Bootstrapping your way to success

Heikki Väänänen, the co-founder of HappyOrNot, talks about his entrepreneurial journey from bootstrapping to raising over 40m EUR funding and scaling the company to +200 employees, and stepping down from the CEO role after 20 years. He also tells why it's a good idea to wear a company T-shirt.

See the episode notes and transcript: https://www.petrikajander.com/bootstrapping-your-way-to-success/.

Guest bio

Heikki Väänänen, 40, has worked most of his life as an entrepreneur. The idea of HappyOrNot was born, when at the age of 15, he received bad customer service at a store he visited. He wondered whether there would be a better solution to give feedback and came up with the idea of the new service. However, he did not execute his idea right away and let it mature for a few more years. In those years, he graduated  as a Master of Science in Technology and founded, at the age of 20, his own gaming company Universomo. He has held board member roles in several technology and services companies, with a proven track record of increasing sales and profitability. With his combined experience and expertise, Heikki has directed the successful strategic development and sale of six Finnish companies, including the sale of Universomo to THQ – the second largest gaming company in the world.

In 2009 HappyOrNot was born. The Smiley devices measuring customer satisfaction can be found at various locations, like grocery stores, pharmacies and airports, in more than 120 countries around the world. The HappyOrNot service has currently collected 2 billion feedbacks - a record in the customer feedback market space. While the idea of the Smiley devices is simple and the way of giving feedback is easy, the feedback data enables actionable insights and empowers companies to develop their business by improving their customer experience.

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All episode notes and transcripts: https://www.petrikajander.com/talkswithpetri/

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