Oulu, North Ostrobothnia, Finland
I’m Founder and Supreme Leader of Valco, a small Finnish audio company. We design and sell headphones (and other audio products) that sound good, last, and come with real support from people who give a damn when something goes wrong. On the side, I sell my wisdom through https://svh.ai, a consulting firm I run with Valco co-founder Jani. My career has been a bit like Donald Duck’s: a little bit of everything. Games, tech, real estate, communications, even public policy. Each chapter taught me something useful, and now I get to use all of it. Product design, marketing, customer service, strategy, my odd sense of humour (no restrictions, because I am the Supreme Leader), and these days a lot of AI work. I fell hard for AI a couple of years ago, and Claude is now our family pet, without the shedding. Valco has grown from a hobby into a profitable, independent company with a loyal cult following. A customer recently told me he had our logo tattooed. We believe in durability, repairability, and treating customers like adults. It’s not a startup. It’s a stubbornly Finnish business with personality. Long-term goal: build a Death Star and subjugate the galaxy. Outside of Valco and SVH.ai, I help my spouse Saija run Spazio, a traditional design furniture store that has opened my eyes to beauty, form, and the limits of my own aesthetic skills. Running a design furniture store in Oulu is probably the most elegant way to lose money I’ve ever been part of, and I’ve genuinely learned a lot about interiors. Although my office still proudly displays Star Wars and Alfa Romeo posters. Forty-something and still childish. Happy to connect, swap ideas, or come on a podcast if there’s something worth talking about.
Founder of Valco, a Finnish ANC headphone brand named after a 1970s state-owned factory that collapsed in spectacular fashion. We figured the name had character. Started in 2018 as a side project. For a long time I ran everything customer-facing myself: webshop, customer service, marketing, even the user manuals. Today Valco has muscled its way up alongside the big players in the home market, still without outside investors and without discount campaigns. Just headphones people seem to like enough to write nice things about online.
My spouse and I are behind Lo Spazio Oy ("Spazio"), a traditional design furniture store in Oulu. My official title is Chief Whatever My Spouse Needs Officer, which in practice means I do whatever my wife tells me and help wherever I can. Please don't ask me for interior design tips, because my personal décor mostly consists of a "car posters and Star Wars memorabilia" theme, complete with a nostalgic "no girls allowed" sign.
Originally founded as a holding company, Sauron & Vader Holdings became the professional playground of Jani Rajaniemi and me. Through SVH we own real estate, run businesses, and occasionally sell our brains to companies in need of general corporate exorcism. It is part holding company, part consultancy, part business sandbox, and part excuse to have a company named Sauron & Vader Holdings. Serious enough to send invoices. Not serious enough to pretend we need a mission statement
I co-founded Superhit, a mobile game startup, and put in both my time and what little money I had. The whole thing tanked. Lesson learned: future investments will be limited to fast cars.
Asunto Rahaksi was a website where homeowners could sell their apartments directly to an investor for an instant cash offer. Probably the first such service in Finland when I built it — Helsingin Sanomat wrote about it. Not a revolutionary startup. Not an AI-powered real estate platform. Just a place to sell your apartment. Built for a specific investor, sold to them in 2020.