Boost Turku crew is pleased to announce the Startup Journey’s head coaches: Anssi Kiviranta and Matias Mäenpää.

Matias Mäempää is a strongly business focused man, who has built a B2B service company from 800 000€ to 17 000 000€ in revenue. Before it was acquired by Visma, he was one of the owners, in 2017. He is continuing as Managing Director at the company and seeking strong growth with more than 130 professionals in the organization. In addition, his experience in start-ups has been as an advisor and an investor in SaaS businesses.

Since 2000, Anssi Kiviranta has been founding many successful projects. He launched an idea of a new kind of online tv-guide Telkku.com and lead the company from a zero to 1 million users online service. Telkku.com was acquired by Alma Media Oyj in 2008. Currently, Anssi is working in Bo LKV, a disruptive real estate company and a lifestyle brand he co-founded in 2015. In just a few years Bo LKV has grown from zero to an estimated 14 000 000€ (2018) in revenue with over 100 professionals.

After these successful separated careers, Anssi and Matias are now the faces behind LEAP – a company that helps promising entrepreneurs to grow and succeed by bringing them networking connections, mentoring and experience.

We spoke with Anssi and he shared his excitement of being part of our Startup Journey 2019 for the pleasure of supporting new startups to develop themselves and for the opportunity of knowing them and how they are working. Anssi said: “simple ideas can be valuable. Something that I can understand and get the feeling.” He mentioned attitude as the most important thing that a team has to have – the startup spirit of moving forward.

We also got a chance to ask Anssi about their new project – EXIT – a book they are producing. Anssi shared that the idea came last spring and the book is full of inspirational success stories of entrepreneurs, including theirs. EXIT aims to bring a positive light and inspire readers for entrepreneurship through stories.

For those of you, who got inspired reading this blog and now you don’t want to miss a chance working with Anssi Kiviranta and Matias Mäenpää, apply to the Startup Journey!

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