Hi all,
since I'm once again sitting on an airplane (this time to USA), I decided to write the next blog post.
The spring is definitely closing in which is absolutely great bearing in mind that in Finland winter equals darkness. We are now happily settled in our new offices at Espoo, Keilaniemi and actively hiring new employees, for example a Corporate Grandmom.
We've received some great customer feedback and we are shipping products out the door at an increasing pace.
Thanks for the constructing criticism also, we've started our next generation product development,
which will hopefully produce great results in 2012.
Board of directors - Risto Siilasmaa
Quite recently our board of directors was strengthened by a very prestigious serial entrepreneur and corporate professional, Mr Risto Siilasmaa. Risto serves also, for example, in the board of Nokia, Elisa (as chairman, biggest telecom in Finland) and F-Secure (as chairman, computer virus protection). To be honest, I'm very happy about this since at the stage we are currently at, growing rapidly, we definitely need expert opinions and help to avoid all the pot holes, and to be able to optimize our wins.
Enterprise Finland Venture Forum
There were several Venture Capital funds from Finland and abroad present, looking for interesting companies to invest in.
Apparently my presentation went well since Mendor was awarded as the most promising company for venture capital investment. One more award to hang on the wall at the office.
During the last two weeks we have been in the news in Finland on a pretty wide scale.
To explain a bit, this all started one morning when I went to the kitchen at the office to get some coffee with milk.
Unfortunately there was no coffee nor any milk left in the fridge.....and the kitchen was a mess. Then it hit me, we need a Corporate Grandmom at the office on a daily basis to help out with small duties like making coffee, and cleaning the kitchen etc. I started brainstorming the idea with our people and the whole thing took off. We immediately announced the recruitment.
One important aspect to this is that there are currently hundreds of thousands of retired and lonely elderly people in Finland with very few daily activities. We realized that our idea of Corporate Grandmom could also be leveraged on a wider scale in other companies also.
There must be other companies also who have exactly the same problems and small needs that elderly people could easily help with,at the same time getting some meaningful program for their days etc. There's also a huge amount of experience, knowledge and wisdom that these people hold, and it would be good for them and for the society to share it with younger generations.
Several Finnish newspapers and media recognized this initiative and there has even been a few radio interviews :)
Let's hope that other companies are also picking this up since we cannot hire all the applicants (there is a lot of applications coming in all the time).
The rest
I guess that's all for now. The plane is starting its approach to London and I'd probably better put this laptop back in the bag.
As a final comment, please give us feedback - good and bad, positive and negative. We want to learn and grow,
and most of all, serve our customers in the best possible way. :)
Thanks and best regards!
Kristian
P.S. Feel free to follow me on Twitter to get these, and other updates. ->
http://twitter.com/ihqkristian