Bootstrapping from Finland: Vainu CEO Mikko Honkanen (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What about the product that had to be localized?

Mikko Honkanen: Yes. We had to localize the product. All the Nordic countries are pretty good with open data. We were able to buy and open the basic data. We had to add lots of local data sources and translate the UI and make sure that we customize the workflow for Swedish users.

Also in 2015, we decided to have a customer success department. We found a fantastic person who is now our Customer Success Director. She took over most of the existing customers to make sure that every single one of them is happy and they want to renew the contract. It was also in September when we brought in a person for content marketing. Starting in Q3, we started building those little departments. 2015 was a fantastic year.

Sramana Mitra: How much did you do in 2015?

Mikko Honkanen: It’s important that we define what’s revenue. As a SaaS company, we typically talk about annualized recurring revenue. We had ARR of a little bit less than €1 million.

Sramana Mitra: Then what happens in 2016?

Mikko Honkanen: 2016 was another awesome year. We brought in new people to do sales and enhance customer success. Then at the beginning of 2016, we decided that it’s important to do business outside the Nordics. We were debating back and forth if we wanted to enter Germany or the Netherlands. Then we ended up chasing Amsterdam mainly because we knew quite a few SaaS companies that were doing well there. It’s a pretty small country still and people are very to the point.

Sramana Mitra: The Dutch are very business-savvy.

Mikko Honkanen: Yes. The whole team flew to Amsterdam in February of 2016. This time, we decided to let one of the January 2015 hires manage the country. It went well. He’s still running the operations. We hired the local people and started building the first office outside the Nordics.

In the summer, because we were approaching 50 employees, we felt that we needed to continue building the central functions and make sure that the organization was ready to accommodate more people. We decided to hire a Head of Finance. We also made a decision during the summertime that we wanted to open up an office in the US. We were torn between London and New York. We decided that we were going to do it in January of 2017. We wanted to build the product and make sure that we have all the data in the US as well before we go all in.

Towards the end of the year, we made a decision to open up in Oslo as well. Even though Norway is a small country, it has a good economy and is pretty similar to Finland and Sweden. Now we have those five offices. We continue the process of making the organization a little more mature. Last year, we brought in the first head of HR. We had a great year. We ended up the year with almost €5 million.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Bootstrapping from Finland: Vainu CEO Mikko Honkanen
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