With Reverse Pitching right around the corner, we talk with Tieto, the largest IT services company in the Nordics that provides services to both the public and private sector, to get a preview of what they’re looking for. In recent months Finland’s entrepreneurs have been paying more attention to the consulting company after the news that Taneli Tikka, popular Finnish serial entrepreneur with positions including CEO of IRC-gallery, COO and owner of Dopplr, and founder and chairman of a Chinese TLD Registry, has joined the company to focus on Tieto’s internal growth plans focusing on the industrial internet.
Tieto hasn’t just made one key hire, they’re putting solid money behind their mindset. For instance the company has increased their funding into development costs from €40 million in 2013 to €50 million in 2014. Of that latest sum more than 40%, or about €20 million has gone into their internal growth bets focusing e.g. on the Industrial Internet and Customer Experience Management which, if you could compare to an independent startup, would come up to roughly the same size as a Silicon Valley A round.
With this increased funding Tieto’s crew is looking to bring outside talent into the company to solve problems that they see on the horizion. They plan to bring in talent by acquahiring teams and by finding parters especially in the hardware, devices, and sensors area.
Tieto is additionally looking to get a better handle on their data by finding people in the Data Science area – everything from a single scientist or whole teams to work with, or by finding startups that are doing analysis, visualization, or other tools.
Finally a big need for Tieto is to gather startups deep inside industrial automation to support their Industrial Internet plans.
If you or anyone you know looks like they could be a match for Tieto, then the easiest way to get in touch with them is at our Reverse Pitching event taking place in Helsinki on October 27th from 12:00 to 17:00 where we bring together large corporations and startups so we can help increase the speed of partnerships, acquisitions, and customers – things that push our startup scene forward.
