Perttu Ojansuu- Co-Founder And CEO At Happeo- Making Work A Happier Place During These Uncertain Times!

Perttu Ojansuu is the CEO and co-founder of Happeo. He started in the SaaS industry by building the biggest Google Cloud company in Finland. As companies expanded their digital toolsets, he saw problems in the way they collaborate and communicate – more tools, more information silos. More information silos, more miscommunication. More miscommunication? Less happy employees.

Perttu Ojansuu found his new mission. Work needs to be a happier place, wherever it is, remote or in-office. That’s why Happeo exists. Happeo is the community-powered employee communications platform that Internal Communications, HR, and leaders use to align and engage talent. It is the tool they need to create a high-performing digital culture – fueled by a strong employee community.

In an exclusive interview with AsiaTechDaily, Perttu says:

The best advice is to ask for advice. There are a lot of talented people who have done what we want to do. Many people miss this in an effort to create an image of themselves to other people.

The most important thing to being an entrepreneur is that you’re super interested in your topic. For me, this meant hundreds of hours in books, blogs and videos about Venture Capital (Venture Hacks, Y-combinator Hacker News) and SaaS related items (SaaStr, Jason Lemkin, David Skok and SaaStock). After that, it’s choosing the field you want to satisfy. And after that? A lot of work, a bit of luck, and never giving up.

Read on to know more about Perttu Ojansuu and his journey.

Please tell me about your personal background, and what are you working on currently?

Perttu Ojansuu: In 2010 I co-founded a company called GAPPS, with the aim to help businesses of Finland to move their IT operations to the cloud, more particularly to Google’s G Suite and Google’s Cloud platform. Throughout the years, the popularity of cloud-based solutions increased and our focus on customer care made our firm grow into a big success. After observing a lot of implementation projects, we came to the conclusion that, while G Suite is an excellent collection of tools, it lacks an overlaying hub to connect all its products together. On top of that, a lot of companies that transferred from Microsoft missed having an intranet solution in G Suite’s ecosystem. “Two birds, one stone” is what we thought, and in 2016 the first iteration of Happeo was born. Since then, we’ve been growing fast and were fortunate to sign amazing clients and partnerships. Today, big brands and fast-growing companies such as Randstad Sourceright, the World Wildlife Fund, and Tide Cleaners all use Happeo to engage, align, and retain more than 300.000 employees worldwide.

Happeo helps companies to create a digital culture where happy people lead the conversation – fueling business growth.

How have you attracted users and grown your product from the start till now?

Perttu Ojansuu: Happeo was born as a product-centric solution, but from day one, it was our vision that has set us apart from the rest of the market. We don’t want to just provide a solution – we want to reinvent the way companies communicate internally. That’s also why our user-first design is the biggest differentiator. In 90% of the cases, Happeo can be rolled out within 10 minutes and everyone can start using it. It’s that easy. We’re really proud that this is the main reason companies choose Happeo.

What’s your business model, and how have you grown your revenue? What strategy worked best?

Perttu Ojansuu: We source the majority of our deals through a combination of inbound and outbound marketing and consultative sales. Recently, prospective customers have heard good things about our in-house Customer Success department during reference calls. The combination of a robust and clear message that gets attention, with a no-nonsense and well-thought-of consultative sales process, down to an in-depth and tailored onboarding experience through our Customer Success team – that’s the core of our SaaS-business model and the reason why our churn is exceptionally low. Naturally, finding the right product-market fit preceded this – it’s our team of talented developers that keep the wheels spinning.

What are some marketing tips to help maximize the success of a product launch?

Perttu Ojansuu:

1. I don’t believe in standard marketing. I believe in storytelling. Storytelling at Happeo is conceived in the marketing department, but it’s lived through our other departments and is created in conjunction with them. For example, marketing will never come up with a message that Sales doesn’t support, and vice-versa. Bringing these two departments together (or “marrying them” as my CMO calls it) is key to sustainable success.
2. Outbound-only or inbound-only doesn’t work. An integrated approach is best. Our Sales Development Reps (SDRs) sit in the marketing team precisely for this reason and are amazing at giving feedback to the marketing team, directly from prospects.
3. Capitalize on your talent. Talent is the driver of business today, so be incredibly selective in your recruiting process, even if that causes delays. I’d rather wait a year to find the right fit than struggle with someone less than that.

What’s the hardest thing about product launches? And what is a good product launch checklist to be well prepared?

Perttu Ojansuu: The biggest challenge is finding the right time. If you’re too early, your current customers will be unhappy. They’re the ones that need to hear about it first after all. If you’re too late, you’ll have a cool feature (or product) out there that nobody will know or care about anymore. It’s a delicate balance. Another one is that your teams will need to work very closely together. Everyone needs to be aligned, and this can be problematic for organizations that aren’t used to everyone’s noses being pointed in the same direction.

A checklist, roughly, would look something like:

• Define your true Unique Selling Point (USP)
• Come up with a media plan
• Develop a story around this
• Make sure the organization doesn’t just understand but lives that story
• Write a press release
• Get an agency involved if you don’t yet have the journalistic contacts required – PR is very much about who you know, not just what you’re telling
• Inform your customers. We’ve set up a customer community for this. It works really well.
• Test, test, test. Launch needs to be perfect across all your channels.
• Monitor the results – if you can’t track it, it doesn’t exist
• Evaluate based on those results and adjust your messaging where necessary (and possible)
• Don’t try to tweak the life out of your original message
• Plan follow-up communications after your initial bang

How do you plan to expand globally?

Perttu Ojansuu: We started in Europe, but the North American market grew quickly – it’s now our biggest growth market. We plan to expand there and open an office soon, grow our team of developers in both Finland and Romania, and then look further into the APAC market, from which we already see strong demand. Naturally, Europe will always remain a core-strategic focus.

What are the most common mistakes companies make with global marketing?

Perttu Ojansuu: Not aligning marketing and sales is a huge and common one. Another one is forgetting about branding – especially in B2B. You’re communicating to companies, but those companies have people working for them, and people relate to stories, images, the overall untrackable “feel” of your brand. You can’t forget about that human touch.

How do you handle this COVID-19 outbreak situation for your company’s survival in the future?

Perttu Ojansuu: We partially mentioned this in a blog post on the Happeo site, but for us, it starts with empathy. This is one of the biggest outbreaks of humankind, and companies need to do everything they can to prevent loss of life. We did everything we could early on. Remote working is in our DNA since Happeo allows companies to work and communicate from anywhere in the world. True to that, our entire company has been working remotely for little over a month now, and business continuity wasn’t affected in the slightest. I firmly believe that companies need to allow remote working, and COVID-19 was a wake-up call for a lot of them.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, our platform usage across our customers has gone up by 400%. Because Happeo enables companies to manage their remote-communications effectively, we’ve seen an increase in demand. Another example: one particular customer, pre-Corona, purchased 3,000 licenses when they’re a 15,000 employee company. During the COVID-19 outbreak, they noticed how much they needed a central platform to communicate with their employees, so they decided to roll Happeo out across their entire organization – in just four days! We’re incredibly proud that they managed to do this in record time, and that they trust us to provide them with the solution they need to ensure their own business continuity.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received? And what advice do you have for someone who is interested in doing similar things like yours or in a similar direction?

Perttu Ojansuu: The best advice is to ask for advice. There are a lot of talented people who have done what we want to do. Many people miss this in an effort to create an image of themselves to other people.

The most important thing to being an entrepreneur is that you’re super interested in your topic. For me, this meant hundreds of hours in books, blogs and videos about Venture Capital (Venture Hacks, Y-combinator Hacker News) and SaaS related items (SaaStr, Jason Lemkin, David Skok and SaaStock). After that, it’s choosing the field you want to satisfy. And after that? A lot of work, a bit of luck, and never giving up.

What are the one or two things that you would do differently if you could go back to 10 years ago?

Perttu Ojansuu: I wouldn’t actually do much differently. I would just say to myself that eventually things go well, so remember to enjoy every day. As someone wise has said, we overestimate the short-term impact but underestimate the long-term one. That has truly happened already with our first company. The economics of scale are hard to believe until you see it happening, but it’s truly possible, it’s not only in the books.

You can follow Perttu Ojansuu here.

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