Me, smiling in a Japanese forest temple somewhere in Kyōto, 2018 :)
Santeri Posio
Discovering, designing and developing products
Me, smiling in a Japanese forest temple somewhere in Kyōto, 2018 :)
My background
In 1994, a month before Kurt Cobain died, I was born. I've lived my life all over Finland, experiencing different environments and meeting different people from the start. In my life there have been two constant elements: 'change' and 'creation'.
I was four years old when I sat in front of the family computer. I started to teach myself digital drawing, animation (RIP Flash), how to create a website, how to use Adobe's tools for my projects, I even created, hosted and admined a fansite with a phpBB-forum for the Finnish Dragonball- fans when I was in the 6th grade.
I've also worked blue collar and manual labour jobs from a young age, whether it'd be in the family farm or a summer job as a removalist. Applying the work ethic I learned doing bodily work to the stuff I was passionate about really clarified the path I wanted to take in life. For me, creating things with a computer as the weapon of my choice was so natural that when it was time to enroll for University I already knew where to apply. In 2013, I started studying Information Processing Sciences in University of Oulu (home of IRC!). Alongside my studies I did freelancing as a graphic designer to make some extra coin.
In 2016 I started working in OP Lab - R&D-unit of the biggest financial group in Finland.
One from the archives: "Snowman", 2005
My career in OP Lab
I started my career in OP Lab by pitching them a businesss idea. I had been working as a freelancer alongside my studies and the available solutions to enable that didn't quite please me back then. The idea that I pitched in 2016 was that OP should create a service that gives freelancers (or - "light entreprenuers") tools and a platform to run their business to gain a new clientele from an emerging market. The goal was to get them to create the service for me, not to land a job.
A few years later, OP Kevytyrittäjä is launched and proves itself to be a massively successful venture.
Although OP Lab is an R&D-unit, during my time there we operated with an internal startup accelerator model. In practice this meant that although all projects created in OP Lab were more or less related to OP's core business, our project portfolio had a ton of variety in it.
Some projects I worked on include:
A startup sidehustle
Sometimes, ideas are good enough to pursue on your own. This was the case with Heila. Heila is a dating app designed to take the legwork out of online dating and cut off the time spent from an online match to a real world date. After exploring the business potential and getting some initial customer validation for the project we made things official and set up a company around the idea. Our team has world-class talent working with modern technologies like Elixir and React Native.
Heila is currently in development and we're open to the idea of external funding.
Giving back to the community
I have had the honor to give back to the community that has given so much to me. I have never declined an offer to help out a student in need or share my insights with an academic community.
Get in touch
Currently employed. Sorry recruiters :(
You can reach me through email or a
phone call. If that's not your thing, I'm also reachable through Twitter and Telegram with the handle @olenposio.
All rights reserved.
Shoutout to HTML5UP for the design, it was a breeze to make it work for me.
Shoutout to HTML5UP for the design, it was a breeze to make it work for me.