From Remote Finland To Global Markets: Founders Solving Transit, Industry And Climate

Joensuu is a small city in eastern Finland, close to the Russian border, and it keeps producing founders who think and build globally. Kasey Snyder steps in as guest host, bringing you conversations recorded at SOHJO with entrepreneurs proving that distance is not a disadvantage when the work is real. Across transit, manufacturing, robotics, retail, and climate tech, the common thread is practical innovation that can travel from the Nordics to North America.

This episode features conversations with:

• Juho Häme, Co-Founder, Einbus
• Jani Akkila, CEO, Process Genius, and Jani Toropainen, CEO, Mecmetal
• George-Cosmin Porusniuc, Co-Founder, Henki Robotics
• Joona Kotilainen, Co-Founder, Hiil Oy
• Leo Fadi, Founder & CEO, Vesko Oy
• Tomi Haring, CEO, Business Joensuu
• Miska Ruotsalainen, CEO, Fiidback
• Sami Koskela, CEO, Filtson

If you care about Nordic startups, applied AI, climate tech, industrial IoT, and the realities of scaling into the US and Canada, press play, subscribe, and share this with a founder or operator who needs fresh ideas.

Transcript

Kasey Snyder 0:26

Welcome to Global Edge Talk, the podcast where we celebrate the global entrepreneur. I'm Kasey Snyder, head of European growth at Global Edge Markets. I'm stepping in as your guest host for this special episode. My team and I specialize in helping Nordic and Baltic tech leaders navigate the complexities of North American expansion through market readiness assessments, fundraising, and strategic business development. I recently returned from Sohjo in Joensuu, Finland, a city that sits at a fascinating geopolitical and intellectual crossroads. While it may be a remote region near the Russian border, it's also home to the University of Eastern Finland, a powerhouse of research that is fueling a surge in high-tech startups. In this episode, I'm bringing you my interviews with founders who are proving that distance is no barrier to world-class tech. You should be listening because these are companies that aren't just building products, they're solving global challenges in digital defense, harmful emission reduction, and predictive AI analytics. At Global Edge Markets, we believe that social capital, or the connections and trust that we build across borders, is a critical ingredient for our global future. By supporting these innovators, we aren't just growing businesses, we're improving our collective society. Let's dive into the exciting work happening in the forests of eastern Finland. Hi, Juho. Great to have you here. I'd love to learn a little bit more about Einbus. Can you tell me about it?

Juho Häme 2:01

Yeah, so uh we're building this um platform that connects passengers, organizers, bus operators, and travel organizers on on one platform.  Yeah, so our goal is to predict public transport demand and uh provide more bus routes and more buses and less private cars, hopefully.

Kasey Snyder 2:51

It sounds like it would be very valuable for big cities with major events happening.

Juho Häme 2:56

Yeah, actually uh we have worked with major events like this music festivals, for instance, where there are the there are thousands of people during one day in one place. So we have arranged bus connections from like inter intercity bus connections there, and we've also piloted some shuttle services. So like when you're traveling a few kilometers inside a city. So those are the two two main use cases that we're piloting.

Kasey Snyder 3:21

And are you only looking at urban destinations or do you have applications for all terrain or off-road spaces as well?

Juho Häme 3:27

Sorry?

Kasey Snyder 3:28

You mean like all terrain, like non-paved roads?

Juho Häme 3:32

Non-paved roads. Yes. We've also been exploring this uh like concept of terrain passability. So in terms of this is more like border security, looking at how uh how passable, how well vehicles can move in the wilderness. And um that's a completely different use case in a way, but we can use the same algorithms for routing and uh this kind of f finding routes and optimizing them.

Kasey Snyder 3:59

What sort of concerns would someone have if they're trying to manage through uh wilderness or forest area? What uh obstacles do they encounter?

Juho Häme 4:07

The main obstacles are vegetation and like the slope. We use terrain models as the base and vegetation based on satellite images, but also the weather changes like rain can turn roads into mud, for instance. So it it really has a big effect on how how well you can drive a car somewhere.

Kasey Snyder 4:26

Aaron Powell And do you think having your company here in Finland with the more challenging uh climate is a benefit for your company?

Juho Häme 4:34

I think definitely, since we have uh four seasons every year in Finland, so I think that like really uh highlights the differences between like like, for example, every Finnish person has three sets of clothes. So so one for summer, one for spring and fall, and one for winter. So I think that that same applies for like moving around in the forest. So so you have to think about whether you put skis on or boots or sandals.

Kasey Snyder 4:58

But that makes a lot of sense, actually. And can you tell me what you're doing here Joensuu?

Juho Häme 5:02

So in Joensuu, we are pitching this uh wild flow idea, which is related to border security and ecosystem restoration, wildlife habitats, which is like might not sound like it relates to the uh transit platform thing, but actually it it's uh technically the same solution to these both problems.

Kasey Snyder 5:22

Excellent. Well, it was wonderful speaking with you. Thank you for sharing and best of luck at the pitching competition.

Juho Häme 5:27

Thank you.

Kasey Snyder 5:35

Okay, great. So I'm sitting down now with Jani of Process Genius as well as Jani of Mecmetal. Thank you both for being here with me. I'd love for you to introduce yourselves and tell me a little bit about your companies.

Jani Akkila 5:47

Yeah, Jani Akkila, Process Genius, representing our project, Genius Corp. We are basically providing a platform for industrial companies to build a holistic digital review of their operations with uh from an app level to asset level, floor level, combining 50 to 80 softwares to one UI to share that distributed information in in context to different user groups so that everybody knows all the time what is going on and what is about to happen.

Kasey Snyder 6:17

Okay, interesting.

Jani Toropainen 6:18

Yep. And uh I'm Jani Toropainen, CEO of Mecmetal and also co-owner of Mecmetal. Mecmetal is a 30-year-old company. I have been manufacturing fully electromechanical concrete product production lines so the equipment for manufacturing like paving stones or building blocks or whatever. And they're also specializing on this that you can use different kinds of materials in the production, so it doesn't need to be the traditional concrete, and we have many, many sustainable ways also to handle the actual concrete to make it low-carbon products. And that is the one that we are now specialized. The reason why we are here together is actually this that we have been listening to customers a lot, and the service part of the business is more and more important. We have always had a lot of intelligence in our production lines in the control systems, but now we are moving totally in the new phase. That way that we are now combining the actual equipment, the actual environment of the customers' factories to platform which shows the real real-life situation and predicting the future as well. And also combining all the important key things from the customers together to do the production more efficiently.

Kasey Snyder 7:32

Okay, how interesting. So we have a legacy company in the construction field that has now found this unique opportunity to partner with SaaS software, and it sounds like you have a predictive element to your model as well?

Jani Akkila 7:45

Basically, we are visual layer. So our software enables one to build visual layer. But information, data, predictions, mathematics, physics, they have to come from elsewhere. I would say that if you know Power BI, companies are making dashboards with Power BI in factories, showing dashes and graphics and traffic rights. Currently, with our kind of flagship customers, they are replacing Power BI with our interface. Because having a in-context digital wind of the sales and production equipment is much more efficient for people to understand in context than having a dashboard full of widgets.

Kasey Snyder 8:21

Okay, and do you feel like this is a complex uh tool to learn? Will it take a lot of training for the individual people on the team to all be able to coordinate together?

Jani Akkila 8:29

No, because they know the real life, they know the process and plans. Now they just have a virtual digital 3D model where it's all the data and information connected. So it's much more easier for them than a kind of random graphs.

Kasey Snyder 8:43

Okay. And have you implemented this into any of your projects so far?

Jani Toropainen 8:48

Yes, we have a pilot now which is running there. And I would recommend also it is not that difficult. It is actually like uh very, very good for us because we don't need like 15 developers to build the software from the scratch and keep it up all the time, update everything when it is needed. But the Process Genius part is taking care of that. The platform is all the time updating, there is new preferences coming all the time. And uh we just need to take care to bring all the important production information to the platform, show it to the customer, and then we can concentrate on discussing with the customers and actually the most important things that the customers care. Bring it to the platform, and then the Process Genius is doing the part that is like uh taking care of the platform itself and the gold and everything what is going on that side of it.

Kasey Snyder 9:37

Excellent. Very interesting. And would you say that both of your companies are headquartered in this Joensuu region?

Jani Toropainen 9:44

Yes.

Kasey Snyder 9:44

Okay. And can you tell me a little bit more about why you've selected this area and maybe what makes it a beneficial region for innovative companies to set up their headquarters or find opportunities?

Jani Toropainen 9:56

I would say that this region has a long history because there is a John Deere factory, Aployee factory, and many many industrial companies have been born here or logated here. There is a very good subcontracting networks also. For us, for example, we are doing uh actual machines. So we need some like uh plasma-cutting parts and we need some uh welding and uh machining and stuff like that. And there is already some big companies which are needing those same things so we can use the same subcontracting networks and uh and then the software side, maybe Jani can tell a little bit more about that.

Jani Akkila 10:33

Why we are in USB basically it was a little bit by accident. The company was funded when the two of the founders were living in Bahrain and uh and uh but finished we were finished, so kind of just tested that what would be the cool place and at that time business you used to have experienced exports, industrial people working, and they kind of catched our idea and help us to locate here.

Kasey Snyder 10:56

Hey, excellent. Well, thank you both for your time. This was a really interesting story, and I'm excited to hear about how your collaboration is helping both of your businesses to grow. Thank you so much.

Jani Akkila 11:05

Thank you.

Kasey Snyder 11:14

Well, thank you for sitting down with me, George. Let's talk about human-centric future of industrial robotics. Your company name, Henki, translates to spirit or breath of life. Yes. Industrial robotics is often associated with cold, sterile efficiency. How are you designing software to give machines a more human or intuitive presence in the workplace?

George-Cosmin Porusniuc 11:36

Yes, that is a great question because um a lot of the machines and robots that we work with, they work around humans and with humans. So taking into consideration the human interaction aspect as a first step in the, let's say, user experience and design of the platform we are building is is important. I can give you a clear example. For example, in the past, we have been working with a self-uh like autonomous robot that was navigating around construction sites. And construction sites by nature are very chaotic, very messy, lots of stuff going around and lots of people. And people that work in construction are not very fond of modern technology, and I would have to say that they weren't really the the type of people to respect the machine. And in that space, the machine has to be respected, but the machine has to respect the person as well. So what we did is we made a very simple to use interface for the robot that was basically a on a on a tablet screen on an iPad. We we had the interface that the robot was was meant to be controlled with, and it was very intuitive. And the the people that worked with the robot had to only basically click somewhere and the robot would go there. And the navigation stack of the robot was developed so that it would take into consideration the safety of humans first. So as soon as a human came into space, the robot would stop, would not do anything else. But uh I think to add on to the question, building successful machines that work with and around humans in the 21st century is a symbiotic relationship. It's a bit of a back and forth. For the machine to be successful, it has to take into consideration the safety and working with a human being. But we as humans have to also kind of respect the machine. So to be self-aware and to be aware that we are working with machines, and if we want to accommodate them into the workplace and in around us, we need to be aware that they're with us and to learn to work with them, right? So it's a bit of a back and forth.

Kasey Snyder 13:36

Okay, that's interesting. Self-awareness on the part of a human as well as the robot.

George-Cosmin Porusniuc 13:40

The machine, yes.

Kasey Snyder 13:41

Yeah, very interesting. You've been instrumental in modernizing the master's curriculum at University of Eastern Finland. What is one thing universities are still getting wrong about robotics education?

George-Cosmin Porusniuc 13:52

That's a great question. I think I wouldn't really paint it in a way that the universities are getting it wrong, but I think a lot of educational institutions are still stuck in the, let's say, past ways of teaching robotics. So one thing that they should do is to keep up with the industry standard. That's one thing, and that's what we did with our course. But then I think the importance of robotics education and how it should be done is twofolded. So, firstly, it should focus on hands-on experience, but at the same time, it should strive to build an education, learning experience, especially in robotics, that's seamless, that's not stuck in details. So, what exactly we did, we adapted our framework that we are using in our work, robotics operating system, or ROS 2. It's the second iteration of it, and we took away all the headaches of installing it and setting it up for the students. So the students can jump in the course and in the really experimental part of what we do so that they get their hands on and they understand why we are using that thing. Not okay, let's spend a month to install this thing. So then we can jump into why we are learning that thing. By that time, 80% of the students, it's a number that I just came up with, will lose interest. So we need to keep the students interested, make the education experience and learning experience seamless, and keep it hands-on. Perfect. I would say.

Kasey Snyder 15:17

On agentic AI in Ross 2, you envision a near future where robots program themselves in a real time to adapt to new warehouse tasks. What does this mean for the role of the traditional robotics engineer in the warehouse?

George-Cosmin Porusniuc 15:33

That's a great question. So the future that you just described in the question, let's say, is not far from reality. It's quite maybe in the near future than in the long-distance future. So already our work as robotics engineers is shifting greatly from just coding and coding and coding ourselves from more defining the requirements of what the robot should do and what the task should look like. And then the agentic AI is building it with us and for us. But I think that the role of the robotic engineer still is important when we link what the agentic AI and the robot does in relation to the real world. Because our experience as traditional robotics engineers is built from times when these tools were not available to us. And it already brings a challenge that links to the educational side of things. How can we still train robotics engineers that have the hands-on experience without the experience of having robots do a lot of things by themselves? That's going to be tough to solve, and I don't have a question for that. But I think that the role of the robotics engineer will be to, well, firstly orchestrate and make sure that what the GentTKI does is according to standards and it's not something totally out of the realm of uh of what should be done. Orchestrate, design, and uh basically supervise. So that's that's probably going to be the shift of uh human roles in many, many niches and many industries, not only robotics, but that's already happening to us as experts building these robots. So we're not yet going to the stage where robots program themselves for new things. That's a bit far away. But programming them for existing things is already a very automated task in which 90% of the effort has been shifted to the AI, and we are more, which is good from my perspective, focusing on how we can make these things. What are the requirements? What's the design? What's the architecture of these things? Um, and I think that AI is still some steps away from being able to take that away from us.

Kasey Snyder 17:36

Fair enough. Okay, last question. I heard that you are a stand-up comedian in your spare time. Can you share one funny or disastrous event that you witnessed? A robot fail, perhaps?

George-Cosmin Porusniuc 17:48

Yes. Funny is uh maybe I can try to paint it in in funny ways. So one time we were working with this robot, um, uh autonomous mobile robot. Well, we were programming it to do a fairly simple task, which would seem quite counterintuitive for some of your listeners, but basically we were trying to make our robot drive slowly in a very straight line. I mean we had a margin of error of about two millimeters to deviate from that line, so quite small. But um what happened and what what goes to show that human error can happen even if you're a seasoned expert? While we were testing with that robot, we were in our office back then, and the robot was in the office. We had a strip, uh kind of uh duct tape strip on the on the ground to have the robot, you know, really keep track or for us visually to know that it keeps track of the straight line. And um the robot also had a let's say a piece of wood behind it, like a straight, long piece of wood behind it to make sure that it follows the the the middle line. And as we were testing, I remember I think I was doing the test, and I put a wrong value for the velocity of the robot on one of the axes of movement, and instead of the robot going slowly forward, it started driving with full speed backwards uh through a glass door that broke. Yes, that broke. Luckily, no one was there, but that's just uh kind of shows the impact of like a small change, how big of an impact it has in the real world. Right. It was funny. We laughed it off. Oh, good. We made sure to not we made sure to not do that kind of testing again, uh, and to to safeguard it uh nicely. Um yeah, there's many funny stories that have happened. I've I've yet to incorporate them in my stand up. Okay. I'll I'll try to for the future. Thanks.

Kasey Snyder 19:45

Well, this was perfect. Thank you so much for sitting down with me. Lovely to chat with you.

George-Cosmin Porusniuc 19:48

Thank you so much for having me.

Kasey Snyder 19:57

Okay, great. Well, thank you so much, Joona, for sitting down with me. I understand that you are an uh expert in carbonized wood technology and utilizing industrial side strings for sustainable construction. Is that right?

Joona Kotilainen 20:09

Yeah, yeah, that's right. We have a company called Hiil Limited, and uh, we have found out a way how to carbonize the wood without using any external fossil fuels. It's really energy efficient and uh good for the environment. And we have combined a way to utilize the kind of unused wood streams from different sources from construction industry, from sawmill industry. So basically we can treat wood uh to reclaim it and to to make it to make better use for it.

Kasey Snyder 20:42

Well, speaking of the construction industry, in the US, the market is shifting towards heavily towards healthy building. How does Field's carbonization process eliminate the need for chemical preservatives while outperforming traditional treated lumber in the harsh North American climates?

Joona Kotilainen 20:59

This is really important factor for us that we don't want to use any toxins in protecting the wood. So all of the components that we use in our wood are natural nature-based. So we have uh we have the wood that is the that is the raw material that's nature-based. We apply fire, which is nature-based as well, and we also use special-made linseed oil that has been they have they have gotten uh get out of jail free card from all this all of these uh reach chemical control tests and systems because it is all natural-based linseed oil. So with natural components we can get the durability of the wood really high and old, but also the aesthetic aspect really good and long-lasting. So you would look into you would look into decades of this wood being untreated. So you just put it up and leave it there and it will last because the burning process is the kind of our engine that that we get the protection from.

Kasey Snyder 22:02

You've turned wood waste into a premium product. As you look toward North America, do you see heal as a product exporter or as a technology provider that can carbonize the waste of the US based timber giants?

Joona Kotilainen 22:16

Yeah, we are now that now that we are a small company still, most likely, most likely we would approach international markets with first with product exports just to just to get Our business running in different markets. But definitely in the future it does not make sense logistically sense to start shipping wood from Finland to the other side of the world, essentially. So we are heavily looking into commercializing our technology once we get our patenting, patenting and the protection around our technology and innovations. Then we'll start finding out opportunities and potential customers who would be interested in the technology side of it.

Kasey Snyder 22:58

And how are you positioning here to be viewed not just as a design choice, but as a critical, long-lasting structural innovation for large-scale developers?

Joona Kotilainen 23:07

Yeah, that's how we are how we are doing it. I think it all comes down to references and uh the projects that that we made. We have made a decision that we will not be doing handicrafts in our company, but instead we have been pursuing uh industrial scale operations and industrial scale manufacturing, which would be tens of meters per minute, should be the processing processing volume. And with our latest factory that we opened up in November, we uh are already there. We are just lacking the customers, large enough customers to fill the whole capacity. So right now we are running at let's say 10% capacity as of today. But we, for example, last week last week we started negotiating a project here in Finland that would take 100% of our capacity for the next three to four months. So it's the largest customer so far that we are negotiating with. But this is exactly the kind type of customers that we are looking for. It's uh it's a project that comprises of dozens of buildings that would all want they would want all of the buildings to have the exterior planning from the burnt wood and from this and this uh promoting these ecological values. Once we land that, I think it's much easier to get other second larger, larger scale large scale projects. I think they all follow, follow each other.

Kasey Snyder 24:30

And you mentioned to me earlier that you are a serial entrepreneur and that you have lived outside of the region but have returned to start these businesses. So I'm just wondering, is there anything about the Joensuu area that makes it very special for innovative startup companies or high-tech companies to establish here?

Joona Kotilainen 24:48

I would say I would say that the there's a really low threshold to get your network network up and running here, and a really low threshold to communicate with all of the higher-ups in the city officials and those who give uh permits and so on. I would say that the bureaucracy level is the same here as in other cities, but the kind of uh people dynamics are much easier. Friendly neighborhood, and if uh one would start a company here, they would get quite they would get it up and running quite fast and meet the right people locally quite fast. It's also really good network. The region is has networked quite heavily to other places as well, even though we are located in a remote corner of eastern Finland, most of our customers and most of our projects we have done in our company are elsewhere. In other markets and in other other cities in Finland. So I don't see with the digital age or with internet and uh teams, meet Teams meetings. Um I would I would say that the remoteness of the place is a good side because you don't need to use time on commuting or you don't need to use time on getting around difficult people dynamics. I think there's a lot of lot of benefits to to be staying here.

Kasey Snyder 26:05

Perfect. Well, it was lovely chatting with you and thank you so much for your time.

Joona Kotilainen 26:08

Thank you for the interview.

Kasey Snyder 26:17

Hi, Leo. Thank you for joining me today. I'd like to learn more about Vesko and what you're working on.

Leo Fadi 26:22

Hi, Kasey. Thank you for having me. So I'm Leo. Vesko, we are building a retail operating system for retailers, offline retailers first. So we are offering them like the platform from which they can actually go online, uh, but also to actually manage their store, to have like a point of sale system, to have a logistics, to have paint payment solutions, and it's all connected. We are a startup and we have basically just launched it and uh provided like our first customers. And now we are in Finland, but by next year we are also like looking forward to go worldwide.

Kasey Snyder 26:55

Excellent. And when you're talking with small business owners and store owners, what are they expressing to you about their concerns about opening up an online shop or how they can incorporate AI into their current processes?

Leo Fadi 27:08

Well, uh the same issues actually coming from even like big businesses, let's say like even manufacturers and uh going online, it's not that simple, like if you people like would say. So we are not trying to replace Shopify in that sense, but we are offering the same solutions when it comes to visibility. So the most difficult part for them is so far is actually getting their data and being, let's say, like visible online. It's not just let's say like a storefront. There's like a lot of manual work behind that. And using the current technologies, it actually takes something between two months to even six months to set up. And uh so far, like for small big businesses like using the AI itself, they are like still like in the buzz. They have no idea like how to use it. And everyone is let's say like using consulting agencies, and by the time they finish their agents, a new update has come and they have to change everything. We have just came from Sweden and we have done like uh small research in Sweden and also let's say like the rest of Nordics and Finland. And uh for them, they want to see AI actually helping them in cutting manual work, not in increasing it. And so far, like even with the current solutions of the models themselves, they are good. But I don't like to have, let's say, like my Shopify chatbot creating the description for me. I need more than that. So these things that they have been hearing from our customers, and in the next six months, we are developing solutions that actually help enrich the data for the customers. So it's like if they get, let's say, like 100 products in a few clicks, they can get it online. And the same thing also, let's say, like for the manufacturers. So it's like instead of using too many multiple systems and fragmented data, we can create like a whole product description for them and enrich their data for them that's also gonna help them to be visible for many customers too as well. So yeah.

Kasey Snyder 28:59

Very good. And you mentioned so far you're working with customers in the Nordic region, but what's your plan for scaling this to international markets or North America, for example?

Leo Fadi 29:08

This is the next step for us as soon as we get our like AI layer. Again, it's like applied AI. So that's like what people are like looking for, and we hope that it's going to take uh people take notes for it, and we can get some, let's say, like some PR lift for it. And by 2027, when it's ready, we are ready to go, let's say, like a whole EU. And the next step actually is like the North America markets and the UK and the rest of the world. So yeah.

unknown 29:38

Okay.

Kasey Snyder 29:39

And you mentioned having international co-founders for your company, but you also said you really enjoyed living in Joensuu. So, what makes this area a really desirable location for early stage founders and startup companies?

Leo Fadi 29:52

That's uh interesting question. So, like asked Thomas last month we were like in Joensuu, and I brought my two found two co-founders here to Joensuu. They have never been like in this area before. Um, one of them is like actually living in Berlin, the other one is like living in Lake Como. Uh they were, let's say, like amazed by the ecosystem here, and they were like just shocked. And they like to be, let's say, like in a place where I can go to my workplace in five minutes, and I don't have to do that via metro. Yeah, so this is like one of the things that they I actually like about like being in the OSU.

Kasey Snyder 30:26

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for your time. It was lovely chatting with you, and we wish you all the best.

Leo Fadi 30:30

Thank you so much.

Kasey Snyder 30:39

Okay, nice to speak with you, Tomi. If you could share with me your vision and inspiration for Sohjo this year.

Tomi Haring 30:45

Once again, this is a great event what we have established over here in Joensuu. So where people from different angles come and meet together. So creative people and more technology-oriented people. So, as a city where we have over 20,000 students, this is exactly the place to have this kind of business events.

Kasey Snyder 31:06

Perfect. Thank you. Okay. Hi Miska, thank you so much for sitting down with me. I'd love to learn more about Fiidback. Can you tell me about the company?

Miska Ruotsalainen 31:21

We uh Fiidback is AI-based conversation, but we are in wider mission we are want uh revivalize feedback culture so feedback giver will be familiar and know why the feedback uh is essential to give. And we must we want to companies and other players is able to use feedback to grow and so they don't need to make mutual is that is not um needed. We want that everyone can give feedback anytime to company that uh they are interacting. Example in events you see something is wrong, you can instantly give uh feedback for event organizer and someone can come to fix it or make it better so it's not like we events make it better at next time. It can fix and make it better now.

Kasey Snyder 32:40

I understand. You mentioned to me that your inspiration for starting this business was that the current feedback loop is broken. So what do you think are the biggest issues with the current feedback service?

Miska Ruotsalainen 32:53

Um I think uh big biggest uh is that uh companies try to only collect data that they don't um tr understand why and how people might want to give and what is the bottleneck what how uh people feel when they now give the when uh they arrive with the feedback uh survey link in uh example in uh email. Everyone get uh send of many of uh these surveys uh in weeks per example, but no one know what is their feedback impacting to anywhere anywhere. They don't see that is necessary to give it.

Kasey Snyder 33:54

Okay, and I wanna understand the global mindset of the company. So how did you bake the international scalability into your software architecture when you were building the company? So um would it be like uh you know, the language flexibility that it can be?

Miska Ruotsalainen 34:17

Yeah, uh we think that our software will be able to integrate it in in any uh app or website and we can make um the whole flow how to uh let people know that you you can give the feedback easily and when you can give it and what happened after after and before before the you give the feedback.

Kasey Snyder 34:58

Great. Um and thinking a little bit about this region of central Finland, uh what would you say to um investors or potential partners in the US about the reliability and creative problem-solving skills of software engineers coming from Finland? So tell me a little bit about what makes software engineers in Finland a bit special. Does it have something to do with their culturally the reliability, the consistency, creativity, and problem solving? What would you say is uh special. What do you think about the uh from your personal experience or what you bring to the project? What do you think is really good?

Miska Ruotsalainen 36:03

I think we had uh Nokia here, uh it was uh very good for us. And all the employees of Nokia is now make made companies, big companies, and so tech companies and they or maybe oscillator to uh high tech films, others, and we have big.

Kasey Snyder 36:32

Do you have any special connection to the university that you attended when you were developing this product?

Miska Ruotsalainen 36:38

My technical uh co-founder has uh and connection to Karelia and uh we are are making corporation some core uh corporation with them. Uh and we have one people who make our software from it's very nice to have two of four founders in Joensuu.

Kasey Snyder 37:02

And just remind me which partners you have currently, which companies are you working with now?

Miska Ruotsalainen 37:08

We have the pilot pilot customer. Our uh pilot customers is now citios of and we'll one smaller company will be Talos Noste, a small uh accounting firm, and we help them to collect in internal uh feedback with uh people who are different places.

Kasey Snyder 37:35

And are you participating in the pigeon competition, Kasmin?

Miska Ruotsalainen 37:39

Uh yes.

Kasey Snyder 37:41

Excellent. Well, good luck to you on that, and thank you so much for sitting down to talk with me.

Miska Ruotsalainen 37:45

Thank you.

Kasey Snyder 37:53

Great to sit down with you, Sami. Thank you for taking the time to meet with me. I'd like to learn a little bit more about Filtson. Can you explain the company to me?

Sami Koskela 38:00

Yeah, thank you. I'm more than happy to do that. So, Filtson is a spin-off company from the University of Eastern Finland, and we have a technology which can reduce methane gas directly from surrounding air. It's based on a microbiological process, and the cool thing about it is that it can reduce it in real time. So we can constantly measure how much we have reduced, and we can quantify that constantly, and our business is based on the benefit, uh, how much methane has been reduced, and that's uh that's uh what we are offering to the customers.

Kasey Snyder 38:34

And how does this apply for farmers, particularly dairy farmers, that may have to deal with this issue?

Sami Koskela 38:40

Yeah, so uh so agriculture and and food industry is the first segment we are targeting with our first application, also which we launched last year. And the benefit in that industry, kind of considering the whole value chain, is that the food companies uh processing the product which farmers are producing, so but the emissions are from their overall kind of value of production chain. So that's why the benefit comes for both of them actually by by reducing the emissions from the overall value chain. So so it's it's equally important for the farmers to reduce their direct emissions, but also the food companies' emissions because they're using the products what the farmers are producing. Right. Which is the milk or beef. It's actually not only their dairy farms, it can be also utilized by the beef farmers.

Kasey Snyder 39:34

And you mentioned that that's just the first application. So what other markets are you interested in?

Sami Koskela 39:39

Yeah, so so the beauty of this technology is that it's not only limited to one industry or one segment. So we started from there because it the first application was much easier and faster to implement and bring it to the market. So we can really show that this technology works, if you will. But there are also other segments and two major ones. The first one is uh waste treatment, various kinds of waste like uh bio waste and also water, water cleaning, cleaning or water treatment is uh is another another area within this waste treatment. So that's a big segment, and then the third one is uh energy segments, coal mines, natural gas, and oil wells are are ventilating a lot of methane every day because it's like a side product from from them. So so that those are the segments we are targeting also. And we actually have starting the first pilots already now this spring uh in in this waste treatment industry. So we we we are already tackling two out of those segments.

Kasey Snyder 40:40

Very nice to hear. Now, I think there is a lot of concern in the sustainability about greenwashing right now. And what would you say your perspective is on that? And how would you justify the science behind what you're doing?

Sami Koskela 40:53

I'm actually really happy that you asked that because that's one of our core things and differentiating factors uh compared to many other technologies, which we by the way need. We need all the different technologies to help in this global warming challenge we have. So though so technology and especially the quantification is really, really cool. Like mentioned that the production happens in real time, and we are able to actually measure the concentration before and after the reduction uh reduction when it happens. So we can constantly quantify and and um and also kind of show that how much production we have made. And we can easily turn that into a CO2 equivalent, which is the common currency in the species. So actually, greenwashing as such, from this kind of uh quantification perspective, is something that we don't need to worry because we can we can constantly show that almost almost in real time how much reduction we have we have made and where, particularly on the device level, or farm, or facility, or factory level, or area level, whatever you like.

Kasey Snyder 42:04

So would you say that then that makes you a reliable source for companies that are looking for emissions offsets or need to make purchases based on the maybe issues that they have in their own companies or then separate industries?

Sami Koskela 42:18

Yeah, that's that's actually exactly where we are targeting now in the beginning. So exactly those industries which can reduce their uh the emissions from their own production chains. We offset market is maybe one day we have so much supply that it it's enough to be to be offered in the offset market, but but we want to offer this this technology to the segments and industries and customers who want to reduce their own emissions. That's our target. And there are a lot of of those because Meteen actually just changed last fall uh by United Nations IPCC. Based on them, it it was uh now kind of lifted to the second worst environmental gas after carbon dioxide. So so it's it's a really, really, really bad gas. 28 times worse than CO2. So the global uh I mean the warming facts.

Kasey Snyder 43:14

Wow. So then are you targeting um international markets, specifically any regions or countries that you think would be able to utilize this most quickly?

Sami Koskela 43:22

We definitely focus on global globally. So Finland and Nordics are probably somewhere where we start. But we already have now discussion, for instance, in China and actually US as well. So because you have a big, big uh dairy, dairy and beef industry there, and and also oil and gas. So we'd be contacting one one Canadian company who is offering uh equipment for oil industry. So so so uh that's probably one area also we we are looking into.

Kasey Snyder 43:50

Okay. Now to go from the big global perspective to this very narrow region of eastern Finland, the company is from this area, is that right?

Miska Ruotsalainen 43:59

Yes.

Kasey Snyder 44:00

And what do you think makes this region of Eastern Finland so desirable for innovation and for startup companies?

Sami Koskela 44:07

I think that the University of Eastern Finland, where we are spin-off, uh it it has a lot of different areas where we can utilize the the innovations and the know-how and expertise. And actually, one of our founders is still to continue working in his academic career in the University of Eastern Finland. And we see that as a as a as a really key key kind of partner for us also in the future because the the basic research is done there and and they constantly seek for new opportunities and innovations and which we can then hopefully at least some of them we can we can take and and start to productize and commercialize them. So I I think we we really see it as a as a key contributor for for our business. And then also they can do like we are doing now in Yonsu or starting soon is is one one kind of targeted project where they can provide some extra resources and and and facilities and equipment from the university which we need need. So it's definitely an important for us especially when when we are in startup phase when we don't have all the all the things ourselves.

Kasey Snyder 45:13

Absolutely well it was wonderful chatting with you. Thank you for sharing these insights with us.

Sami Koskela 45:17

Thank you.