Bootstrapping from Finland: Vainu CEO Mikko Honkanen (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How many customers do you have in all?

Mikko Honkanen: A little bit more than 1,200 customers.

Sramana Mitra: What has been your experience with the US? Three markets are Scandinavian markets where the policy is open data. Is the Dutch market open data as well?

Mikko Honkanen: There’s actually a site called Global Open Data Index. You can compare different countries. All these countries where we operate rank pretty high. It’s different in each country. In the US, accessing financial data of private companies is not easy. On the other hand, there’s a lot more additional data that is available.

Sramana Mitra: The web is a lot richer and deeper in the US, but not as open.

Mikko Honkanen: For example, government contract awards are open data. We feel that we have selected good markets. Nowadays, we use premium data providers. We might buy some data even though most of the data is sourced from open and public data sources.

Sramana Mitra: What are you experiencing by way of competitive landscape in the US now? Whom do you see in deals?

Mikko Honkanen: We expected the US to be more competitive. If you analyze any technology category, most of the leading players are from the US in terms of the number of companies. Then we also need to keep in mind that there are so many companies and so many prospects in the US.

If you pick a random company from, let’s say, Ohio and you pick a random company from Sweden, the odds are they’re pretty much on the same level in terms of how advanced they are in terms of using technology. Even though there are more players in the space, there are also so many more prospects.

Sramana Mitra: You’ve done all this with no external financing?

Mikko Honkanen: It’s a bootstrapped company. We have not raised any VC funding.

Sramana Mitra: We are big fans of bootstrapped entrepreneurs. We constantly feature bootstrapped entrepreneurs. What else is interesting that you would like to share from your journey?

Mikko Honkanen: At the end of the day, it’s all about people. What’s also very unique is, we just had an annual general meeting. We invited all the shareholders. We have almost 50 employees who own part of the company. We have a very low employee turnover. We didn’t have a single person that we decided to let go. In the first 18 months, we didn’t have turnover. But the key people have been with us since day one.

We don’t have external funding. The best funding for any startup is actually the revenue that comes from customers. It’s very easy to forget that. The media always highlights when someone is closing a big round even though it’s more important to find a customer who’s happy.

Sramana Mitra: Far more important. Our mantra in One Million by One Million is entrepreneurship equals customers, revenues, and profits. Financing is optional. Exit is optional.

I hope to keep in touch. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Bootstrapping from Finland: Vainu CEO Mikko Honkanen
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