Sesame Summit 2026 – application open

How Finnish startup Taito.ai went full circle at Slush

For Finnish startup Taito.ai, it all started at Slush 2023 when entrepreneur Kristo Ovaska told his former teammate Juho Eräste that he was thinking of starting a company focusing on employee performance management, a pain point they had experienced at their previous company, Smartly.io. “Let’s do it,” was the conclusion. During the event, Ovaska also caught up with Accel partner Sonali de Rycker — more on this later.

Fast forward 365 days and Ovaska was back at Slush, this time on stage, being interviewed about his first year as Taito.ai’s founder — and what a year.

On the first day of Slush, Taito.ai announced that it had raised a €2.5 million seed funding round led by Accel — more precisely, by de Rycker, who Ovaska said regretted not investing in Smartly. Presumably, these feelings only grew when Providence Equity Partners acquired a majority stake of the adtech startup for €200 million in 2019.

However, Accel previously made a very successful investment into a Finnish company: Supercell whose CEO Ilkka Paananen now invested in Taito’s seed round alongside Wolt CEO and former Slush CEO Miki Kuusi, as well as other founders such as Eléonore Crespo (Pigment) and Robert Gentz (Zalando).

Becoming Accel’s second investment in Finland means Taito.ai has big shoes to fill, but de Rycker said in a statement that she and her team were “inspired by Kristo’s strong track record of building enduring, valuable businesses and his motivation to change the status quo given his first-hand experience in leading large teams.“

Improving employee performance management with AI

Eräste and Ovaska both share the motivation to improve employee performance management, but might not have teamed up if it weren’t for that chance meeting at Slush 2023 after losing touch for a couple of years. This was “true Slush magic happening,” Ovaska said. They were soon joined by their former Smartly pal Mikko Kivelä, who became Taito’s third co-founder and its chief product officer.

Through customer interviews, the trio soon found out that many other companies experienced the pain point that they had as Smartly was scaling. “Taito.ai’s platform is one we wish we’d had at Smartly.io — a scalable, AI-powered solution that enables continuous feedback and coaching,” Ovaska said in a statement.

Taito, whose name translates to “skill” in Finnish, is now in close beta with clients including Supermetrics, another Finnish rising star, and plans a public launch in 2025.

Watch Taito.ai CEO Kristo Ovaska interviewed on the Builder Stage at Slush 2024 on his first 365 days as a founder by none other than Slush CEO Aino Bergius:

YouTube player

you might also like

blank
Events 19 hours ago

Last week, I spent three days at Bits and Pretzels in Munich — a startup-focused event with a distinctly Bavarian flavor. Think Oktoberfest meets startup conference, complete with dirndls, lederhosen, and more beer than you might expect. As someone building an AI-powered event platform, I went in with a specific mission: Observe how startups actually market themselves at events. Here’s what I discovered: GoodBytz: The power of good demos What they did: Robotics startup GoodBytz set up a booth where its robots prepared kaiserschmarrn (a traditional German dessert) all day long. Why it worked: Nothing beats seeing a product in action. While other booths had brochures and demos, GoodBytz’s robots were actually cooking. The smell, the movement and the end result stirred together an experience that people will remember and talk about. The lesson: If you have a physical product, show it in action. The old writing adage generalizes well: Show, don’t tell.  Let people see, hear and touch the product. WeRoad: The bathroom hack What they did: Posted “Missing Investor” flyers in bathroom stalls with QR codes pointing to their website. Why it worked: Pure genius. Every startup at the event was looking for investors, but the “Missing Investor” headline, while a bit on the nose, proved irresistible. Plus, bathroom stalls are one of the few places where people have 30 seconds to actually read something. The lesson: Think about where your target audience’s attention will remain undivided. Sometimes, the most effective marketing leverages the most unexpected places. Emqopter: Visual impact matters What they did: Designed a bright orange booth that displayed their drone prominently. Why it worked: In a sea of grey, white, beige and brown, Emqopter’s bright orange booth was impossible to overlook. The drone was real, too, and proved a real conversation starter. The lesson: Your booth is competing with hundreds of others. Make it visually distinctive and ensure your product is the hero. Quests: Community building using the product What they did: Created a busy, branded booth with accessories (toy car, traffic cones, a bulletin board) and used their anti-loneliness app to build communities among founders at the event. Why it worked: Quests used their product to solve a real problem right at the event, and the busy booth design generated energy and curiosity. The lesson: Use your product to solve a problem at the event — if it’s possible, of course. Demonstrate your value in real time. Dyno: Event-themed marketing What they did: Distributed branded electrolyte packs with the tagline “Your hangover ends. Your pension lasts – with Dyno.” Why it worked: Dyno aligned its messaging perfectly with the Oktoberfest theme. Every attendee was thinking about beer and hangovers, so Dyno’s goodies were quite relevant. The tagline was clever, memorable, and directly addressed a pain point most people at the event might have to deal with later. The lesson: Tailor your marketing to the event’s theme and culture. The more you tie your messaging and product to the context, the more memorable you become. So, what did I learn? Event marketing is about more than just showing up and setting up a booth; you have to understand your audience and create experiences that people will remember. Here’s what really struck me: most startups and even big companies don’t know how to leverage events properly. They book the booth, show up and hope for the best; maybe they bring some branded pens and a pop-up banner. Then they’ll go back home and wonder why they spent €5,000 in exchange for 50 business cards that never convert. The startups that stood out at Bits and Pretzels understand something fundamental: event ROI isn’t about booth size or location; it’s about strategy, creativity and planning. None of the startups above improvised on-site, or planned something the night before the event in their hotel rooms. They laid everything out 4-6 weeks before the event. A solid pre-event strategy is what separates successful event marketing from expensive booth rental.  But what matters most for early-stage startups is that you don’t need a massive budget to stand out. WeRoad’s bathroom stall hack probably cost €50 to print the flyers. A standard booth package at Bits and Pretzels would go for €3,000 to €5,500. The ROI difference is staggering when you compare the cost per meaningful conversation. That’s the difference between simply spending money and investing smartly. Building Sesamers has taught me that helping startups find the right events is only half the equation. The other half is helping them understand how to maximize ROI once they’re there. Good props aren’t a marketing expense; they’re opportunities to meet customers, investors and partners, and strike up engaging conversations.

blank
New Materials 2 days ago

Lios Group, the Irish startup behind SoundBounce, was a winner of JEC Composites Startup Booster 2018, and has been making significant strides since taking home the award.

blank
New Materials 1 week ago

Tree Composites aims to accelerate the energy transition with innovative composite joints.

Subscribe to
our Newsletter!

Stay at the forefront with our curated guide to the best upcoming Tech events.