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Clarity

Sampo Parkkinen

Helsinki, Finland

Serial Entrepreneur & Angel investor. CEO and founder @ Revieve. General Partner @ LandInChicago. Founder and COO @ RapidBlue Solutions (acquired by ShopperTrak in 2013). Mentor @ Techstars, Impact Engine & Healthbox. I've built, scaled and operated multiple technology businesses through which I've executed both direct and partnership-driven go-to-market models with successes and failures. I've secured multiple rounds of VC-funding ($1m+) both for my own businesses as well as participated in helping companies I've invested in. Realized high multiple investor returns (9x+). Product-focused. I've filed and retained significant IPR both in the US and Europe.

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Entrepreneurship Customer Acquisition Digital Marketing Start-ups Product Management Marketing Strategy Product Development Business Strategy Analytics Internet Entrepreneur

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Retail Market Knowledge

I've been involved in the retail segment for 8+ years selling technology to retailers as an operator of a startup as well as leading product development for retail technology products for a large corporation. I understand the thought process of retail executives and management and their considerations for evaluating new products and offerings. I can help you understand the retail market and the retailer mindset in order to build products for retailers that scale and generate revenue.

B2B Marketing and Sales

I've successfully lead two startups from inception to beyond product/market fit in the B2B enterprise sales space using a combination of direct as well as channel partner-based sales and marketing strategies. I've brought completely new products to market generating >$10m or recurring revenue. Through these companies, I've hired high-performing sales teams and can help you in getting your product to market, go-to-market strategy or in making hiring decisions for B2B-sales and marketing personnel relevant for the stage of your company's development.

Product & User Experience

I've pioneered several product categories as a founder and operator globally including retail-analytics products, subscription e-commerce services and SaaS-platforms as well as helped various startups build their products through mentoring at Techstars, Impact Engine, Healthbox and other accelerator programs. Products I've built have generated 5x+ annual revenue growth and created $100m+ enterprise value.

Raising Venture Capital

As an operator and founder of startups, I've raised multiple VC-investment rounds from European as well as US venture investors. I've also contributed a 9x+ return on that capital through M&A transactions. I can help you position your offering to an investor as well as help you understand the investor mindset and thought process investors go through when evaluating you during your pitch.

Crafting the Ideal Pitch

I've spoken as a guest speaker in numerous growth company events including Slush, Retail Business Technology Expo and Commerce Expo among others as well as pitched on-stage in front of hundreds of venture capital and angel investors with both success and failure. I can help you highlight areas of your pitch that you need to improve on as well as ensure that your pitch tells a credible story both to investors and customers.

Answers 23
Reviews 0

Answers

Sampo Parkkinen answered

Would an E-commerce platform to sell all different kinds of accessories be successful?

This is something you should ask your prospective customers. You should try and figure out what the problem is that you are solving for them in order to start understanding whether your idea has any merit whatsoever.

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Entrepreneurship

Social Entrepreneurship

eCommerce

Sampo Parkkinen answered

What are the best ways to generate traffic or ways to reach to the customers you are looking for as a startup?

Depending on what your startup / website is offering, you should focus on different channels for customer acquisition.
As Dan suggests, you can usually categorize the different customer acquisition channels into paid vs. non-paid (meaning you're not directly paying to acquire traffic, not that the traffic comes without you having to spend time and money on getting it). Customer acquisition is the biggest problem startups face by far. Many channels are awfully noisy. Which channel makes sense for you depends entirely on what your startup does and where your audience resides and spends their time.

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Marketing Strategy

Online Marketing

Early-stage Startups

Sampo Parkkinen answered

How did you get your first bunch of members in a co-working space?

Co-working spaces are a dime-a-dozen these days. There's no shortage of co-working spaces. Without knowing exactly what sets yours apart from all the rest my only assumption is that the product your providing (co-working space) isn't good enough to convert. On the other hand the issue can be with your pricing as well, not only level but also contract duration etc. Try really hard to think about why a company should choose you as opposed to the numerous other alternatives.

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Business Development

Coworking

Marketing Strategy

Sampo Parkkinen answered

How can I successfully pitch an app idea for the entertainment industry to investors?

On top of starting to test, you should also focus. Rather than trying to solve all five problems you've highlighted, talk to your prospective customers and figure out which one of those problems is causing them the most pain. Then focus on that and solve that problem really, really well. Superficial validation "sounds like a good idea" is no validation at all.

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New Product Validation

Ideation

Music Industry

Sampo Parkkinen answered

If I cannot find a co-founder. Is it okay to pay professionals to help take my start-up to the next level?

You can obviously outsource the technical development of your product / MVP. However beware that often this puts a glass ceiling on your company since no one cares enough for quality, scalability etc which become important if your startup is to take off. On the other hand, you're implying that the team in question would take your startup to Series A. That is a very different value proposition. If they are saying that they will take the company to Series A, I would be very skeptical since getting to a Series A round implies reaching some level of product/market fit and having a sound business model and therefore is a significantly wider proposition than simply building the technical implementation of your product.

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Start-ups

Investments

Accelerators

Sampo Parkkinen answered

How can an Eastern Europe start-up target the Western World?

The origin of the startup rarely matters unless you make it a point / problem for yourself. Asking the correct questions does. If you ask simple yes/no questions from your prospective customers, you will always get misleading responses. E.g. if you ask me whether I value quality, I will say yes. However, there might be 1000 other things I value more than quality or that I would be willing to pay more for than quality. So even though I value quality, it doesn't mean I will pay for a product that provides me with that if it lacks the 1000 other things Im willing to pay for.

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Start-ups

Open Minded

Eastern Europe

Sampo Parkkinen answered

I am being allotted some equity in a startup. What can be some reasonable clauses which can help me force buy-back or impose selling preference later?

First of all, usually funding rounds are NOT used to pay back previous investors but rather insert cash into a growing company in order for that company to reach new scale. If you're accepting equity as part of your compensation, you're also accepting the risk that this equity can be worthless or potentially very valuable. The only way you will get liquidity from this equity is through an acquisition of the company where your shares are sold or by selling your private company shares to another individual prior to such liquidity event. There's no guarantee you can sell your equity or that it will be worth a set amount.

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Entrepreneurship

Private Equity

Equities

Sampo Parkkinen answered

What is the valuation of my social sports mobile app startup?

Early stage valuations are never scientific. What I would say however is that its increasingly challenging to get outside capital (apart from fff-funding, Friends, Fools and Family) for any concept, idea or development-stage idea. An early indication of promise and ability to execute on behalf of the entrepreneur is the ability to put out an MVP or a first phase product onto the market with little or no outside funding. This brings back to the valuation. For a pure idea-stage company with no product on the market and therefore no metrics, I would be shocked if a pre-money valuation would exceed $500k. If you already have an MVP on the market, have been able to demonstrate traction etc, then those things tend to influence your valuation. As does obviously the local availability of capital. For any pre-product/market fit startup however, an early-stage valuation rarely exceeds $4m. Another option to "postpone" the valuation discussion is to take in the capital as a convertible note with a cap. The cap should be something you believe you can exceed as the valuation for the next round of funding.

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Startup Consulting

Valuation

Mobile applications

Sampo Parkkinen answered

What are some key activities you should be doing during the launch week of a new startup?

This depends entirely on who you're launching to and what. If you're launching a consumer service, I'd focus on getting exposure for your launch and making sure the product works for all users who try it. There might be other elements to this depending on what the product is. One thing I would definitely do is to learn from your first users, have conversations with them and understand why they decided to try your product and what they think of it.

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Startups

Product launch

Entrepreneurship

Sampo Parkkinen answered

How can I validate my product idea in the most cost efficient way possible?

The best way to validate your product idea is to talk to your customers / users of your product. Don't pitch them your product directly, but rather try to highlight if the problem your product is solving is in fact perceived a problem by your users and what is that problem causing them currently. This will help you figure out if the problem is worth solving and if customers would be willing to pay to solve the problem. So don't start testing an idea, start with finding the problem.

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Ideas Development

New Product Validation

New Product Development

Sampo Parkkinen answered

What process should I take to acquire customers?

If only it we're as easy as someone telling you exactly what to do and voilá, the customers would just appear. In reality very few startups actually fail because they can't put together a decent product and very many fail because no one ever hears that they exist. There are a great variety of different customer acquisition channels you can try. If you get one channel to work, you already have a good business. If you get more than one to work, you have a fantastic business. I'd recommend reading online about customer acquisition channels.

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Sales Process

Sales

Lead Generation

Reviews

Member since April 2016