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