Jyrki’s blog series: Pt.3 Things to do… Part 1

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Company name was one of the first things in our to do list. We wanted something simple, fun, playful and which would make a nice company logo. Somehow our very first proposal involved an animal and that idea stuck. We had a very long list of interesting names and did a comprehensive check which domains are available and started voting. Eventually we came up with a cosmic reptile, gecko. Finnish translation “gekko” looked a bit more visually pleasing than the English one so we selected it.

Company logo selection was exciting. We had heard about logo competitions and wanted to try it out so we turned our heads towards logotournament.com. Parameters were defined and soon we had a hundred different proposals. Next we picked top 5 artists and gave them more guidelines which modifications we wanted, and finally came up with the winner artist. The winner then created multiple other and modified proposals and the final one can be seen in these pages.

Shareholders’ agreement was also in our top priority. We spent several days in identifying potential issues that might happen between owners, sketched our own proposals how those should be treated and then it was time to get some legal advice to define those in legal terms. The discussions with lawyers went smoothly and we as a result we had a good comprehensive agreement which was signed by everyone. Read more on “Jyrki’s blog series: Pt.3 Things to do… Part 1″ »

Making an agreement with Brazilian school

Brazil is an amazing place. On my quick work trip to Manaus, I also wanted to find new ways of attracting attention to HeyWe!, which we are looking for launching  very soon. I asked around for a school where I could visit and discuss about promoting HeyWe!

My Brazilian friend, Dalton, was about to visit a private school called “Centro Educacional Adalberto Valle” and asked me to join him. What a great chance! I was hoping to get an opportunity to find a correct person and getting an audit for introducing HeyWe! to them. I also dreamed about handing over the three “HeyWe!” T-shirts that I brought from Finland for the children and taking a picture of them with HeyWe! shirts on.

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Jyrki’s blog series: Pt.2 How I ended up in starting my own business

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How I ended up in starting my own business

My first experience on computers was back in summer 1982 when I got my hands on my uncle’s TRS-80 color computer. I was immediately hooked on programming and the next year I got my first own computer – Commodore 64. Eventually this hobby came out to be my profession, first spending five years in machine vision algorithm and A.I. software development and then moving forward in career path managing SW projects and development units.

In 2004 I started leading a new SW unit where we were creating new applications for various Symbian devices. This was very exciting times and I got excellent experience on developing mobile applications from scratch – from evaluating end user needs to delivering fully working product to customers. Eventually organization changes killed this unit, but amongst its members the desire to continue in apps area remained.

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Jyrki’s blog series: Pt.1 Starting up a new company

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I was requested to participate Nokia Bridge session in June 2012 in Oulu, Finland and give a presentation how I started up our company and how we manage our daily life. I soon realized this is topic which cannot be discussed in a mere 20 minute monologue presentation in an auditorium. Therefore we will have a series blogs describing how our people went through the metamorphosis process from being a busy bee in Nokia to an entrepreneur.

The series will be covering topics like:

o How we ended up starting our own business

o Things to do when starting a new company

o Daily routines when working in your own company

o Own product development

o Marketing

o Financing

Let us know which topics you would like hear about and if we have experiences on those then we’ll try to cover those in our future blogs!

“It’s a cultural thing…” – Tips for successful cross-cultural business communication

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Yes, it’s a cultural thing. Oh wait a second, is it? Let’s dig a little deeper.

In today’s business environment, we are required to interact and to do business with people belonging to different cultures. If we wish to succeed, mere interaction is not enough. Firstly we must understand what the other participant is saying and secondly we must also understand where he is coming from.

What's wrong with this picture? Nothing really. It's just another way of doing things.

What's wrong with this picture? Nothing really. It's just another way of doing things.

A popular metaphor for culture is an iceberg. The visible part of the iceberg, which lies above the surface, is comprised of observable parts of the culture such as language and customs. What lies beneath the surface is the tricky part. The non-observable portion of the iceberg is comprised of the values and beliefs, which are difficult to see but are oh-so-important to know when doing business across cultures.

In this blog entry I will be discussing some tips for doing cross-cultural communication. After all, we are all required to do it in some point of our lives. The tips are chosen according to a no-nonsense, get off your high horse, point of view.

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