Aalto Ventures Program provides students with inspiration, capability and network necessary to build new scalable businesses as startups or in established organizations. Samuli is a cofounder of positivesignalsand country manager with Axenon. Samuli helps companies to grow quickly and build organizations everybody wants to work with. He has a strong career of taking software and service businesses from small to global scale.
He introduced us to a surprise guest speaker Iiro Lamppu from Vainu.io. He has been with the company since the very beginning (he was the 5th employee) and helps the company to sell and serve better. His interest include innovations that change the world to the better and customer service that really helps customers.
Both the speakers gave a short introduction about themselves and then we conversed about examples of good and bad culture, whether we can feel the company culture through a Sales person or interview process. Although there is no perfect answer to this, a person represents the company and the company values are exhibited when we meet anyone from the company.
Iiro gave a case example about Vainu, where he spoke about how the company culture at Vainu was when it began its operations compared to now when it is a fully established company with around 125 employees and 5 offices . He shared that how easy it was to get in touch and to speak with the cofounders and employees in the beginning and as the company grew they have a hierarchy to follow. When asked about why customers buy from them, one of the member from the group, a client of Vainu, applauded them on how they make the user experience better and put customers’ needs foremost.
Samuli led us for group work by imagining situations like ‘Customer’s behavior when he/she likes you’ and ‘Deal internally with a project gone bad’, In the former situation we discussed about how the behavior is different according to the region the person belongs to, but, mostly it is evident that a client likes you when she tends to be positive, is already planning for the future prospects, contacts you even before you get back to the client.
While for the latter topic, we discussed as how we can get together and review the situation and what went wrong by each person’s perspective. We felt that it is the responsibility of the leader to take the situation in his hands even though it is a negligence by one of the team member. We also felt that instead of playing the blame game or making the person feel let down focus and see how the situation doesn’t occur again and how can it be improved.
It was an enthusiastic discussion and everyone participated in the discussion. Samuli suggested the group a good read Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success by Adam Grant. Give and take changes our fundamental understanding of why we succeed.
Aalto Ventures Program have their next workshop on Sept 27th How to talk to investors?
Story by Aalto Start-Up Center intern Shreeja Shukla