The few thousand euros that he got when he was fired and his wifes maternity leave salary covered his family for the first six months until he was able to pay himself a salary from the company.

Luckily, Janne received some help in the beginning

A friend and former colleague of Jannes, Petteri Koponen had a neighbour, Thomas Enholm, that had an ad agency in need of some web developers. Petteri introduced Janne to Thomas after which the three quickly decided to create a company of its own instead of having two guys at the corner of the ad agency.

The first three months Exove worked with the ad-agency clients after which more and more customers started rolling in and within a half a year the company was self sustaining. Among the first customers were Jaiku, Blyk and Asuntoverkko. Janne explains that the first employees did a great job and satisfied the customers. Those customers recommended Exove further to other companies which also became customers. The employees brought in some friends to work at the company and so a cycle of growth started. At the end of 2010 Exove was thirty persons strong, and in October 2011 the company had grown to a 47 person company and the growth only seems to be accelerating.

But why didn't Janne seek any funding for his company?

"Having a kid, having a wife, having some loan all the heroes become cowards. So I decided to take the easier way and build a consulting company. Looking back at it I can say that I am satisfied with the end result, and I don't see why I should have done it any other way." Janne explains.

Funding could have helped the company to go international earlier, but other than that Janne thinks that the company would have been growing the costs too fast if it had too much money to burn.

The biggest cost for Exove is the salaries. Their offices are not too fancy, they've sticked to the systems that they know and they try not to open any new cost points. "It's easier to save the money beforehand than later when you are running out of money."

Through being cautious when creating costs Exove has been able to grow through the company's own cash-flow without raising any funding.

Looking back Janne wishes that he would have known a few things when he started Exove.

Prepare more and think more about the things that are outside of your comfort zone. Janne was comfortable with doing the technical things (building applications and websites) and he wishes that he would have known more about accounting, sales marketing and the legal aspects of building a company.

It was easy to just sit behind a desk and do the coding because that was where the money came from. But more networking and more sales could have helped in ensuring that they had tasks for the next months. So Janne would have liked to know that more effort needs to be put into building the base for the growth.

Jannes advice for entrepreneurs

Having built Exove into what it is today Janne has learned a lot. To those who want to start a company Janne would say that they should just get going with it. You don't know if you can pull it off before you do it. Failing to do it will also give you allot of experience, so you will learn a big number of things in a short time. And that is the whole point, to keep on learning and improving yourself.

Learn from your mistakes, learn from mistakes of others - but also learn from the success of others. However, don't try to mimic anybody else. You are you, and nobody else.

In building a consulting type company like Exove you can manage to do so without funding. But if you are building a service or product business where the money doesn't flow immediately you might need some back-up funding. You can either raise funding or then you can do some consulting. Work harder, work smarter and you will be fine. But you will never amount to anything if you don't get started. So start your business and adjust just as you go.

Janne on building the perfect team

You have your own strengths and you should believe in those. But you also have your own weaknesses and you need to get help with them. For example, by hiring someone to cover them. At the end of the day you cannot change yourself, but if you get people to "patch you up" you have a great start to build a winning team.

When building your team, hire only people you like working with. With your team in place you need to be proud of what you can do and just sell, people will buy. Janne likes the sales mantra of Continuent where Dale Royal, head of sales, said "Pick up the phone, call the customers, they will buy."

Having a team requires leadership

Janne says that he likes to "lead among the people". You need to understand the needs of your team and where they want to develop and you cannot truly understand them if your background is completely different. In Exoves case Janne has done most of the work that the team is doing, so he understands them. At the end the most important thing is getting the team to want to work with you because you are you. The people should follow you because you are a good guy and you know where to go. Leading any other way will only be short-sighted.

Key points to learn from Janne and Exove:

1. You don't necessarily have to raise funding to build a growth company.
2. Believe in your strengths.
3. Hire people to cover your weaknesses
4. Don't try to be anyone else.
5. Lead by having a direction and generally being the good guy among your workers.

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