The Startup Story of Touko App

Kuva
Touko App
Martti Mäkimattila (Business Mill) and Kari Hautamäki (Touko App)
Kari Hautamäki – CEO and co-founder of Touko App desired to enable all startups equal attention and growth opportunities by investors. That led to development of Touko, application that has recently been launched for Androids and iOS devices. Today, Touko as one of the first professional “swiping apps” provides startup companies, investors and job hunters the possibility to connect via mobile phone.

The idea of Touko was born after a long chain of reactions that took place in early 2018 when I was thinking about the topic for my master thesis. I got a few great ideas as well for the thesis as well for a business. One of them actually led to founding our company and later to an invitation to Slush Helsinki to pitch the idea for a larger audience.

During Slush though, I noticed that there was a lot of newly founded startups that was really struggling to get their first-round funding, not because of the ideas would have been particularly bad or unscalable, but simply because they were such in an early stage and the companies with some revenue coming in already got the most attention from investors. That led me thinking that I’d like to solve this problem for all the entrepreneurs out there − what kind of a platform and service could give all the entrepreneurs and startups the same opportunities and visibility in the eyes of investors, no matter how big or small they are at the time.

Touko’s philosophy is to bring all like-minded doers, innovators and investors together under one application

While talking about entrepreneurship, usually one needs a team or resources, and often both, to get innovations from the drawing board to the shelves of stores or the phones of consumers. That's why Touko was invented. The mobile solution allows you to find and form teams and contact the perfect investors to make your innovation into an actual product.

We've been doing quite well while developing Touko, to be honest, and managed to avoid any major setbacks. Touko also managed to raise small funds from Business Finland and got invited by the Indian ambassador in their Helsinki based embassy. Really happy about our intern Alejandra as well, who actually came to Finland all the way from Honduras and Italy where she's doing her master’s in marketing. She’s truly amazing in marketing in four different languages and there is no doubt that her expertise and skills wouldn't give Touko that extra groove for Touko’s further growth.

Also, I would like to thank the Manager of Business Mill Accelerator Martti Mäkimattila. During the process of developing Touko, we have met a few times in really inspirational brainstorming sessions. Especially Martti’s professional experience from the US combined with his Ph.D. background from engineering has given me plenty to think and re-consider from a Scandinavian paramedic point of view.

The developing of Touko will continue

Touko App is now available on Google Play Store and iOS AppStore. Besides, we’re soon adding a couple of new features on Touko, like video pitching and location-based matching.

 

More information about Touko:

Toukoapp.com

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Text and photo: Krista Tuomi

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