fi en

20 Finnish tech startups you might not have heard of / updated!

19 Sep 2018 by Maria Kotaniemi

There are SO many cool and interesting Finnish startups that keeping up with all of them might be hard. We decided to introduce 20 tech startups that we think are beyond awesome.  These startups do some pretty amazing stuff, such as

  • Democratizing AI
  • Creating new ways of consulting
  • Transforming local delivery and the ownership of vehicles
  • Saving lives
  • Updating different fields of business to the digital era
  • Building satellites

…and much more!
These startups also offer lots of interesting challenges for techies, so if interested please drop us a line!

1. New Things Company

Exciting and a bit mysterious new startup that is all about curiosity towards the newest technologies and the world. This pack of experts explore, experiment and stretch the limits in order to change the way consulting is done. They have this thing called Lab Time where they build cool new things with workmates and test out new tech.

New Things team is build of seasoned and very cool individuals, great developers and one of the best designers we’ve met. Just after the first half a year, they’ve landed some of the best customer cases in the Finnish market.

Tech stack: JavaScript, TypeScript, Node.js, React, Redux, RxJS, Ramda, Clojure, Scala, Java8, Spring Boot, AWS, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Ansible, Docker

https://www.newthings.co
P.S. Listen our podcast episode with Sami Ruotsalainen from New Things Co → 

2. Columbia Road

Digital marketing has become the new black of marketing. Columbia Road is a digital growth consultancy by Futurice with strong expertise on growth hacking, full-stack marketing and digital commerce. If you’re on your way to ecommerce, Columbia Road is a very worthy partner to boost your growth.

The key team members are known players in IT business community and really know their stuff. This is a company that has a really bright future ahead. It might just be the next superstar in combining online business, marketing and tech.

Tech stack: Ruby, Scala, PHP, JavaScript, Java/J2EE/ .NET/C#

https://www.columbiaroad.com

 

3. Polar Squad

Polar Squad is a fresh DevOps consultancy company that was established late last year. The team of DevOps pros helps development teams become more productive at delivering software to production, the DevOps way of course. In practice, this means setting up cloud environments, deployment pipelines, and observability systems as well as promoting DevOps culture in the client organization. 

These genius minds are hiring and in fact, they already grew out of their first office! Despite the crazy growing speed, the company is still cozy small so you’d have an opportunity to influence the way the company is built. So, as said in the Polar Squad’s website, if you master DevOps, know something related to DevOps or are at least willing to learn, the squad wants to hear from you! 

Tech stack: AWS, Terraform, Kubernetes, Ansible, Docker, CI/CD tools
https://www.polarsquad.com

4. Tomorrow Tech

Passionate about creating digital products that change industries? Then check this out! 

Tomorrow Tech was established in August 2016, and since then they’ve grown close to 10 skilled peeps and also got their first product DIAS out to the market. DIAS it’s a digital trading platform for the residential real estate market and it’s built together with banks and government. We can’t wait to see what they come up with next!

If you’d like to work with very experienced teammates and interesting technologies as well as have lots of freedom and responsibility, Tomorrow could be the place for you.

Tech stack: Java, Scala, Clojure, Kotlin
https://tomorrow.fi

5. Adventure Club

Adventure Club dares to challenge the world’s way of thinking. The company has expertise in digital product design and the crew helps businesses in this area by offering consulting and creating new businesses. They also build their own products, and one of them is meeting your unborn baby in VR. Fascinating yet a bit quirky, and a perfect example of the company’s bold way of thinking.

The Design ecosystem in Finland has gone through big changes when companies like Fjord has been bought by Accenture, Idean by CapGemini, Palmu by Solita etc.. and what we are seeing now are these newcomers that offer a refreshing touch to the market. Adventure Club is definitely one of the most interesting newcomers.

https://adventureclub.io

6. Neverthink

What if someone collected all the best videos of your favorite subject to one place? The guys and girls at Neverthink watch videos all day every day for their living so that you can just sit back and enjoy!

Neverthink really caught our eye last summer. We’ve got a call that there is something really awesome and new coming up, and when we met with Aviv and Claus we learned that they’re really on to something big. In a short period of time they were able to get some really solid team members to both their advisor and development teams. They also landed a rather big seed round investment and are aiming to be the Spotify of videos.

Tech stack: JavaScript, NodeJS+Express, React, Redux, Redis, PostgreSQL

https://neverthink.tv

7. Singa

If you’re the type of person who loves to have a karaoke party anytime, anywhere, Singa is for you! Singa is the new coming of Karaoke and took the national art of Finland to the digital era. No more months and months of waiting to get the latest hits to the selection of your local karaoke bar, when you can have an updated, huge high-quality song library of 20 000+ songs on your phone or any smart device.

This business needed the tech flavor for a long time and now it’s there. This Finnish startup got backed by Reaktor Ventures and they are aiming for global markets. Singa has an awesome team and a really good product, that is going to be BIG in Japan.

Tech stack: Python (Django/DRF), PostgreSQL, Java, Objective-C, Swift, JavaScript (Angular/React/Vue), Docker, AWS

https://singa.com/

8. Mount Kelvin

Oh boy what a bunch of great minds. We’ve always loved Houm.io, nowadays known as Mount Kelvin, and they hold a special place in our hearts. They spinned off from Reaktor a few years ago and are making physical world smarter. If you love building smart homes, you are going to love this company.

Mount Kelvin offers smart, easy to control lighting solutions for all sorts of luminaires. Create moods and adjust lighting with smart switches and motorized blinds and shades. You can also control the lighting with the mobile app and Alexa Voice Service. Goodbye boring and hello flexible lighting!

Tech stack: JavaScript, Bacon.js

https://www.mountkelvin.com

9. Silo.ai

Silo.AI is a burning hot new service startup that’s a software company with a little twist. The Helsinki based Silo.AI solves companies’ problems with the help of Artificial Intelligence. The team is on a mission to democratize AI and to create new business opportunities with it.

Most of the AI work in Finland is in consultancy businesses but Silo is building their own service. That’s a big difference and it opens a possibility to actually invest some effort in learning new. Silo is a really good example of what you get by combining 20+ leading researchers with developers.

Tech stack: Python, Scikit-learn, Jupyter Notebooks, Docker, Kubernetes, Meteor, Angular, Node.js, Flask, MongoDB

https://silo.ai

 

10. Heltti

Better, more efficient occupational healthcare! Heltti deals up to 76 % of the health issues remotely, but never distantly.

Heltti challenges the traditional healthcare operations and aims to offer more effective and customer orientated occupational health- and welfare services by focusing on prevention and being genuinely involved in the customers’ everyday life. Forget the time-consuming doctor visits because of a simple flu – just text your occupational healthcare team directly at Heltti.me app and get the medicine from your nearest pharmacy.

Tech stack: TypeScript, React, Python, GraphQL, Docker

https://heltti.fi

p.s. CEO of Heltti Timo Lappi talked about starting a company on our podcast →

11. Reaktor Space Lab

Every little boy’s dream! We firmly keep an eye on this one because c’mon, this is so so very cool! The crew has already built three satellites, and an experienced developer will genuinely get to put his/her hands on the mud and build satellites, ground stations and services on top of these.

Turnkey small satellite missions to LEO and beyond, the team has a solid background in the actual physical side of building satellites but what they need developers for is to build the services that use the data gathered by satellites and to analyze it for business purposes, saving the refugees at the seas, helping farmers to grow better crops, etc. There are a lot of potential implementations for the data Space Lab is able to gather using cool new tech such as spectrum camera.

Tech stack: C, Python, Docker, GnuRadio, Linux, Javascript

https://reaktorspace.com

12. Starship

If you have ever imagined building robots for a living, oh boy do we have an answer for you. This pearl from San Francisco is about the really rock the world of logistics: Starship transforms local delivery by delivering your groceries and parcels with cost-efficient and environmentally friendly robots.

Starship is one of the World’s most interesting robot companies at the moment, and they are now building a local team in Helsinki. What we know about the team so far is that it has at least two high profile Reaktorians in it. We cannot wait to see what the future has in store for Starship!

Tech stack: iOS, Android, JavaScript, C++

https://www.starship.xyz

13. Iceye

Iceye built the world’s first microsatellite using SAR, a synthetic-aperture radar. The crew aims to learn more about the Earth with the SAR microsatellite, that obtains terrain and land-cover information about our beloved planet Earth. In addition, it is also capable to detect objects, track targets and monitor activity.

Eye’s on Horizon, this company has really aimed high and made it. They launched their first satellite early this year and are now building a fleet of six satellites to send to space. They are working with a Microwave Camera and focusing on taking pictures of ice moments in Nordic Seas. Their team has been growing fast and they are well funded. Really cool company to follow and join.

Tech stack: C/C++ , Python, PHP, Javascript, Spring IO, Scrum / Kanban, RESTful APIs

https://www.iceye.com

14. +1 Agency

+1 Agency is a consulting agency powered by scientists, designers, engineers, researchers, creatives, business strategists and machines. Measuring human experiences is difficult, but +1 solves the challenge by dealing and combining diverse and real-time customer-, employee- and sales data, and benefiting the newest artificial intelligence technologies.

We got to know +1 last year and the positive energy of the company overwhelmed us with joy. They have a rather senior team flavored with business minds and they are now building their tech competences. In this team you’d get to learn a lot and also contribute as a techie. Since it’s a small team your role might be large.

Tech stack: Python, R, Java ja Scala, Hadoop, Kafka, Spark, Docker, Ansible, Vagrant, PureScript, HTML5, Spark MLIB,  Google Tensorflow, Scrum

http://plusoneagency.com

15. Leanheat

Leanheat upgrades building HVAC systems to the digital age and brings big savings for real estates thanks to the IoT/AI powered indoor climate and heating control system.

Despite its young age, Leanheat has been able to land some of the most interesting clients & partners in the Finnish market. Last year the team of international and experienced talents got a rather big investment to fasten the company’s global growth. Leanheat must be one of the most interesting companies to work for if you’d like to be building practical IoT stuff.

Tech stack: Clojure, Javascript/React. Python, R, PostgreSQL, AWS, Linux, Ansible

https://leanheat.com

16. Kaiku Health

Once upon a time not too long ago, an ambitious idea about predictive cancer care was born at Aalto University in Finland. The idea then evolved, strengthened and spread overseas. And today, Kaiku Health is used for digital patient monitoring in cancer care, fertility care and occupational healthcare, and over 30 European hospitals and clinics are using the platform to improve the patients’ quality of life through health data science.

Kaiku has their own SaaS-service that they are developing, and one of their key projects this year is to improve the platform integration capabilities. They’ve landed some good investments in the near past and are now building their development teams. With Kaiku you get to work with big data storages, use data science and machine learning and the most important, to save people’s lives.

Tech stack: React, Redux, Ruby on Rails

https://kaikuhealth.com

p.s. We also chatted with Kaiku’s VP of Engineering Petri Avikainen, listen the podcast here →

17. Steerpath

Ever got lost at the university when trying to find the right class room or lost your friend at the trade fair center?  Steerpath feels your pain and wants to make life easier by providing indoor navigation spiced up with interactive maps and asset tracking.

Steerpath is a cool company founded by members we know from our previous jobs. They tackle an interesting problem, which we are unable to handle with satellites and GPS, how to navigate indoors. So, if you’re interested in figuring out how to build kick ass services using data from actual physical environment around you, this might be the place for you.

Tech stack: ReactJS, Python, C, Objective-C & Swift , Java (Android), AWS, OpenGL & WebGL

https://steerpath.com

18. Arilyn

Augmented Reality (AR) reshapes the way we interact with our surroundings. With Arilyn’s easy to use visual tools any company can take their content marketing and brand storytelling to another dimension and bring their AR ideas to reality.

AR is for all so Arilyn provides a full service from concept design to production and implementation, for big and small goals. This pioneer team has helped brands, such as Huawei, Finnish Red Cross, Greenpeace and L’Oréal, in over 20 countries and they ain’t stopping there. If you are inspired to step into the world of AR, this is a company you want to get to know.

Tech stack: Unity, Rails, NodeJS, Angular, Unity, 3D, iOS, Android

https://arilyn.com

19. Smartly.io

Smartly is working closely together with Facebook among other social media platforms, and here you get to automate and scale customers’ social media marketing PLUS travel all around the world. Smartly has really skyrocketed as a business, but even though it is not an early stage startup it is still under the radar for most.

For a developer Smartly is a really interesting workplace where you are directly taking a part in automating marketing efforts for a vast budget of over 1 mrd euros in total. With their tools you can manage the campaigns of all social media accounts in one place, how convenient!

Tech stack: Ruby, PHP, Redis, Python, JavaScript, Cassandra, Dockey

https://www.smartly.io

20. Kamu Health

As air pollution worsens, asthma is becoming more common. KAMU is an evidence-based, medical-grade service that helps people with asthma to predict and prevent asthma symptoms. You only need your smartphone to use KAMU’s special spirometer to easily monitor your lungs and optimize your use of medication. You can also react when potential problems, such as cold weather and changes in air quality, occur as KAMU alerts you about those problems.

KAMU’s long term goal is to gather data to speed up future asthma research and treatments: By sharing their anonymized data KAMU users can help build a clearer picture of the disease, provide better data for medical researchers and doctors as well as help improve the guidance for staying healthy. Want to join this exciting ride?

Tech stack: React Native, Typescript, Qt, PostgreSQL, Docker, Kubernetes, SmartMet, Azure, Caddy, PostgREST
https://www.kamuhealth.com

 

Want to see more interesting companies? Check out our Developer’s top 20 workplaces -blog post! 

 


Talented is shaking up the general way of recruiting software professionals in Finland and worldwide. We help senior IT and digital Talents to find better fitting jobs and projects, and companies to build digital competences and employer brand.

Stay up to date on Finnish software industry insights and connect with both the hiring companies and the other techies who geek out on the same stuff you do – Join the Talented Developer Community!

Software industry insights to your inbox?

Witted Insights is a monthly overview of the Nordic software consulting business. Subscribe so you’ll know how the companies in the industry are doing.

By entering your email address you agree to receive the newsletter on a monthly basis in accordance with Witted’s Privacy Policy →