Final steps before WeTell Networks

At the end of my last blog post I wrote that you don't have to wait long for my next post. Well that was over a month ago, sorry about that. I have just been too busy with my work to write here. But here it is now, last 8 months of WeTell Networks and maybe something about the future.

After the summer of 2009 we were really excited because our case was sent to Helsinki Keksintösäätiö. We knew that if they said yes, we might get 30 000€. That would be enough to build our pilot product and we could start the testing with customers. We spend the whole fall talking with Keksintösäätiö and sending them new material. They also arranged us a meeting with a very talented and experienced consultant who had worked with several startups. This happened sometime during November 2009. 

This was also the time when we started to talk more about making WeTell Networks a real company. We started to plan where we could get the seed money, what accounting company would be the best, who would be our third person on the board etc. We talked about our idea with our consultant Ari Jämsen and he suggested that we should apply for Tekes PK-LTS program. It's a program to make a business plan with a consultant. We send the application and in few weeks we had our first meeting with our PK-LTS consultant Juha Puutio. We had great talks with Juha and because he was also a lawyer, he helped us with the papers we needed to fill to register the company.

On the 27^th of November we had our first board meeting, where we made decisions about the management team, chose the accounting company, the bank, the lawyer etc. On the 17^th of December we went to the city administrative court and registered WeTell Networks. That was a happy day for us because the plans that we had made for several years were finally true!

The beginning of the year 2010 was a busy time for our new startup. We had several meetings with our consultant and several VCs. All the meetings with the VCs were pretty much the same. They said that we had a good idea, it had market potential but at this point there were too many risk factors. They also told that if our product would be ready and we had people using it, they would invest on it. Also Keksintösäätiö told us the same even after we had positive feedbacks from two consultants. So no 30K€ for us. I'm not sure how many companies got the seed funding from them. I believe at this point many entrepreneurs would have stop trying but for us it gave a new drive to show those people they should have invested on us. We also realized that it is VERY hard to get funding when you don't have a pilot product.

From January to March we tried to get funding and also worked with our pilot customer, developing the product. At this time we also started to work with an AD agency Laboratorio Uleabårg, a group of very talented people. With them we developed the UI. They made us new sketches of the service and I have to say it looks great. We also made a decision that we will not see any VCs before we have a working pilot version of the product and customers testing it.

So finally we have reached today. At the moment we are doing product development with our cooperation partner. We have a few applications inside TE-keskus and Avera and we hope to get some financial support from them. But we can't trust on their support. If we get some money, that's great. If not, we will get the money from somewhere else. We have several pilot customers waiting for our product here in Finland. We are also discussing with UK based companies about pilot testing. Interest to our product has been great and also companies from fields we didn't expected have been very interested on it.

WeTell Networks is at the threshold of success, but to get there we need a lot of hard work, some luck, faith on the product and boldness. That we don't lack but so many Finnish people that are making the decisions do!

Juha Karppinen

WeTell Networks

History of WeTell Networks

Hello again!

As previous writing was an introduction to our blog this one will include more information of our history as a company. WeTell Networks saw first light in the year 2005 when I Juha Karppinen and Hannes Huotari met at the University of Oulu, where we studied software business. We took same courses and listened Vesa Puhakka and Juhani Warsta explaining of the ICT business. We talked a lot how many ICT companies especially in Finland had problems understanding the business behind the technical point of view. Also communication seemed to be problem for many companies on the ICT field.

Vesa Puhakkas new and creative ideas made us think that how we could help small companies' success better in dynamic business environment where we live in. That was the first time we started to develop our own business idea. We shared our business plan to professors, friends, entrepreneurs and many others and idea developed all the time. At first our ideas just keep expanding, we had A5 size paper full of drawings as our business idea. With this complex idea we took part in the Venture cup in 2006. Results were good and bad. Some judges loved it but some just didn't understand it. Well I have to say that our idea at that point was a huge bunch of ideas tied to together, so no wonder some people didn't understood it.

Year 2007 we didn't developed our idea so much because I was studying at the University of Manchester for 6 months. At the end of the year we took WeTell Networks back to table and started to work the idea. At the beginning of the year 2008 we tried to focus our idea and found very talented Web designer to do sketches for us. Sketches and advices from friends helped us to focus idea so much that we went to talk guys at Tekes and Technopolis . Meeting with Tekes didn't go so well because we didn't have product, customers, real market research etc. Only thing we had was great idea and good feedback from potential users. Selling the idea although you really believe on it is not the easiest task to do, especially in Finland.

Meeting with Technopolis was better because we got the guys to believe that there might be something in our idea. We get in to the Technopolis early phase business incubator program and Mika Ruostesuo trained our idea and us. We learned a lot from those sessions and our idea grew to be idea with business potential. All this happened at the end of 2008 and first months of 2009. We entered the Venture cup 2009 competition with our new and improved business plan, but got the same result then last time. Judges were again split in half. But this didn't stop us trying!

In the spring 2009 Mika send us in to the keksintösäätiö tuoteväylä program. They believed our idea so much that they hired a consultant to do marketing research. Marketing research was positive for us and it showed that WeTell Networks has marketing potential. This was great for us and our idea went to Helsinki, at that point it seemed we might get funding from keksintösäätiö. Same time that we waited decisions we worked with consultant and had meetings with potential customers. Customer feedback was really important and made us see what customers really wanted. At this time it was summer 2009 and everything seemed great and we started to think should we make our company official!

Everything that happened between year 2005 and summer 2009 teach us a lot of things that you can't learn from books. It also showed how difficult it is to get funded, if only thing you have is the GREAT idea. Everybody says if you have a good idea you will get funded and money is not a problem, but is it really so!? If you are a student or working somewhere else you don't have free time or thousands of Euros to do market research, how you can then prove there is market potential in your idea. Should government or private investors build startup center which would give money to potential entrepreneurs not to the consultants. If entrepreneur could show with that money that there is marketing potential they would get bigger funding, would that work maybe or maybe not. In our case it might have made a difference and WeTell Networks would be 2 year old company not 2 months old as it is now.

So our blog have now reached summer of 2009 and last 6 months are still coming. I didn't want to write all here because this blog post would have got too long. I promise that you don't have to wait next post as long as it took to write this one. Hopefully when you are reading this blog next time we will have good news about funding, we have very interesting conversations going on with one VC. We are living interesting times now!

Cheers for reading and feel free to give us feedback!

Juha Karppinen

WeTell networks

Welcome to Starting the StartUp blog dear reader!

This blog will tell you a story of WeTell Networks, fresh new startup from Oulu Finland. We will tell you how we ended up building our own company, after we had talked about it for several years. During these years we have talked about our idea to professors, potential customers, VCs, friends, family, consults, etc. and all they have helped us to shape our idea to form as it is today. It has been a long run with ups and downs, but we have loved all the way!

During this time we have learned what it is to do business in Finland, especially if you are building a new company with fresh business idea. In the beginning we had to hit our head to wall few times before we found right people and learned what right things to say are. You can't learn these things from the University or any other Finnish schools, although they have good courses about entrepreneurship and how you should run your company. I think we should take a look how things are done in the USA or UK and we might have more young entrepreneurs.

As the previous paragraph tells you our blog is not only about how we are doing as a company, although that is essential part of it. We will also blog about StartUps in general, our views of Finnish way of doing business and share our knowledge of what we have learned during these years. Hopefully this blog will give some advices to young people, who are building a startup or are thinking about it.

As this is our introduction writing we try to keep it short and tell you more about WeTell Networks and our history in the next episode.

Cheers

Juha Karppinen & Hannes Huotari

WeTell Networks