---
title: "Growth Company Success and Financing | Olli Sirkiä | Neuvottelija 188"
titleOriginal: "Kasvuyritysten menestys ja rahoitus | Olli Sirkiä | Neuvottelija 188"
episodeNumber: "188"
guest: "Olli Sirkiä"
datePublished: 2023-04-16
duration: "45:16"
youtube: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9pB4s6quk0"
originalLanguage: "fi"
topics: ["investing_markets","saas_software","ma_exits"]
subtitleMethod: "none"
provenance: "Owner page assembled from YouTube metadata, the neuvottelija.fi episode record and a MacWhisper transcription of the Finnish audio. The chapter marks are the publisher's own list as released with the video, each verified to fall within ten seconds of a real transcript cue. No English caption track was produced, so no transcript is published here. The transcription contains one gap of roughly thirty seconds at 17:33-18:02, in the middle of the Rule of 40 argument, where speech resumes from the second half of a comparison whose opening is not preserved; the summary is written only from what the transcript contains and the gap has not been filled by inference."
fiCanonical: "https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/277-kasvuyritysten-menestys-ja-rahoitus-olli-sirkia-neuvottelija"
canonical: https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep188-kasvuyritysten-menestys-ja-rahoitus-olli-sirkia/
---
# Growth Company Success and Financing | Olli Sirkiä | Neuvottelija 188

English subtitles are not available on this page. This is an episode summary, not a curated transcript.

## Chapters

- [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9pB4s6quk0&t=0s) Olli Sirkiä of Trado Capital and the portfolio: Lyyti, Hoiwa, Augment, Mjuk, Timma, Freska, Fiksuruoka, Jobilla, Profinder
- [00:24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9pB4s6quk0&t=24s) A job interview simulation — odd questions as a selection criterion
- [02:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9pB4s6quk0&t=172s) Trado's co-investments such as Lyyti and Augment
- [05:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9pB4s6quk0&t=300s) Augment's business model is healthier than Voi's or Tier's
- [06:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9pB4s6quk0&t=360s) Jobilla and Hoiwa
- [08:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9pB4s6quk0&t=510s) Timma — B2B2C in one product
- [12:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9pB4s6quk0&t=770s) Using venture debt in growth companies when the only collateral is receivables and equity
- [16:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9pB4s6quk0&t=975s) Why is the SaaS Rule of 40 a poor metric?
- [17:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9pB4s6quk0&t=1060s) High cost of sales as a risk
- [20:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9pB4s6quk0&t=1230s) What makes a good salesperson, and their KPIs. A bonus model beats a commission model
- [21:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9pB4s6quk0&t=1290s) Hoiwa, Auntie, Terapiatalo Noste and Äännekoulu, and how a reform of the care model might land
- [25:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9pB4s6quk0&t=1500s) How a brother fixed a childhood speech-sound problem in a day, and how it is done now
- [27:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9pB4s6quk0&t=1620s) Mental health services and demand, particularly among young women
- [29:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9pB4s6quk0&t=1770s) Fiksuruoka — fighting food waste with dry goods
- [31:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9pB4s6quk0&t=1860s) Fredman Group and Chefstein, IoT-based SaaS. The Finnair case
- [32:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9pB4s6quk0&t=1923s) How Trado Capital chooses its potential investments
- [33:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9pB4s6quk0&t=2030s) Finland has excellent startup teams — the small home market is the problem
- [34:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9pB4s6quk0&t=2090s) The challenge of going abroad: local hires, a country company, or an acquisition
- [35:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9pB4s6quk0&t=2158s) The reseller model does not work well in software
- [37:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9pB4s6quk0&t=2250s) When it is worth joining the board as well as investing
- [38:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9pB4s6quk0&t=2325s) OKRs or Must Win Battles? Board incentives and target setting
- [41:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9pB4s6quk0&t=2483s) The value added reseller model, and whether AI could make these valuable
- [42:36](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9pB4s6quk0&t=2556s) Translink's SaaS expertise versus the competition
- [43:27](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9pB4s6quk0&t=2607s) How Sirkiä uses AI
- [44:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9pB4s6quk0&t=2660s) Outro: how to reach Olli Sirkiä

## Summary

**Olli Sirkiä**, founder of Trado Capital, came on to discuss how growth companies are
chosen, financed and taken abroad.

**The Rule of 40 gets its most useful criticism here.** Sirkiä accepts it for internal
steering — set growth to zero and the cost structure has to settle somewhere — but says it
is too crude for an investor because it equalises all costs. A company spending sixty per
cent of its budget on sales scores the same as one spending that money on product, though
these are entirely different companies to own. He adds that a CAC to lifetime value ratio
does not show the churn profile either, since firms onboard customers not yet ready to use
the product. His summary of why sales efficiency deserves the closest attention is the best
line in the episode: it contains not only how well the sales machine works but how good the
product is, and the two are tightly bound.

**Venture debt, described concretely.** Companies this size have no collateral beyond
receivables and equity, and personal guarantees no longer work. Trado does not take
receivables as security; instead the loan is meant to be repaid, and failure converts it to
equity on deliberately harsh pre-agreed terms — a structure designed so that nobody wants
to use it. In a normal growth scenario the founder pays interest rather than ownership.
Sirkiä draws the limit himself: a conversion handing over sixty per cent and leaving
founders nothing would mean the loan was too big or the terms too brutal, and a crippled
company serves nobody.

**On Timma** he explains why software combining a B2B product with a consumer marketplace
has to win the B2B side first: adoption needs someone locally to show how it works, which
is why online-only competitors have failed, and the marketplace only becomes valuable once
market position is established.

**On selling and internationalising**, he credits the view that commission alone is a poor
incentive and that paying for activity works better, since salespeople look too far ahead.
He is unambiguous that the reseller model does not work in software — a reseller carrying
your product and a competitor's sells whichever interests it — and notes that Workday,
Salesforce, Monday and Pipedrive all have partner networks now but none began that way;
distribution is a consequence of having customers, not a way to acquire them.

**His conclusion about Finland** is that the constraint is not team quality. Ideas are too
often built such that the domestic market is the whole market, and then a company can do
everything right and still stop at a few million in revenue — fine for the founder, not for
an investor. "When you look at the world through a small hole from here, plenty of
companies run aground on it."

He also describes why an investor should not join early-stage boards (they take more time
than mature companies, you cannot sit on twenty, and the company gains nothing from
international experience at that stage), and gives an unglamorous account of deal
sourcing: wanting even a conversation might be one company in five hundred.

## A note on the source

The transcription contains one gap of roughly thirty seconds at 17:33–18:02, in the middle
of the Rule of 40 argument. The line before it ends "and they scale", and speech resumes
from the second half of a comparison whose opening is not preserved. This summary is
written only from what the transcript contains; the gap has not been filled by inference.

## Watch

The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel:
[Kasvuyritysten menestys ja rahoitus | Olli Sirkiä | Neuvottelija 188](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9pB4s6quk0).
A Finnish edition of this episode is published at
[www.neuvottelija.fi](https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/277-kasvuyritysten-menestys-ja-rahoitus-olli-sirkia-neuvottelija).

## Explore the ideas in depth

- [Nordic SaaS Valuation & M&A: How AI Reprices Software Companies](https://www.neuvottelija.com/guides/nordic-saas-valuation-and-ma/): How software companies in the Nordics are valued and sold as AI moves inference into the cost of goods sold — where multiples stand in mid-2026, the metrics that get repriced, why vertical SaaS defends its premium, AI due diligence, and the shift from seats to outcomes. Grounded in Translink's SaaS valuation work and Neuvottelija conversations.
- [Enterprise AI Agents: Economics, Governance and the Shift From Tools to Workers](https://www.neuvottelija.com/guides/enterprise-ai-agents-economics-and-governance/): A guide to enterprise AI agents — the real cost model behind agent work, why owning your own stack is becoming a strategic question, a working governance framework with approval gates and audit trails, the agent risk matrix, the EU AI Act timeline as it stands, and who captures the productivity gains. Grounded in a real multi-agent lab, two 2026 keynotes, and Neuvottelija conversations.
- [How to Sell a Company in Finland: An M&A Banker's Guide to a Clean Exit](https://www.neuvottelija.com/guides/how-to-sell-a-company-in-finland/): A practical guide to selling a company in Finland and the Nordics — the process phase by phase, share deal vs asset deal, valuation, due diligence, buyer types, deal structures, taxes on the sale, minority squeeze-outs and the ownership context that shapes every exit. Grounded in Neuvottelija conversations and Translink M&A practice.

---

Cite as: Sami Miettinen, Neuvottelija — Growth Company Success and Financing | Olli Sirkiä | Neuvottelija 188, https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep188-kasvuyritysten-menestys-ja-rahoitus-olli-sirkia/, 2023-04-16. For quotes include episode 188 and timestamp.