businesses
with founders
We bring clarity and reduce complexity
We are looking for missionary entrepreneurs with a humble drive and passion to deliver value to customers.
We are industry agnostic and work with B2B and B2C companies. Your business can range from an idea stage to a well-funded growth company.
Venture building is a marathon but often it feels like a series of sprints. We care deeply about building value in the long run. Yet, our focus is on the day-to-day practicalities.
We bring clarity and big picture thinking to everyday decisions while reducing complexity.
Our focus is on everyday smart decisions
We are passionate about building a better future with growth companies that scale and have a positive impact. That’s why we love even the most audacious founder missions.
We drive to accomplish these visions and share the good, the bad and the ugly along the way. Like in life, business is a lot of work, hardship and rough moments. Those moments define your resilience and trust. And these, in turn, make you a long-term partner in a journey.
Ultimately, success is based on all the previous experiences and decisions combined with some luck. We cannot help with luck but the rest is something we do every day.
Our talent is in strategic thinking with common sense and experience
Chairman as a Service
Our level of involvement is very hands-on with varying levels of intensity based on your business needs.
Chairman as a Service is a private and trusted advisory service for entrepreneurs. It offers on-demand and hands-on business support in matters of great importance for the company and its future.
Chairman as a Service requires mutual trust and respect from both parties. It is a long-term relationship that often lasts for years. It combines elements from traditionally different services such as strategic advisory, interim, coaching, mentoring and consulting. It does not replace the official chairman position nor it’s a threat to that role.
In practise, the service is an on-going relationship with continuous dialogue and interaction. It can adapt to your needs and requirements, hands-on business execution included. Consider it as your trusted business partner on-demand.
Every CEO deserves a great chairman…but they seldom do.
Leading an organisation is a lonely role. There are always challenges and the decision making never stops. Yet, running the day to day often takes most of the energy. It leaves very little time for the big picture, the future of any organisation.
CEO and chairman are an ideal partnership. The CEO handles the everyday, and the chairman supporting him and concerning more about the future. The trouble in paradise comes when the chairman cannot commit enough time for his role.
This leaves the CEO juggling between the urgent and necessary. The constant switching between low and high beams is hard. The harder the everyday fog the more energy it takes to use the high beams and pierce through the short them reflections.
The strategic mindset does not like to be around operational worries. If you’re concerned with pressing issues the future feels rather irrelevant in that moment. And even if you have the nagging feeling of omittance it’s easy to ignore.
And this is where the chairman kicks in. He feels the pain, he shares it. He understands the mental pressure to get the daily business done and the drain the future focus requires. His role is to help the CEO and to be more concerned about the future.
Chairman role has less mental constrains to roam free in thoughts and ideas. He doesn’t need to think too much how and what it takes to implement the ideas. The pain of actually executing the plan can filter out good or even necessary actions, often subconsciously.
Kicking butt and offering the oversight when needed is a crucial role. Every great CEO needs that. Or at least the awareness that it will happen if he’s not at the top of his game.
At best, the CEO and chairman are like a jazz band improvising at the stage. Both understand their roles and play accordingly. The result can be something astonishing and the feeling of joint creation and accomplishment can be thrilling.
It’s like a true partnership where you have just become aware of an issue and your partner has already thought out a solution for it. You start a sentence and the other one finishes it.
But this requires effort, trust and experience. Doing the work and being good at it. Learning from mistakes, being brutally honest and most of all humble. Not all decisions are good nor are all the ideas, from anyone. A safe environment to show your vulnerabilities and hesitation, ask for help and admit your shortcomings.
Every CEO has a chairman but is it just a formality? The legal structure and oversight are there for a reason. But fulfilling just the formal necessities is only a starting point. What happens on top of it makes all the difference.
Benefits
- Sounding board in decision-making
- A third-party view on matters
- Concerns with the big picture
- Helps in forming the strategy and navigating it
- Gives honest and direct feedback
- Provides business opportunities and enhances the overall business prospects
- Evolves with new requirements
- Adapts to changing and dynamic situations
Every CEO deserves a great chairman…and now they can have one, as a service.
Interested?
FAQ
At what stage should we get you involved?
We have co-founded companies and therefore been part of the whole process from the very beginning. The opportunities and challenges change during the life cycle of a business. We are happy to come in sooner than later. When do you want to start making better decisions?
What’s the compensation model?
Our model reflects the situation of the company. In the early stages, we are heavily equity-based and when the company cash flow sustains it the cash component becomes larger. The equity ratio is usually over 80% of the total.
We are a start-up and short in cash. When should we talk to you?
We are always happy to talk with entrepreneurs and help them with their missions. If you meet our criteria then we can find a model that works for both of us. We are flexible but expect to be compensated fairly. There is no better time than now to start making better decisions.
What are the partner benefits?
We are Amazon AWS Activation partner and can provide $25k/$100k AWS credits for our portfolio companies. For example, Stripe and Hubspot provide start-up discounts for our companies.
Why should we work with you?
You should only do that if you can build a better and more valuable company with us.
Quoting one of our entrepreneurs about our founder: “Results speak for themselves. We’ve gotten funding through his help, avoided fatal mistakes at critical moments, stayed focused, found new partners, new ideas and refined our business strategy into the right direction. Petri is a pleasure to work with. It’s fast, efficient and fun.”
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Results speak for themselves. We’ve gotten funding through his help, avoided fatal mistakes at critical moments, stayed focused, found new partners, new ideas and refined our business strategy into the right direction. Petri is a pleasure to work with. It’s fast, efficient and fun.
Petri is a perfect advisor and specialist for top management. He has wide entrepreneurial experience, is very focused, efficient and multi-talented. When needed, he can be the hard truth-teller board member, positively encouraging mentor, a hands-on specialist on multiple areas (PR, marketing, business development, negotiations, deal-making, business strategy, etc.), idea factory and a pro-active connector.
He has a huge amount of knowledge from different fields, as well as an excellent network. Petri knows the startup-scene extremely well, from early stages to growing the company. I can recommend him to any advisory or managerial position.
Petri is a strategy-minded, future-oriented, and collaborative person. He is creative and inspiring.
From my experience working with Petri I know, he pays attention to detail and always spots what is important, at the same time he keeps track of the big picture.
He provides sound advice and gladly shares his knowledge, experience and vast network. Petri is, with no doubt, one of the best.
Petri contributed significantly to the success of the projects I was heading. Loyal, insightful and independent visionary. Most definitely, someone I’d want to to have on my team in the future.
Petri is a terrific sparring buddy for all sorts of discussions from solving practical business problems to quite theoretical topics of company law. He always comes up with useful suggestions and insightful questions to drive the conversation forward. I had the pleasure to work with Petri on a few projects during my law firm days.
Petri has mentored several latest batches at Startup Wise Guys, helping startups to brainstorm around strategy and brandy. Petri is the right person for a startup to share what you do, to have a fresh view on it and see what can be improved.
I really appreciate all that Petri did for us. His valuable insights and guidance during the Startup Wise Guys B2B SaaS Accelerator Program pushed us forward for innovative thinking. Petri’s strong branding and marketing expertise helped us design our branding strategy and story from a different angle.
…very professional, focused and passionate. Petri’s attention to quality was a great asset to our project. Petri is a man who can both plan and execute.
It was my pleasure to work for Petri, he was an excellent boss and provided me with great memories of various tasks carried out with passion and precision. Petri strives for excellence with all of his heart – with great milestones!
Petri Kajander is one of those people who gets things done, promptly, intelligently, and professionally…It was truly a pleasure to work with someone so competent. When it comes to establishing a business strategy and executing it, Petri Kajander is in the top tier. I recommend him unreservedly.
Petri is a prompt and fast actor with a clear mission. Fun to work with and always positive!
If you’re a startup CEO and find yourself in a blind alley you should definitely contact Petri. Petri has a strategic mind and he is great at pointing out faults in your own assumptions and getting you out of the ivory tower to learn from the only group that actually matters: your present/potential customer segment. He also has a vast knowledge and experience base: not only is he familiar with different technologies and management strategies but also has a solid understanding of economics and market dynamics in general.
From first impression onward, Petri is very intelligent, visionary business-thinker. He has a great talent for communicating his views to a listener, challenging them to excel in their game.
It is easy to get along with Petri: he says things straight out, fights forward, sympathizes the appropriate amount with challenges and knows how to see the big picture. Petri ́s views are relevant and appropriate. He has a genuine desire to help one forward and a can-do attitude, exactly that which a start-up needs. A positive guy with a good sense of humour!
Petri is a ‘can do’ and solution-oriented person. He has a strategic mindset and the ability to transform strategic planning into action and results. If you have something that needs to be developed or a problem that needs to be solved, through his approach and participation Petri can help you to find or create your way forward.
Petri is a very positive-minded advisor, entrepreneur and investor. It has always been my pleasure to work with him. He is sharp, smart and loves challenges. I can only give everyone a strong recommendation to do business with him.
Petri is a dynamic thinker and doer and has a profound track record in serial entrepreneurship, marketing, internationalization, finance and has assisted several startups to take their business to the next level. He is also fun to work with.
I’ve known Petri from the startup circles and used his expertise on several projects. As a benevolent chairman-for-hire, he has helped me with strategy for growth and investment topics, provided valuable connections, and opened pathways and doors toward successful business. I value his input and trust his advice.
Petri is an innovative coach and facilitator for a startup business strategy and I can warmly recommend him for companies in need to clarify their business model and objectives. A great thing about Petri is that he actively links together people and companies in his network.
