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The first guest of Prodeko Founder’s Talk series fall 2016 was Juhani Mykkänen, co-founder of Wolt.

Around 40 DIEM students and staff participated the event on September 28 and rarely has there been so many questions to the presenter.

Juhani has graduated from Aalto Sci Computer Science department Information Networks and already during his studies worked in several creative fields. He was the editor-in-chief and columnist at Helsingin Sanomat Nyt-liite, chief at Radio Helsinki, co-writer of the Koodi2016 guide book with Linda Liukas. He has also given training in communication & media as well as speaker gigs and event hosting, chairing panels etc.

Wolt lets you order home-delivery or takeaway food

Juhani Mykkänen is one of the six founders that created the mobile app Wolt which “brings you your meal in 30 minutes”. Food is something everyone needs daily and the total market and euros spent on food and meals is enormous. Wolt invented the app which saves you time and effort in shopping food, preparing meals, eating out. You download the Wolt app, choose a restaurant (in Finland, Stockholm, Tallin), build an order and pay. You can eat in the restaurant, pick it up as take-away or get it delivered in 30 minutes.

The DIEM students had a lot of questions for Juhani – mostly about his experiences of starting the company, the team and its’ strategy.

Hard but rewarding work

Juhani emphasized that starting a business is not about the idea – it’s more so about the execution, the funding, the team and especially the critical timing. Wolt is a pure tech company doing logistics as well and financers believed in their idea and the doers.  

“The focus is to keep the product or service concept simple and to concentrate on the problems that they want to solve. Building fast is critical but mistakes can rarely be avoided. Don’t explain – but admit and fix the mistake, if you make one.” Juhani is responsible of the marketing and communications as well as partnerships and he has benefitted his media experience and contacts widely.

The rapidly growing and scalable business now has more than 450 merchant partners in Helsinki, Turku and Tampere.  It launched it’s app in Stockholm in April 2016 and now also has restaurants and customers in Tallinn. Wolt already has over 250 000 downloads.

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About Juhani

Check out Wolt and order your food