I am leaving Holvi

by Setok

In many ways Holvi was the culmination of every little decision, every little ripple in my life. From the time I started coding as a kid, to when I saw Steve Jobs launch NeXT, to following Richard Branson’s ballooning capers. It was the notion that technology and passion could be brought together to create something truly world-changing, and a business like no other. I have always felt like the odd one out: in Northern Ireland where I grew up I was the blonde Finn (and the Northern Irish identity is already a bit of a mix), and then in Finland I was the English-speaking British-Irish-something guy. Although at times it brought misery, I also hope that background has helped to boldly question the status quo or any sense of ’business as usual’.

Many people, when they are young, struggle to work out what they want to do with their lives. I have never had to deal with that. My belief in computers and technology to change everything never wavered. Every decision I made about my life, from the computers I worked with, to choosing the school to attend, were all guided by the notion of one day building a great technology company, and creating a product people would love.

Tuomas Toivonen and I set up our first company back in the late 1990s, doing consultancy. It was obvious to all that my itch was not in consultancy, but in creating beautiful products. However, consultancy did put some butter on the bread, and it taught some valuable lessons about how incumbents work. We had a couple of false starts, but it wasn’t until we set up Scred that we went head on into the very unknown territory of running a startup business. Everything was new, and everything had to be learnt the hard way, and boy did we learn. It was a company where payments were to be at the core, but on further investigation the business model we had outlined was just not going to be feasible (worthy of a blog post itself). I have no regrets in creating what we did — it was the best learning experience ever.

After partially taking time away from things to complete my 6 week tour of the Nordic startup ecosystem, through The Travelling Salesman project, we got together with Tuomas to decide upon the future. We looked closely at some of the experiments we had done in and around Scred: ‘miniature corporations’, a group-focused online shop and tracking activity money, and decided the only way to really get at where our ambitions had always lied was to essentially become a very new type of bank. That is the point where money comes in, money is stored, and money goes out. That’s the point where you can build the transaction machine for a future generation. An engaging, human-focused platform. One that would enable new activities.

This was how Holvi was born, and we followed by working day in, day out, to create this next generation of financial service. More importantly it was also born to solve our own problems, and the problems we perceived around us. Essentially Holvi was formed as a banking service for creating and doing, and one where we early on decided to recruit for and invest heavily into the user experience.

Our aim was always to build Holvi big, bold and international. We said no to things that would be in conflict with those goals, and worked hard on things that would help it. Holvi was created to disrupt a vast industry through stunning innovation and new technologies, leading to a service people have loved, and with costs a fraction of what a traditional bank would have. It wasn’t always easy — it never is with something so ambitious — and there were certainly debates aroud many points. However, we were combined in our common mission and vision, and desire to change the world.

I don’t think I was always a rebel. A bit different, yes, but as a young lad I think I still lacked the confidence to really be a rebel. However, I always wanted to make a difference and to build a dream. Holvi, after so many years of wrangling, was my dream. Last week the decision was made that Holvi would be repositioning to focus on a set of core business areas with a change in the executive team. I will be leaving that team.

It was an amazing experience connecting with the numerous individuals all round the world who learnt to believe in what we had created. It has been a blessing to be able to preach a vision so bold. Some day I may put thoughts on paper about our fascinating Holvi story, but for now I’m taking a moment for reflection while considering and looking at new opportunities for innovation and disruption. I hope to still meet many of you for beers at a nice pub or at startup events. Even more so, I hope to work with some of you in once more creating something wild, something crazy, something impossible.