We hired a new CEO to Finland. I believe we found the best person to lead us through the next steps on our journey.
His name is Jouni Heikniemi.
I've known Jouni for a long time. For the past decade, we've co-hosted Ikkunastudio together, spending countless hours discussing technology, business, leadership and whatever else happened to be on the radar.
He's an accomplished entrepreneur, CEO and CTO, and one of the best-known people in the Finnish Microsoft ecosystem, too. But those aren't the main reasons I believe he's the right person for the job.
It's his principles.
Jouni doesn't build his life around where there's the most money to be made, the easiest time to be had, or the most impressive title available. He goes where he thinks he can improve something, build something, and bring something to the people around him.
He's people-first and culture-focused, but also very much a let's-get-this-thing-done person. He has strong opinions, the integrity to stand behind them, and absolutely no problem challenging me.
Zure Finland doesn't need someone to simply continue what we've been doing. It needs someone who can take what we've built, make it better, and lead the company through its next stage.
Here's what I said about Jouni in my LinkedIn post. And here is what Jouni said about joining us in his LinkedIn post.
Since founding Zure with Sami Lavikko 15 years ago, Zure has grown and changed. It took us almost 10 years to expand abroad, but since then we've found exceptional, like-minded people from 4 other countries besides Finland: Belgium, Denmark, United Kingdom and Netherlands.
Especially during the past few years we've started to notice how good this international expansion has been to us. Every year we have more cross-collaborative projects across Europe and even USA, providing interesting challenges to our people and pushing us to learn and become better.
I'm happy that we've been able to expand internationally while staying independent and trying our best to preserve the things that have made us who we are: culture before rules, community before profitmaxxing, deep yearning for learning and excellence of craft, and the freedom to continue building a workplace we can be proud of.
Now, I want to put more of my time and focus into this journey. I'll continue as Group CEO, with my focus increasingly on growing and developing Zure as an international group.
This means boosting the activities that benefit all our countries, strengthening our offices across the Europe, figuring where we should go next, ensuring the safety of the Group as a whole, and finding the right people and companies to build Zure with us.
The goal's never been to make Zure bigger for the sake of being bigger. The goal is to make Zure bigger so we are more broadly known for being people who want to solve the difficult problems, who want to make the right thing the right way, and who aren't afraid to be honest with success or failures.
While I'm not disappearing from Finland and am daily available to our people and customers, having Jouni take responsibility for Finland gives me the opportunity to focus on Zure as a whole.
First, work continues, with the goal of every day being an improvement to the previous ones.
Second, if there's something here that interests you, get in touch. I'd be happy to talk.