Welcome to Brazen Careerist!

About Me

I have a life-long passion for startups, gaming and online communities.

I've been involved in several major gaming sites, be it in editing, developing or managing them.
I have also done designing, modding and creating indie games and game engines.
I enjoy competitive gaming, and have played top level in games such as Counterstrike, Quake and Unreal Tournament.

I regularly write about and advocate growth entrepreneurship, and enjoy pitching and speaking at events. Being an entrepreneur in Finland has forced me to network and reach out.

I find it very rewarding to work with smart people and seek good communication and challenges.

Work History

• MySites.com
• CEO
• March 2006 to Present

• Lead a team of some of the most high-profile Ruby programmers in the world
  Raised $750k in funding internationally
  Setup the team across Finland, Germany, Netherlands, France
  Developed 4 partnerships
  Lowered burn rate 25k -> 9k in one year
  Traffic: up to 3M hits / day
  Traffic growth: +800% in Dec 09 -> Jan 10.
  Received coverage in top blogs such as Techcrunch, Mashable, Readwriteweb, Startupmeme.

  Events/Promotion:
  Spoke at 100+ keynotes, workshops, pitching events
  Mashable US tour (July 08) 1 month touring in Seattle, SF, LA, Austin, Miami, Boston and NY.
  Received "Best Pitch" award at EOS conference in Nice (Nov 09).
  Finnish Student tour (Sept 08), across 5 cities.
  Organized CounterStrike Source EU (largest online tournament, twice in a row)

• Aalto Venture Garage
• Coach
• September 2010 to Present

• Aalto Venture Garage is the hub for entrepreneurs and startups throughout the Baltics. Located on Aalto University’s campus near Helsinki, this 700 sq meter industry hall is an open work space where entrepreneurs gets support from the Coaches and work together to grow their businesses. Bootcamp, run four times a year, gathers up the best early stage startup founders to learn from the best serial entrepreneurs and investors from the region.

  At the Aalto Venture Garage I am doing pro bono work coaching and lecturing to the startups attending the various Boot Camps.

• Summer of Startups
• Main Coach
• July 2010 to August 2010

• Summer of Startups is a program that helps students create a startup rather than take a summer job (similar to SSE Labs in Stanford). The goal is to enable students to work on their idea, get coaching, and meet inspiring speakers.

  It is a collaboration between student-run associations from the top 3 schools in Helsinki (Aaltoes, Hankenes and Hues) and funded by TEKES.

  The program features:
  - 10 selected startups (10 nationalities, 30 people) from 60 applications
  - 20+ guest speakers
  - pitching competition in Estonia, demo day in Finland

  Summer of Startups has been noted to deliver very high quality pitches and is considered to be one of the most effective entrepreneurship programs to date in the country. It has received acknowledgment from various ministries and state organizations.

Education

• Tampere Polytechnic
• BA in International Business, E Business, International Marketing
• 2004 - 2006