Building a company is a journey worth experiencing

A bearded man joins the online meeting, smiles gladly and says it is a good day. “We have just moved into our new office. Our own office,” says Jaakko Karhumaa, CEO and co-founder of Microsoft Azure consultancy Mallow. The new home is still missing some final touch, but the feeling is good.

It is Friday, which is the day Mallow has its weekly company-wide team meetings. The agenda equips the team with business understanding, sense of belongingness and shared learning. While the focus is on reviewing how it is going with business, projects and the company in general, the get-together invites every “mallow” to see impacts of their individual contributions on the company’s journey.

Jaakko’s journey as a mallow started in 2021 when he became an entrepreneur for the first time. When asked about motivations, Jaakko says how he also likes to think of his life as a journey. It is about creating and exploring different experiences that make the life richer and the traveller more content. 

Before Mallow, Jaakko had spent most of his almost 25-year-long career serving big international corporations. The experience he was still missing on the life journey was building his own company from scratch.

“I was haunted by curiosity and the idea that I could use the things I had learned in big companies for something else. To put these lessons into building the best version of a company.”

Jaakko’s career was originally journeyed in digital product business and sales. While he had been considering entrepreneurship for a long time, he was struggling to find an idea for his company. Jaakko wanted to come up with a cool thing. At that time, he thought the thing would be a new interesting product.

“I grew self-critical. I thought that to start a company I should have a super idea, something really special. A world changing idea of a product.”

The years went by and Jaakko’s career took him from product to professional services business. Still, Jaakko was curious about the thought that he could leverage his learnings from the 25-year-long career in building the best version of a company. In addition to business and people leadership, he had gained a superb Microsoft services expertise during his years in various global corporations.

Jaakko had been discussing an opportunity of founding a company with some of his contacts in the startup scene. The reason he then decided to take the leap and become an entrepreneur was very much about luck and right timing. 

“And then came this Azure area. Almost every company was short of skilled Azure experts, so there was something to it. I concluded that building a great business needn’t necessarily be a magical invention.”

Jaakko started the Mallow adventure with co-founders Teemu Tapanila and Jani Nevalainen. Very soon Henri Hietala joined the team as well. While many other skilled experts have joined the team, the common nominator still remains. What every mallow has in common, is the excitement and drive to become ever better in the Azure domain and impact the company. According to Jaakko, the team has the will, determination and stamina to succeed.

“These guys are the superstars. When a company is founded on the idea that it is the best at something, then customers should continuously be left thinking “Wow! That went really well!” But that is easier said than done, nothing to be taken for granted.” says Jaakko.

Jaakko took the role as the CEO of the company. While he enjoys the skipper role, he wants to give space, freedom and responsibility to others to make decisions. Jaakko believes his curiosity and desire to utilise the common intelligence help in navigating the leadership path. 

“I don’t think I’m restricted by prejudices. I have a thirst to hear points of views from other company founders and our employees. This is the biggest thing in my leadership.”

Fueling common intelligence and curiosity are reflected in even the Friday meetings. The Mallow team members take turns in sharing knowledge of a chosen weekly hot topic. It can be for example technology or market related insights. Jaakko sees this kind of joint learning takes the whole team forward.

Now, Mallow has been part of Jaakko’s life journey for a year and a half. When asking about the key learnings, Jaakko chews over his entrepreneurial experiences so far and says:

“In the beginning it felt that things progressed very slowly. And simultaneously, I wanted everything to happen immediately. For me it first felt frustrating. But now looking back, a lot has happened. And yes truly, a lot has been achieved already so far. And while the new office is a small thing, it represents certain accomplishments.” 

“However, the goals move constantly forward. The hunger grows by eating and so the journey continues!”

Explore the full series for more co-founder stories:

1. Finding meaningfulness in entrepreneurship – Jani Kallio
2. Curiosity leads an entrepreneurial path – Mikaela Nyman
3. Courage, smart risk-taking and a club – Vesa Härkönen
4. The story an entrepreneur would tell – Emma Grönlund
5. Building a company is a journey worth experiencing – Jaakko Karhumaa
6. If you can do it for someone else’s account, why not make it your own business – Ilkka-Cristian Niemi
7. On a mission to transform learning through a purpose-driven business – Marjut Sadeharju
8. From corporate world to GenAI pioneer – Daniel Arroyo
9. The converge of art, people and data – Kira Sjöberg