How do I pronounce your surname?
Just do whatever feels good to you.
Perttu O-jan-su, Ojansuu?
Ojansuu.
Ojansuu, okay.
Yeah.
I can do that, Ojansuu.
Hi, everybody, Fintan here from Damson Cloud.
This week, I am in London.
We're having a bit of a travel time
the last couple of weeks.
This week, I'm in London,
and I'm chatting to Perttu Ojansuu,
who's founder of Happeo,
which is a digital workspace solution.
So, thanks for taking the time to come and chat to us today.
Thank you, happy to be here.
Yeah, so just a little bit on your background
before we kind of kick into things.
Obviously, you're founder of Happeo, the digital workspace,
but previously to that you were founder of Gapps,
which is a Google partner, who we know well as well,
and you also have a B.A. in science and economics,
and a master's in entrepreneurship,
which I was surprised to find out, so that was interesting.
And you did that maybe about 10, 12 years ago?
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
And so, what I always start these things with is
a little bit of an icebreaker.
So I always do the one with Ian and the guys as well.
So, the ice breaker one is,
if you could have any superpower, what would it be?
This questions comes from my son.
He always asks this.
Actually, I always ask the same questions
in these job interviews as well.
It's interesting to hear the answers.
Yeah, right now, actually,
I'm never sick, but I happen to be now sick,
so if I would have the power to heal people.
And yourself. Just by touching,
yeah, on myself, so that would be cool.
That would be cool, yeah.
That would be a very sort of selfless one as well,
that you could use both for yourself,
and for other people. Yeah, exactly,
like healing people.
'Cause then vulnerability is just for yourself.
Well, we both are in the making people's life happier
and more productive.
Think about that, if everyone would be
all the time health.
Yeah, that would be a good one, that would be a good one.
No, it's a cool question, I love it,
to ask it as well, and then you can actually get
the real person out there when you hear the answer,
so that's cool, I love it. Yeah, it's good,
it's a good one.
I'm going to do a compilation, I think,
of all the fun answers that we've gotten so far.
Okay, so, a little bit about yourself.
I kind of wanted to dig into a little bit about you
before we sort of got into the company stuff.
So I know that you're from Finland,
but outside of that, I have no real knowledge of Finland.
My first time there was actually at the Happeo conference,
other than the similarity of my own name.
I was delighted to actually get to go, which was great.
We were in Helsinki, obviously, last year
for the Happeo conference,
but whereabouts are you from in Finland?
Are you from one of the major towns?
Or are you a country kid?
What's your sort of background?
Well, it's a boring story.
I'm actually born in capital, so Helsinki.
Capital kid.
Yeah, yeah, but I mostly spent my childhood
in the second biggest city, called Tampere.
It's actually called the Manchester of Finland.
It's kind of like, they used to have old paper mills
and fabric factories there,
so there's that kind of heritage.
But, no, the past few years,
I have lived already abroad.
Yeah, yeah.
You're living in Helsinki at the moment?
No, in Amsterdam.
Amsterdam, okay, cool.
I thought that, but I wasn't 100% sure.
Yeah, no worries.
If you ask my girlfriend,
she says that I live in a aeroplane, so.
Yeah, I feel like that this week for sure, for sure.
Sometimes, in our type of jobs,
and probably moreso even with yourself,
you do kind of find, I'm too familiar with the airport,
you know, but yeah, that kind of goes
with the territory sometimes.
Did you have kind of a typical Finnish upbringing?
Do you have a big family, or a small family?
Any siblings?
Yeah, we were six people altogether,
and I'm the eldest.
I have always said that I was the black sheep in a way.
I always tried the barriers,
and then the others learned from my mistakes.
Well, they could follow behind.
That's good.
That's what you want.
I was the other way around.
I was the youngest, and I was the black sheep,
so I was kind of the one where my parents were like,
oh, Donal didn't do this.
You know, and I'm wrecking things as I go.
I have always been adventurer,
so that's the thing that, I think,
everyone in our family is,
and I think it's cool, the childhood,
what we have, and so many memories,
and with such a big group of people,
so that was definitely nice.
Yeah, it's nice to have a close family relationship.
I have a close relationship with my own family
and my parents as well.
I don't think I'd really go a week
without talking to them, if I can,
if I can fit it in amongst things.
And I'm lucky that I live in the same country as them.
In terms of your kind of family background,
it's interesting, as Donal used to say to me,
you've never had a real job.
You know, I've always worked for myself,
so I've never sort of worked that kind of 9:00 to 5:00,
and you're the same, you don't seem to have worked that,
you know, you've gone straight into--
Not much.
Not much, yeah, I mean, we always do
maybe a little bit when you're younger.
I had a few sort of odd jobs in college
and things like that, but realistically,
that sort of long term, working five years
or 10 years for a company,
we neither seem to have that.
Do you think there was anything
in your family background
that kind of pushed you that direction,
or you were the only one kind of doing that?
Currently, I'm the only entrepreneur,
but I know that my brother has as well that kind of feeling,
and maybe some day, he would like to.
I think both of my parents are just workaholics.
They just happen to work in public industry.
They worked in public sector.
Yeah, so that's that,
but I think all of us have learned,
yeah, the hardworking culture.
Yeah, mentality, culture, which is important as well.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it's only that,
and then I have just chosen to do it this way.
But it is still, you know,
maybe less unusual now, but certainly,
when I was growing up, it was something,
my parents are both teachers,
and they kind of came from that background,
and my mom's side of the family were big into business.
My grandfather started his own company,
so there was a business background
that kind of was pushing me towards that,
but I remember my parents being nervous
about the idea of us starting our own business,
and kind of going down that road,
'cause they were used to the sort
of more traditional jobs, and the security.
Now, I personally think, nowadays,
that doesn't exist in the same way,
do you know what I mean?
Sort of a job for life is kind of gone,
do you know what I mean?
But, like, 20 years ago,
when they were having these thoughts,
and conversations, that it did still exist.
I think, in a way, that what they have said
to me always has been that you do your thing,
whatever it is, and you'll be successful,
and they haven't said that, okay, it's risky or not,
or maybe you should--
No, they have always said
that whatever you do, that's what we're supporting.
And that's great.
Ideally, that's what you want, do you know what I mean?
I don't want my son to feel,
I have a 10-year-old, you know
that he has to do a similar job to me.
He'll probably do something completely different,
and that's great, do you know what I mean?
And I think it's terrible
when you see people forced into family businesses
that they don't really want to work in, you know?
It's not really what they love,
and it's really obvious that they don't want to do it,
but that's what mommy wants, or daddy wants,
you know, so it's never good, really.
It's never good, really,
and I don't think it lends itself
to people being happy in life,
do you know what I mean?
If they're not sort of doing
what they genuinely want to do.
Can you ever see yourself working a 9:00 to 5:00?
Do you see a future where, like,
if the company was sold, or bought in five,
or 10 years, or whatever,
could you imagine yourself
in a bigger kind of corporate environment?
Yeah, of course, yeah.
I work more than 9:00 to 5:00.
Sure, yeah, yeah, that would be easier.
This is like, ah, this is easy.
So yeah, I don't mind that.
It depends of the company culture,
and what's the challenge?
What's the challenge?
Yeah, yeah.
'Cause every one of us want to pursue always
to the next level, and next level,
so that's like, you never know what life brings.
No, no, yeah, and I think
that reeling something out doesn't make sense.
I like working for myself,
and I think I probably always will,
but I could see myself, I think I would like the challenge
of maybe a larger company.
You know, I've worked with large companies,
but that's kind of different.
You're a consultant, you're external,
you know, you're kind of part of the team
for a little while, but you're never fully integrated,
and you get to kind of see a little bit
of the internal politics, but you're enough outside it
that you're not as affected by it.
Maybe it might be interesting to be right in there,
the internal politics.
So your founders, the other founders
that you have in the businesses,
in Gapps, and in Happeo,
where did you guys meet?
Was it in college, or school, or family?
In university, or in the university circle, that's that,
and actually, what was interesting,
what led to the founding story of Happeo.
I was part of that kind of entrepreneurial group of people,
and we brought people from Silicon Valley to Finland
to teach us how to build
these kind of scalable product companies,
so the idea of Happeo, or something like that,
was always there, and so it's kind of like part of that,
and then, yeah, that's where we found each other.
I think it's interesting,
'cause that was sort of my next piece,
that the Happeo product, originally, Universe,
as some of you may know it as,
was born out of Gapps, and out of a sort of need
within a particular costumer, I assume,
or costumers for a solution like this,
so there are particular challenges
that you guys came across, you looked at the market
at the time, there was nothing there.
You kind of had Google Sites
as a very basic kind of internet thing,
but certainly, nothing like the product
that you guys have created,
and it is interesting because,
and we were having this conversation before,
a lot of the Google partners
in the ecosystem, particularly the ISVs,
who have been successful have been born
out of Google partners, where a real need
from a customer sort of has come about,
and they've built a solution around that,
and I think it's really because,
rather than sort of creating a tool,
and trying to find a need for it,
it's the other way around.
It's like a need was sought.
It's so clear in front of your face.
So, can you tell us a little bit
about how you feel that led
to the success of the business,
or how much that was sort of part of it,
and if you're able to share
that initial couple of customers
that sort of, I suppose, were the trailblazers for you guys.
Yeah, well, the journey of Happeo started
kind of like from the migration
of the Finnish largest companies to Google,
and then realising, as you said,
what kind of challenges they are facing
so that, actually, something like this could be potential.
Then, with discussing with these organisations,
then they said, yeah, there is definitely a need.
Then we, yeah, did the first demo product,
and that's how to do it, but yeah,
the idea was all the time to kind of,
we actually had a few other ideas already before.
Other products.
Yeah, other products, but we didn't feel
as related, that that would be our passion.
It was about time-tracking,
or something like goes to the really...
Time management, product management.
Yeah, so that was one idea that we had at some point,
but yeah, this was definitely,
we saw that, yeah, this is what we definitely want
to change in the world, how people communicate.
Totally, and I think you have to be passionate
about it, don't you?
Yeah, totally, totally.
Has to be something that you're really behind.
Otherwise, you know,
you're going to run out of steam eventually,
do you know what I mean?
As you said, the long hours and things like that,
you're going to be like, this isn't worth it.
Do you know what I mean?
So it has to be something you're passionate about.
That's great.
How long did it sort of take
to get from that point where you were developing a solution
for a customer, and they were using some skeleton version
of what is now Happeo, assumably,
to a point where you were like,
this is a product that we're demoing?
Like, I remember the first time you guys demoed it
in, it wasn't San Francisco.
Yeah, or Vegas.
In Vegas, yeah, the first
and only time they had the Google Next conference in Vegas,
and I can remember, you guys rented out this cool space.
I remember going down.
It was actually Ian Nairn that got me,
yeah, it was, all those years ago,
to get me to take a look,
and I was like, what's this Universe thing?
I don't know about this, okay.
Sure, we've got nothing on at the moment.
Then we went down, and we saw you guys demo it,
and you had the Rovio guys there.
Yes.
Yeah, so they were obviously one of the initial,
or first couple of customers
that you guys got on board.
Yeah, so Rovio was famous of the Angry Birds game,
so they were one of our first customers,
and yeah, they were a part of the launching.