakes than to do them slower perfectly. And it goes against all kinds of things we've learned from our mothers, when a mother says, that it's not the quantity, but the quality. And then they say that you have to do things well
and always be proud of what you've done, and you should sleep on it and things like that. For our folk culture, like many folk cultures, guides us to think that it's better to do it perfectly now than to do something messy quickly, but in the digital world it's worth doing things messy quickly. That's how it is, and PAP Laaks is like a classic idiom, that mo move fast and break things and fail fast and then, for example, this 'Zero to One'
one lesson from the book, like, that it's worth being the pond where you have half of that market or even all of it. So in a way you end up in a dominant market position, which is of course awkward to say regarding competition law, but it is delicious if you are the industry winner. Yes. But when we repeat these truths like this, everyone says 'yeah, yeah, that's how it is'. But then it must be remembered in daily work. People don't remember it. And then they still revert
to doing things slowly and 'let's think about it some more' and 'the meeting was today' and then only making the notes three days later or something, and time is constantly being lost, or meetings are held that are an hour long, when a 20-minute meeting would have been enough. So, like, this if you believe in this exponentiality and the importance of speed, then you have to also remember it in everything you do during the workday.
Yeah. And related to this is my other, like, strong takeaway from listening to the book; it's very simple, but it was intriguing to me, meaning that since it's inevitably the case that time is not just money, but perhaps even exponential money, then in a way, cold-starting yourself is simply just taking the first step and then taking the second. I don't know if it used exactly these words, but
but this just occurred to me. Yes. So because it's so important that the time is like that, you just can't stay lying around like Sami grabbing you by the scruff of your neck and like, getting it in gear, one step and off it goes, and it's a bit like fooling yourself and cold starting, but our brains work in a certain way, so we get stuck in that analysis paralysis and and in a way if the whole environment in Finland is then such that it's celebrated and less is enough and happiness is important and
downshifting, but if you're there in that reflection when you talked about happiness versus agility, well I don't believe in that. I believe that we can be, we have time to be happy when we handle work matters nimbly and quickly. So it's not like when I talk about the need to act fast, I don't want to stress everyone out, but I want it so that when we are doing something, we do it really fast. When we aren't, we can just take it easy and relax, and things can take their time.
For example, we can do things very nimbly and immediately during the workday. Then we go to dinner, sit there for three or four hours and enjoy good food, good company, because there should definitely be plenty of those slow moments in life, but in business there shouldn't be any.
Yeah. And then partly this—I wrote a book myself—so then I noticed that when I listened to those conversations with, say, really smart people, for instance now with Risto Siilasmaa or BT Holmström, those couple of hours of recordings, so I thought that these should be published as they are, and this is what this long-form podcasting is, that you don't need to condense it to that TikTok lightning phase, but you can sort of savor those lines of thought.
Yeah. And that is useful in itself. Sometimes it takes up some time, but that too is educational, when you see how people think, because there is also something in the brain that develops gradually. Like sometimes for me, I have some call, like I had a call three days ago. Then yesterday it occurred to me that only now do I understand what he meant.
Mm. It took a long time before I realized that when he mentioned some things and I wondered why he was mentioning these, and then after a couple of days it dawned on me that this was probably what the core message truly was for me, and I wouldn't have been able to speed that up. No AI would have told me that immediately, but it required reflection and knowing the person and what they normally say and then knowing what they don't normally say, and
then one can evaluate what a sentence like this in this context means. Yeah, and I also believe that in the brain there is that kind of background process that also, even while sleeping or otherwise, builds those neural networks a bit more slowly, that they might then pop out from there.
Yes. Sort of through the subconscious. Um, but yeah, so then when if we combine these two things, that you should always be taking those, well, nevertheless, those brisk steps in working life and in a way pulling yourself together, so that you don't just slack off or slump in that work community, then when Silicon Valley has this, like, shared perception of time, it sort of automatically, well, synchronizes you to that, like to that clock speed, that's true and then, well, in a way I think it was an interesting observation about these
social encounters, that they too in a way follow that logic, that people are quite, in a way, goal-oriented when they meet people. really fast, and it's just a practical matter when you meet so an insane number of people, so basically I've been in Silicon Valley now uh 22 years, so during that time I met about 20,000 people, so many, that business cards were exchanged and names were known and so on. In a way
you have to somehow manage the processing of 20,000 new contacts. How you sort them, how you group them, and how you handle them, so it's then quite clear that you can't spend much time with everyone, but you have to occasionally state, now we've already shaken hands and that was it and nothing else needs to be done. M and Americans have learned it because when they're in a hurry and there are so many of them, everyone's in the same place and they're also the type who don't get angry
about someone being in a hurry. In Europe, we have a bit of a habit of, like, getting angry if someone doesn't spend much time with us. But Americans don't think this way. They think that okay, 30 seconds is enough and it can still be useful and you can return to it later, and it makes, like, networking much, much more efficient when no one has to stay hanging onto something that doesn't feel right.
Yeah. And then I think that Silicon Valley community comes across quite well, that there is still that, like, physical mass there, that people are in a small area and then there are many kinds of events where people bump into each other even physically and those encounters and team building and in a way new starts for experienced serial entrepreneurs and then in a way that cramming of smart people into a small space is then well that we have it maybe a bit too sparse here in Finland.
So the density of know-how is a very important thing. But then another thing is that in Silicon Valley, now that I reflect on it, in Silicon Valley everyone, almost everyone are doers, but in Finland and Europe there are many of those quibblers, commentators, questioners, ponderers, thinkers, writers, readers, so a lot of those who don't do, they just comment or reflect or criticize or
something. They're like in a secondary role, and when there are too many of those in secondary roles, then this critical mass can't form. You can't have those really great conversations because there are too many people who just want to argue about something. And I think it's a particularly Finnish disease, that there are people—I don't know if they're always like that, but it feels like there are individuals who do nothing but negotiate and argue with everyone, but they themselves
don't do anything. Yeah, yeah. And sometimes people just don't realize that's the case. I remember, uh, in my high school class there was this top a smart guy in the media industry like Roope Lehtinen, well, sometimes he got frustrated I can say, and he spoke a great truth, which I probably chewed on bitterly at first, that 'Sami, the point of a debate is not to disagree.' And in a way, I noticed that I had a bit of that, you know, where it's just great to always find flaws in someone else's argument. In my opinion, I think an argument should have
that quality, yes, but whether you are a doer yourself or in a supporting role. Yeah.
And in Silicon Valley, what's so great there is that everyone is some level of doer, so they can have many opinions, they might debate and discuss, but almost all of them also genuinely build or produce something.
Yeah. Yeah. And I find many such in Europe and especially in Finland places where there are only discussion clubs and the goal is only discussion. That the goal isn't to do something. The goal is only to discuss and then the most important part is left out, that something is genuinely being done.
Yeah. And then, well, we now get to perhaps your, uh, first Silicon Valley, uh, well, big success, namely MySQL. There, Monty Widenius and then Swedish, well, database experts apparently found themselves there a bit before you, so you were sort of brought into it as CEO a bit later. Much later. These were the founders, they were
had already collaborated for 12 years, like doing IT projects together and they had already been developing MySQL for six years before it was made real. It had a little revenue, but it was made real. Such a commercial, operational company only in 2001, meaning six years after its founding, and that's when I joined as the CEO, and yeah, so clearly they didn't
have a very tight clock speed; in a way, they were building great basic building blocks of the internet age in a fine way and with code and probably with open source as well, or was it open source in the beginning?
it was originally closed source, then in 2000, we switched to the GPL license, but even though it took a long time to create it, they were indeed quick back then in what they were doing, and they had this design principle, so to speak, that MySQL must save the user's time. Meaning everything must be easy, fast, effortless. They had already realized that the web world has different
selection criteria, and previous databases were all complex, slow, the kind where it took like several days to install them and then came MySQL, where it took 15 minutes and everything was running and everything worked perfectly from the start. It was really their insight that enabled MySQL to then rise to be the world's to the top. But this isn't really understood either. I was listening to Lex Fridman's podcast, which featured the founder of Telegram, when
he was leaving Russia—he's in France now—and started coding well, sort of, VKontakte and then later Telegram, so he had to tackle the fact that there was no such thing as a distributed database, so that was a massive shift that MySQL and sort of open-source databases brought and enabled social media, really, so it sort of—and then thanks to you, it became a billion-dollar company, meaning the Sun Microsystems
acquisition, which then went even further from there.
To Oracle, but tell me a bit about that, like in a way, a CEO comes into it then anyway, and then there was a seed round, real money, and later, well, in the B-round even, even a bit more money, so how did you kind of connect yourself and this money to that like, growth equation? Well, they called me—I'm not... they called me in December 2000 and said, 'Hey, we're sitting here in Monti's kitchen and we've been thinking that now we really need a CEO for this thing, and we thought that it could be you,'
so that's how they called me, and I yelled 'no' into the phone, because I had inklings of what it would be like to work with them.
collaboration. But then everything started falling into place and I joined in, and in my opinion, there wasn't anything complicated about it. I thought, okay, I'm becoming the CEO. I need to make sure that we have, that we have a company established, because there wasn't one, and that we have all the contractual matters in order—copyrights, employment. Now funding is needed, we need to get that. Then we have to think about growth. We need to have a growth strategy. I have to think about what kind of key personnel are needed.
And then I just started doing it, so I don't really have a memory of there being some brilliant plan other than that what a company like this needs, and as for me, having been chosen but not yet having officially started as CEO, my task was to organize all of it, and I was busy organizing it, but at that stage we didn't have a company or funding yet, so I was paid some kind of
compensation from another company, but I basically handled all of these on my own credit card and just made sure that things were sorted out.
But was it still as a founder? Since you've listened to that Elon Musk, this Isaacson biography, well, in there they also discuss how when Elon Musk joined Tesla, he wants to call himself a founder, even though factually he joined an already established company, where was the operation, as a third wheel, but she like wants to think and and the world thinks she was like a founding partner, so did you feel anyway, that you were like a founding partner in this?
Not at all. People often talk about me saying that when you founded Maias, I didn't found it, and I don't even want to be a founder. It's not, it's not important to me important, and what's more important to me is a kind of correctness, what my role is, that I am proud that I am that kind of mercenary who comes and builds. And I'm really good at that and I want, that, that I'm known for it and that I'm given credit for it and that's how it
has worked. I don't have any need for that, but but here is Elon Musk, who is an incredible entrepreneur, an entrepreneur, and has built absolutely massive, enormously great companies, well he certainly has an ego in a way that perhaps isn't in everyone, nor in me. And in my opinion, it's not just an advantage or it's certainly not an advantage, because then what happens is that when there is too much power and an ego, well, it's a really bad combination.
Yeah. And then, using that power of an owner and CEO, making really drastic changes, and some of them may be brilliant and necessary, but they are indeed, like, really disruptive. So if you look at how he has stormed through Twitter, made it X, and then made that xAI, well, maybe it's been a good path. Maybe Twitter wouldn't have made it without it, but there is certainly like, a lot of jobs have also been destroyed and, in a way, business models along the way. Yeah, yeah. I'm maybe not so
worried about that myself, because he has the right to act like this and it has worked, so even though it was a drastic change, it has produced exactly what he wanted to produce. I wouldn't have wanted to produce there, if I had been in that role, I would have wanted to produce something else, so I would have acted differently. But if you want to produce exactly what Twitter is now, then you definitely have to act that way.
Yeah, but I mean, for himself like, that the company's task is to bolster its owner. Yeah, but that's interesting.
in a way, though, it has now become a billion-dollar company, a Unicorn, and in a way if you were already there founding the company, then shouldn't you have taken that 50 percent share as a founding partner then about how you ended up in the position where you are then still, with those credentials, more of a CEO than a founding partner.
Well, that wasn't on my mind. I, yeah when I think about my life and how I make choices that relate to myself, my first rule is that I seek out circles with smart and kind people. Meaning people who are both. And then when I sought out those circles and then I started doing exciting adventures like
business adventures, but exciting ones nonetheless, so they aren't just basic stuff, but rather doing something truly groundbreaking, new and disruptive and such. Those are the things I want to be involved in and that's how I make decisions and then I join them, and then in a way things happen as they happen and the terms are what they are. It's not a dealbreaker or difficult; it sounds very owner-friendly and well, maybe we'll start thinking, when then
the CEO nonetheless has positive power different from the owners, but still, in that way very significant in that, well, you have nonetheless used quite a firm type of authority over that management team, so tell me a bit about what lessons have come from that side. So, in a way, the CEO and management team dynamics between them and the building of that, well, the- well yeah, I have long been very interested in leadership. When I became a leader at a young age, I didn't think then that I would become a leader. I just
did what I did. But then later I have reflected that it was quite an exciting sort of journey, how I learned in scouting and then in the navy and then as a student, how I learned to lead and, and then I started reading a lot about leadership and then I thought, hey, I have my own thoughts about leadership, and it all stems from when I was like a 12-year-old Boy Scout and what I
learned then, and since then I've developed, and when building a management team, I thought about it like this, that in scouting you go somewhere to a camp or the woods or you go sailing on a sailboat, and then there is like a certain number of people, and maybe you've chosen them, but maybe you haven't chosen them. Maybe they wanted to be involved, maybe they have some motivation issues, maybe they have other interests too, so as a leader, you have to form that group into something better than what it
would otherwise be on its own, and I haven't always been able to choose these people, and in the management team it can also be that when you come in as a new CEO, of course you can change everyone, like I have quite often done, but still you are also given resources, people. You have to work well with them. So my leadership is the kind where I think about what we have here now, what we have at hand and how we get the best possible result from this group and and
productivity with these exact methods, so there's no extra money, there are no new people, we go with these. And I think it's a good principle, even if there were resources, even if you could change managers and recruit new ones, that's the basic idea, that these...
we have, and now, now we need to perform better than everyone else in this sector. We have to be the very best management team, the very best company, and maybe we can't afford to pay magnificent salaries or something like that. We'll go with what we have, but we still have the goal of being the best. And when building a management team with that, I think
you get a natural, um, sense of what is needed, and this doesn't have to be done alone; it can be done with the management team. So in my opinion, a leader can very well share these big questions with their management team. Okay, now we have this management team. How do we make ourselves into a really tough team? Mm.
And that's when those kinds of suggestions arise, from there emerge leaders, they take more responsibility and then a strong team starts to form.
Yeah. Then, well, regarding these—as you mentioned Drucker—then there was Collins's Good to Great. And in that, there is sort of—was it the fifth or sixth level, that humble leader, so I think there was an interesting contradiction there since you have still, well, used quite a lot of your own publicity in leading that company, so in a way, because in my opinion, Collins's model is a bit like that humble and withdrawn responsibility-taker who, as a coach, takes responsibility, but then doesn't come
to the forefront, but then again, you have practically, well, disrupted these business models by being an open-source database apostle, who speaks very aggressively, although I thought it was funny from um, so, like even this 'kela' from 9 to 3 slogan so, here comes a side note, but when I was applying for funding for MySQL and I always thought about how I could say something clever, because I like, I like those kinds of witticisms and
crosswords and Fingerpori and all these, I like those sorts of things and then if I'm sitting on a plane, I'm thinking about how I could talk about this business of ours in some humorous way, so I'm always having these things go through my head. And then I met Ray Lane, who was A partner from Kleiner Perkins, and he was interested in Majesk, perhaps in investing in it, and I was at his, sort of, summer home,
meaning in a magnificent villa, and we were sitting there somehow in the backyard, and he asked, 'Hey, tell me now why you are doing this.' Then I thought, what the hell do I say now? I should say something profound.
So then it came to mind, and I said, 'Ray, I'm working 9 to 3.' Meaning I work from nine to three, which sounds so lazy and horrible that it's shocking. He said, 'What are you saying?' And then I explained, that the database market back then was 9 billion dollars. And I said I'm working towards making that nine into a three. Meaning they would shrink to a third.
and then I am the only survivor. I mean MySQL survives, but everyone else dies. And Ray Lane got incredibly excited about this, because he had been Oracle's Executive Vice President and he left there, not exactly, well, not exactly slamming the doors, or somehow there was some resentment left, so for him this opportunity that we would disrupt Oracle so that it wouldn't succeed anymore, it was like the best thing he had heard. So after that, he
absolutely wanted to invest in MySQL.
Yeah. And it came from that remark when I said but it worked so well, because in America, if I say 'I'm working to 3', then everyone wants to know what on earth that idiot said.
Yeah. But then I'll return to the fact that, in a way, you then have to fight against your partner's lawsuit, which in the US is always a matter of life and death, but even that you turned into a win through publicity. But in a way, I want to return to this CEO role and sort of being the manager of an aggressive public image.
Later on, for example at HackerOne, you've written things yourself, like Reddit posts roughly about how bug bounties and others work. So, in a way, what you're explaining—reflect on this thought process a bit.
Well, as a person, I’m the type who belongs on stage; I like to perform and speak, and to get people to join me through that public in a way that I am suited for the kind of companies, where that sort of CEO thrives. And these, and especially these disruptive companies, they actually need to explain and get others on board with that disruption. That's why it's good to have a CEO
who gets involved and dives into discussions without fear, like I do. In a way, it's only logical that whoever is looking for that kind of hired CEO for a disruptive firm, then of course they will come to me, because everyone knows I can do it; I go there and I can, like, amplify the theme into something much bigger than it was and get all kinds of people excited about this issue. So in my opinion, it's not
relate to ego or anything else. Except that I have a natural ability and I have like, trained it and become better at it. I like it and then there are those companies where it is an advantage, and I shouldn't be recruited to a firm where it isn't needed, because it's such enjoyable work for me that I'll do it anyway. Yeah, that's why I'm poking at this a bit, because I know so many Finnish leaders who are these kind of Mintzbergian 'small steps' strategy
school of thought types, and then they're like, 'well hey, Sami, you're like this weirdo, making a noise in public on your own YouTube and such, but here in Finland you have to be quiet and be humble and so on, so in a way, could it be a bit our fault too, that we should have more people like you and me, who mouth off out there in public, and then, kind of, there are always some like risk vectors. So you can't always control that massive, well
flood of information discussion 100%, but then the wave always covers the next one and we move on and don't stay and over-analyze every single sub-clause like with media consultants, asking 'will you apologize for this now because it gives off' wrong vibes'. So I think this is maybe part of this problem in Finland, which... Well, in a way it is, but then again I think Right, well, others can be quiet so I can talk more. It's not my problem. It's their problem. That's right. Yes. But I think it's
perhaps the problem with this Finnish cluster, that we are a bit too much like Collins-style leaders, or if Mintzberg is the other one, so in a way we don't make those kind of disruptive leaps, but rather small ones. This is how we've always done it. And not in the public eye. It is completely true that Finland is too normative a society. Meaning that we strive for everyone to follow the rules and for everyone to follow the same rules, and for everyone to follow the same rules in the same way, and that's when
a kind of uniformity arises that doesn't produce good ideas or new growth, because everyone just strives to be like everyone else. So yes, I think it's a significant challenge in Finnish society, but then I decide to go into the kind of circles where such a disadvantage doesn't exist. Otaniemi is one, Hervanta is one, in Lappeenranta, Turku, Vaasa, these university campuses and then in Helsinki also Hanken and the University of Helsinki, you'll find people there who speak openly,
debate, dare to speak up, aren't afraid, and when working with them, much, much good is created, and if the majority population sits around watching silently, then it is what it is. That's just how it goes. Yes, I also went to the Helsinki School of Economics after that Hervanta phase and I've I've participated in Aalto University's activities to some extent. So here, I'm trained in finance, but um, it's noticeable that I share your
Otaniemi fandom a bit, that there definitely is a bit of that Silicon Valley vibe, where people are brought together who think in a very, very right way and at the right clock speed, and yeah, and when you think about how Aalto University has defined its own values and culture, it has three words: courage, collaboration, and responsibility, so in that sense, Aalto University is a bit Silicon Valley-like, but it also differs in that things are done together—this group spirit,
the 'talkoo' spirit, which Aalto has much more of than elsewhere in the world.
and it is also its resource and asset that new projects are born there, involving many people or a small number, but still several people working together, and it's not dependent on the ego of one such Elon Musk, but instead they genuinely act as a team, and that results in such more sustainable initiatives, because they are not dependent on just one person, but are done together; and if someone leaves or cannot be involved,
then others fill in. And I think it's really attractive at Aalto in this way, and it's great that we have a model that is genuinely more sustainable. It might not always produce the most rapid growth, but it produces sustainable operations and therefore sustainable business.
Yeah. And I've personally gotten excited about coding again, so I started Harvard's CS50 course. I'm currently halfway through it and I'm coding some small bitmap and WAV byte-level modification programs, which is incredibly boring with that antique code. But then in addition to that, I've started, for example with Lovable and probably soon with Cursor, to
do web coding, so I thought that I'd like to see what the vibe is like, and go to a few hackathons or an idea workshop just as an older guy, to see if something would come of this, because you had good conversations also about AI, in that it's in a certain way a really useful disruptor, so which enables the kind of thing where you can, like, through AI or an AI-developed breakthrough, like quite quickly disrupt many things now.
It certainly brings a huge amount of opportunities. We have opportunities to build new things and disrupt and just about anything. And we don't even realize yet just how much AI brings us new kinds of power. And we've already become accustomed to the fact that if there's some software thing, you need a nerd to do it. You need a coder and it's like its own world and others have no business being there, because it's so difficult, but now that AI is bringing tools such as Lovable
and Cursor, almost anyone can build websites with them. M and it doesn't mean that everyone would be able to do it, because even if you are given tools like Lovable, you have to be very precise about how you define the task. It's a bit like if you have a really smart summer intern, they can only be useful if you give them clear instructions. And it's the same thing with AI: those who
know how to define the task really precisely and clearly benefit. But what is great about it is—for example, now I started—I'm in this kind of um, at an investment bank, at a tech house called Translate Corporate Finance, I founded the Vipe Coding Society there, of course, and then I'm a member of the communications working group for the private equity association, so then I just announced there that together with Lasse Mikkonen, we founded
a kind of subcommittee at that annual meeting, so that everyone can now Vipe code with us, like some company analyzers and such, so there's something cool about that, in a way, that you sit down—I don't know if 'LAN party' is the right word, but that you take a project and then you just start running with it and there are some random people there, because for my I think maybe the best growth companies are born when there's like a bit of a random group and then they passionately start
solving some problem. True. Yeah, yeah. That's true. And now, so this opportunity is spreading to everyone. That means, of course, we were just praising Otaniemi or some other university campus, but AI certainly makes it possible for you to be anywhere and you can have partners or colleagues elsewhere, so it does bring those same powers even to the countryside, if only someone knows how to use them. So in a way this is, it has a democratizing, uh, uh
effect, whereas previously developing and running software has been a matter for experts. Now anyone can try it.
Yeah. But there too, in a way, this physicality, where I personally...
first arranged things and talked a bit on Teams or something, but then...
there's still something about putting laptops side by side and me showing a bit of...
what I'm doing and you showing what you're doing. Incredible amounts were absorbed there.
That reminds me, by the way, when I was working at these giant...
investment banks in London for 13 years, like at Credit Suisse, well...
the biggest learning process there was that, like, I...
thought I was a good Excel user myself, but then there was always some...
guy who, when you'd watch, like 'show me a bit how you model this'...
at this company, oh man, I learned six shortcut commands and like ways to use some VLOOKUP functions there that were in Excel then, where like MATCH—MATCH is more efficient.
takes too much RAM and efficiency... yeah, the database man is talking, I had VLOOKUP well, using Excel as a database, so maybe I should have just used MATCH and INDEX handles it more efficiently, but I did learn Access back then so that I then made our M&A database I was at Pöyry Capital, so I worked with Pöyry's IT guy to make it using Access, as an actual database and not in Excel but I'm a bit of a 'scrappy coder' type, so I like to do
things in some Excels and so forth. But regarding what you say, that it's nice to sit side by side and compare experiences, well, this also works digitally, and we just need to look at the gaming world. In the gaming world, they've learned how you do that kind of intensive, in-the-moment collaboration, even if you're sitting in different places. And they've developed such tools where they show each other screens and they and they discuss
very small details together. They have headsets on all the time and they have all this contact active, so when we talk about how it's so nice to be in the same office or space, well, the gaming side has already moved past that and shown, that you don't have to be. Of course, some time zones are a challenge, but but this distance is no longer a challenge. A good point, then, when describing this—
the Director General of Kela has come under fire because he wants to move the Kela organization from a completely anarchist remote work model to one where they should be at Kela's empty office once a week to show their face, so that in this renewal organization we can...
should like code all the new systems. We don't even know what you're doing if we never—look, there's no control over what you are doing; that surely requires some kind of management system. It can't just be the kind of remote work where everyone does whatever they...
it's funny, because then they really can do their own thing and work efficiency suffers. Yeah, yeah. But if we talk about remote work, it's always said that when employees can't be supervised, they might do anything, but in a regular office they might do just about anything. And it's easier to cheat in a physical office if you sit there and look like you're working and your desk is a bit messy, but not too messy, and you ask or keep asking something or you ask
smart or clever questions. People think you are productive even if you aren't, but in remote work you can't fake it, because then the only output—well, you aren't seen nothing else besides what you produce in your work. If you don't produce anything, then it shows immediately. So there is no such danger that in remote work someone would be lazy and not doing anything, because it shows immediately.
Yeah. Well, let's see. Kela's stance is slightly skeptical because it is a public organization, so the best management practices might not necessarily work there and incentives are not necessarily financial, because I think this too is a bit of my opinion, it always needs to be about management, management, that it's down to management, and now I can't evaluate whether there is good or bad management there, but surely in all organizations there can be good management so that employees trust the management and the management trusts employees. Because such organizations can certainly be built just
about anywhere. Whether there are commercial goals or others, and whether it's a small or large organization. So it is possible. People do adapt to all kinds of things, because because it's sometimes said that people are either good or bad, but it’s not like that. We are all both, and like on my best day I'm a thousand times better and on a bad day I'm a thousand times worse. And if I have the kind of work environment and
community where I can always be a thousand times better, then I am genuinely a thousand times better. And that applies to all employees, so that leadership makes it happen, though of course not everyone can be thou- times better every single moment, but that we get much more of that than the fact that we are a thousand times worse.
Yeah. I mean, regarding this self-direction, I believe in it and remote work too, and actually in coding environments, well, they have it like that, I call them the 'three-monitor men', those proper coders, because because they have that one main screen so do you believe in that, or or is it too much then Well, but that third one is just maybe then they're playing something like Counter-Strike then on that third one, and on the second one they share with a colleague and on the third one they do the work, it's like you can really, like
virtualizing even almost the physical space through remote work, but then not all organizations are like that; they're more like, well, gathering for the Monday meeting and then discussing, but in that case, it’s a leadership challenge rather than a technology or model challenge, but it's about the leader. It’s about how this organization is led. So how does it work in practice, since you’re clearly a fan of remote work, is there some kind of 'one team' approach
solving problems across time zones, where one group picks up the ball when the clock moves to Asia, or how do you get it to run?
It depends on the organization, of course, but exactly like that. And I think the most important thing about it is that if you're in office work and you go to the office, you see your colleagues in all kinds of environments. You see, that they go to the restroom. They come from the restroom, you see them at lunch, you see when they leave the workplace and maybe their family picks them up or something, so you get these kinds of cues about that person's humanity.
Mm. But if you're working remotely, then only this professional output is visible. And then everyone just looks like robots, because we don't do anything else but just sit in meetings and write messages. So in remote work, it's important to bring in this human dimension and to make everyone show what kind of people they are, because because the same things are visible in the office environment. So, we learned back then at Maijaskölla,
that you should include cats and dogs, include pets; if there are children, they are allowed to be seen, and then we talk about hobbies and hold those kinds of sessions where we don't talk about work. In other words, ensuring that for all people a human relationship is formed with each other, and that's when they also do their work better. So that is perhaps my most significant insight here, and that
it requires showing that we are human, because if you're just a robot, then a robot will soon replace you. But if you are human, a robot cannot replace you. Yes. And I think that maybe I don't always even realize how big a change it was. At Translink, they probably took six years ago Slack was introduced, so in a way where before it was a bit of an email-responsive organization, which directs you toward a kind of hierarchical thinking, so in a way if you have a shared
Slack space with a client, the one who answers first is the one who fixes the problem, and in a way it doesn't matter who or what your level is. We also had IRC in use in a way so yes, which was kind of the predecessor to Slack.
Yeah. And it worked really effectively, that's where our biggest discussions were. And when we held these Town Hall meetings, where all the employees were involved, then we had such that only I and a few others were speaking on voice. So like, the voice channel only had the speech of a few people, but through IRC we got comments back from everyone. So communication went both ways, but it was still pleasant to listen to, because there
on the listening channel you didn't have all that other noise; instead, on the listening channel there were only these, like, considered or planned turns of speech, but then on the IRC channel things were moving all the time, like 'what is he saying?' and 'what does that mean?' 'I don't agree'—so there was like a heated debate going on in the background, but still, to the ear it sounded quite nice and you could keep listening to it, because nobody can stand listening to
that kind of terrible debate where hundreds of people among themselves debate something in real-time, but if it comes in a feed like that on IRC, then it's really easy to follow and you can scroll up and down a bit yourself. You can search for words. You see who is saying what, and you can compare that this one says this and that one says that, and then you're more in control. So it was a really good
model for us back then before there was any Zoom or Slack. Yeah, those can also be used, by the way. I'm...
well, one skill I learned in middle school. I took this maybe a bit to impress girls, typing class, well, so did I You're totally on the same page. But in a way, now I can, for example, write to Slack while I'm talking like this and then I'll look at this mobile phone to have side conversations, and I mean, people can't really multitask; it's a terrible inefficiency when in an organization one extrovert speaks and others have their screens off doing
something else. So in a way, you really have to get that anthill buzzing there in the background all the time, and it's not possible any other way than in these IRC or Slack-type setups, and now I would also say that like Google Docs and those kinds of Google documents where everyone comments and writes at the same time. Now at Aalto Founders School, as we run those very intensive weekly meetings with so many topics that we don't have time to discuss everything, but all three or four of us,
are writing things in there all the time, so there's no need to keep separate notes, because it's all created right there, and then we occasionally respond to each other in writing, even though we're in the same meeting, because that way we move forward. So work efficiency is really high.
someone writes something, there's a typo, and I might fix it and so on, and when the meeting ends, everything is already there, all action items and tasks and such are already listed and we just move on. It's really nice to work when it's so efficient and no time is spent on bureaucracy.
or to that kind of follow-up at all.
Yeah. By the way, when I first made that negotiation proxy, well then then a new negotiation proxy was made based on it, and then well the publisher was then a bit like, well, just write it in some Word document and I said no, no, let's do the edits directly in Google Docs with the editor and well, the markups there, and it went much more efficiently then in that, well, as that works, I don't know what your editorial process was in this, that you said you got—you even thanked them for it
same thing, Ulla first said 'Hi, I work with Word documents,' I said to Ulla, that otherwise we'll go completely by your rules, but this has to be written With Google Docs. And that's what we did. And it did cause a bit of confusion at times, as we had different working styles, but it worked really well and, of course, Ulla is a professional. She knows it very well.
So then we worked there and exchanged comments and such, and then sometimes I made corrections and she corrected things, and then of course she complained to me about all my Swedishisms and other mistakes, which she then corrected in there. Yeah. But now, well, we could move on since even though this, as I said at the start, is a positive book and a practical book and also, like, contains the right amount of going through your history in an educational sense, so then in it
however, there wasn't that kind of very sharp 'well, why is Finland so bad' and what should be done, but anyway, that's perhaps the most important thing. So now let's fix Finland and put the lessons from this book into practice, so that we get efficiency and happy people and good workers who do things better. So what would we come up with then as advice for a growth formula specifically for Finland? Well first of all, there is something here, it
kind of splits in two in such a way that if you are a startup founder or a potential one, then you just have to just go and start that company; you shouldn't think that Finland is at stake and it's on your shoulders to save Finland. Because If you go in there like a kind of firefighter to rescue, you're never going to build a great company; you're just rescuing. So, we have to
give these entrepreneurs the peace to build just the best thing they can come up with, regardless of whether Finland needs it or not. So this is for the entrepreneurs, mutta sit jos ei ole yrittäjä, jos mietitään yhteiskuntaa, niin tietenkin Finland now needs economic growth, which we haven't had for 20 years—nearly all industrial sectors are not growing at all. So when considering where we might find growth, although the startup world
is now 2% of all Finnish industries, it still has the highest growth rate and will likely rise to 5%, it can rise to 10%, that's where our best opportunity lies. And then we must realize on a national level that, okay, where do we currently have growth opportunities. Well, maybe mining, maybe some banking, I don't know, but we'll find things like that. And then
we conclude that growth companies are the hottest, best, and surest way to get the economy growing again, which is when we must allocate resources specifically to thinking about how we get more funding for that sector, how we get the kind of education and training for them so that we produce better startup entrepreneurs faster. Now they're already emerging from our own ranks and it can't even be stopped; new ones are coming from around the world all the time.
Miki Kuusis, yes, many of them will come to Finland, but we can facilitate that, for example, with initiatives like the Aalto Founder School where we try to identify potential entrepreneurs, give them the skills, opportunities, and challenges so that they develop into such. We need to do all of that. How do we get more and faster? How do we remove obstacles? Now, of course, taxation must be lowered in certain areas so that it's
more attractive to do, but we have to think more broadly and look at what kind of administrative barriers someone building a company faces and how we can remove them. Entirely. So, politicians and like the national government should think about how we just remove these like friction points, because all the time if you're building a business, you encounter certain challenges and then you apply for a permit and it takes two
weeks or two months or I don't know how long, but how can we speed them up, make them easier, remove challenges, remove problems, remove complexities, remove permit fees, and then we create the kind of environment where it's easy to start and build a business. It's never easy, because business is a difficult thing, but nonetheless these administrative matters can be easier and then more companies will be born.
So we need to look for all these means. They exist, and it's about thousands of decisions and actions. There isn't any silver bullet, such a single solution that brings us wealth and makes everything fine again. No such thing is possible; instead, it consists of many, many small things that we simply decide to fix, but that requires a community spirit where everyone says, we're going to join in, and I commit to looking at my own area,
to see what there is that might be difficult for someone building a business, and how we make it easier, how we remove obstacles, and how we find that kind of simplification. There doesn't always have to be such meticulous rules for everyone; instead, we look for simplifications where but rather move quickly and then see, if there's for instance a small amount of something, it doesn't need to be exactly, precisely right. Then if
the business grows, then tougher goals and requirements are set, but for small ones, so they aren't constantly monitored and given such unnecessary burdens, when it's already very difficult to build a business. So we, the rest of us, should just remove, remove these obstacles and challenges.
Yeah. I would also see good points for making the market economy the number one priority. The combined turnover of all Finnish companies is 513 billion. The gross domestic product is like about 200 billion euros and, well, then again, the public sector has been allowed to rise relative to that 60%, so you should, like, because and understand that it however, this final thing, and the public sector still gets all
its cash flows from these previous two, meaning primarily from the private sector's, like, revenue, profits, and, well, GDP impact, that it needs to be reduced, so it has, like, a kind of wedge effect, so if you're constantly taking a cut of something like 10% or even just a few percent from it, then it slows down precisely this growth a great deal and it's not just, like, that then it has to be, like, kind of gotten from elsewhere then, and it reduces growth and
anyway, and that this market economy should somehow just be achieved by doing everything on market terms whenever it's just possible, and with as little as possible of that planned-economy junk with other people's money. Yeah, there are just some very difficult challenges; for instance, I think that if the public sector is 60%, it must be reduced. But then again, I am of the opinion that for example healthcare should have enough resources so that we get these
services close to people. I'm horrified by the fact that there are now fewer maternity hospitals than before. What kind of welfare is that? That if we want children to be born in Finland, then we should have more maternity hospitals or in more locations, so that everyone has them nearby and feels that it's nice to have children and everything is taken care of. So we should put more money into those. So when
we start reducing the public sector, we have to decide quite carefully where we downsize, because there are also things where we want to put more. Yeah. Maybe that municipal level, we have 292 municipalities, 21 wellbeing services counties, and then one monolithic state, so should we then—now, for example, we transferred employment services to the municipalities, which I think was a good thing, that in a way they are brought closer to those areas, so that's where it then needs to be
get cooperation working, because the Helsinki bigwigs won't manage the employment of Kainuu. So that's a partial solution. Maybe as a quick point here, our age groups have dropped from a hundred thousand to 40,000. So we do have to cut sixty percent of those maternity hospitals, since we simply have fewer babies being born.
I don't agree. I think, I think it should be close so that you shouldn't build such massive complexes where there is like a huge one in some big city, maternity hospital. Then they won't exist anywhere else. We do want people to live throughout Finland and people should be able to give birth within a close to one's own home. And if we cannot afford that, then we do not have a welfare state.
that then we have to admit that this is no longer a welfare state. This is some kind of centralized welfare state or a welfare state of big cities.
But that is not enough for me. If I think about why I work so much and have managed to work for so long and again in this way, I want to see the results in society. That we have a society that offers citizens absolutely fantastic services and support and things like that for those building a family and starting a family and having children and such. I think that is the ideal society,
for which we business people then have the energy to build or start companies or grow them or whatever. Because it feels so frustrating when, like you said, 60% goes to public administration and it just disappears somewhere. That's how it is. Yeah, it's like that too. We must provide people with the important services they need.
Um, then, if you consider that some have said we should make Finland—Finland should be the world's finest small nation, and then some say it should be the best place in the world to start businesses. I think those are two really good goals, and then think about what it would take if we think like this, to get say, if some great entrepreneurs from America set up here, then what would it take for them to come; of course not everyone will, some say, I want a
place where it's safe, where the air is clean, where it's nice to start a family and where it's like safe for the kids and there are good services and things like this and good technology and it's easy to start a company and easy to build a global business from there because there are such good digital connections and other connections and energy is cheap, so there's some kind of vision of Finland where everything could work well and where business would grow because the Finns themselves would
found and grow the business, but there would also be many from abroad who said, "I want to be involved in something like that." But now we don't have that kind of situation, so the economy is shrinking because we aren't doing anything ourselves and we don't really know how to be—like, we don't know how to be good at being hospitable to newcomers when immigrants arrive.
They have a really difficult, hard, and cold time and such. I don't mean the cold weather, but that there is a cold reception if you come to Finland as an immigrant. And we should fix things like that, so that motivated people gather here—the kind of enterprising crowd. Yeah, you could definitely build some sense of community there and of course, like, maybe raise visibility. I myself
I could consider something like that; I would take, for example, something that has been quite popular. I have this Ian MacO'Hagan, who is Irish, so he has learned respectably good Finnish. So, he has come to chat, but why not give it some visibility then, perhaps through the English language, for those living here, for foreign expats. As for the language—I mean, I spent 13 years in London and a year in England, and of course it’s the easiest thing in the world to speak
Broken English there as a Finn, so it’s a bit of a different story here in Finland. In my opinion, when you watch and listen to young people, they already have a vision for this; they have a way of operating that involves a lot of diversity, and it works, and we collaborate and want that kind of safe place, but we are also ready to act in this global world. In my opinion, young people aren't at all lost; they see how this can be done and then they also consider how it
can be done so that the planet isn't ruined. M after all, there are many good models there, so we should start implementing them and set a goal for Finland to become such a super place for those who are willing to do something, who appreciate what we have. Meaning this purity of nature and then the society's safety and the high level of basic services.
Yeah. And I would perhaps highlight what you and I have done. So, well, you can certainly spend time abroad visiting, and many good things follow from looking at another culture's and work culture's best practices and then hopefully bringing them to Finland.
And in this regard, I think the government has made some quite good laws, so one interesting experiment will be this, that we now have this expat taxation where it has been at 32%, and it will be dropped to 25%, but it will also be extended to Finns. As I understand it, there are some strict requirements. You have to have lived abroad for eight years to qualify under this same rule. But I would really hope that I also have quite a lot of foreign listeners, so you considered coming back to Finland and then, well, you get a quite
significant tax benefit, so well, it could lead to interesting situations. It's already been decided. Has it been decided? Yes. So I'll take here well, so it's coming next year. I think it's still a bit open, that besides this possible eight years, how long you must have been abroad, like whether it has to be a foreign employer or if a Finnish one is enough or something else. So well, but I think it's a very interesting experiment, because, well, in a way, it doesn't make sense that if you want them from abroad people who might have settled there, so it doesn't really matter
whether they are Finnish or, say, Brits or Brazilians, if they're high-caliber people, we want them here to get to work and do business. So consider that, in my opinion, Finland is potentially an efficient place, and now this AI integration I mean, I personally just believe that this gives a kind of mental reason for us to 'break things and move fast,' because when you sort of
AI is going to change work methods quite significantly anyway, so why wouldn't you then, by experimenting with smart teams, like try out different things you can do with it?
Yeah, good. I think this has been a really good book, this 'Kasvun kaava' (Otava) by Mårten Mickos. I would suggest we go to the insider section, and one topic I found fun was this 'Crazy Finn' thing, where you had a few points about saying that you sang some Finnish-Swedish snaps songs there as a CEO without shame, and then you had, in a way,
some 'Tales of Ensign Stål', this 'Crazy Finn Abroad' thing, so I'd like to talk about that more for my inner circle, so would that work?
Yes, that works. Alright, thank you for this, and since you've watched or listened this far, consider listening to the book or purchasing and then subscribing to the channel. Thank you.