Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped a SaaS Company from Finland

If you haven’t already, please study our free Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

Vainu.io Co-founder Mikko Honkanen has steadily built an excellent SaaS company from Finland and when we spoke in 2017, was expanding into the US as well. Read on for more.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your personal journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Mikko Honkanen: I was born in a small town in Finland, 20 miles up north from Helsinki. I studied at Helsinki School of Economics. I also studied at Oxford. Then I spent the last 10 years in the SaaS business. I spent almost seven years at a Norwegian company called Meltwater.

>>>

Featured Videos

627th 1Mby1M Roundtable for Entrepreneurs Starting NOW: Live Tweeting by @1Mby1M

Today’s 627th FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable for Entrepreneurs is starting NOW, on Thursday, December 14, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/5 p.m. CET/9: 30 p.m. India IST. CLICK HERE to join. PASSWORD: startup  All are welcome!   

627th Roundtable for Entrepreneurs Starting in 30 Minutes: Live Tweeting by @1Mby1M

Today’s 627th FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable for Entrepreneurs is starting in 30 minutes, on Thursday, December 14, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/5 p.m. CET/9:30 p.m. India IST. CLICK HERE to join. PASSWORD: startup  All are welcome!

Video FAQs

In 2024, Spend an Hour a Day with a Successful Entrepreneur

As I think about LinkedIn’s #BigIdeas2024 initiative, I am acutely aware of the fact that 2023 has given our industry one of the most powerful inflection points in the evolution of Artificial Intelligence. 

AI has now entered popular consciousness.

As such, the desire to take advantage of this discontinuity is akin to yet another tech gold rush. Techies are chomping at the bits to start companies all over the world.

If you are such a techie looking to step into entrepreneurship, I suggest you make a new year resolution to spend an hour a day in 2024 with a successful entrepreneur.

You are thinking, how the hell do I do that?

>>>

Kick-start Your Entrepreneurial Journey in the New Year

Are you looking to dive headfirst into the world of entrepreneurship in the upcoming year? Now is the perfect time to gear up for success. And what better way to start than by learning from a leader in entrepreneurship education and startup strategies?

December Deals on 1Mby1M Tech Startup Courses

At 1Mby1M, we’re passionate about democratizing entrepreneurship education worldwide. That’s why we’ve curated our proven methodology into convenient, power-packed courses available on Udemy. This December, we’re offering discounts of up to 85% off on the transformative courses listed below.

>>>

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped to Over $10M from the UK

If you haven’t already, please study our free Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

Cambridge, England is a great place for high-end technical talent. This story from 2017 traces the journey of a group of such talented people with core expertise in Natural Language Processing, including Linguamatics Co-founder Roger Hale, and how they turned their expertise into a robust, profitable business. IQVIA acquired Linguamatics in January 2019.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your personal journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Roger Hale: I think I had quite a normal upbringing. I grew up in Yorkshire in the northeast of England. My mother came from a family with a local manufacturing business. She also ran a restaurant for a while. My father was an academic. He was a mathematician. He had actually been a code breaker and worked with some of the very first computers as part of that. I didn’t obviously know that until later.

>>>

Catching Up On Readings: The Future of Big Tech

This feature from CB Insights illustrates the future of Big Tech with the help of ten charts. Big tech companies — Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, and Nvidia — are set to earn over $1.65T in aggregate revenue in 2023 and have raked in over $200B in profits. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.

626th 1Mby1M Roundtable Recording

In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording of this roundtable here: