Tomi Kaukinen (host) [00:00:00] This podcast is brought to you by Allies. Allies, it's all about bringing growth to the software services industry. It's a platform where hundreds of companies grow together by exchanging talent projects and best practices. In this podcast, we will bring you the stories of the most successful companies and people in the business. We cover topics from sales, marketing, H.R. and culture to give you ideas for future growth. Hi, and welcome to Allies podcast. I'm Tomi Kaukinen, I'm your host. And today we have a very special guest. We have Mikael Nylund from Gofore with me. Hello. How are you doing?

Mikael Nylund (CE0 at Gofore) [00:00:35] I'm good, Tomi. Thanks! Thanks for having me!

Tomi [00:00:38] You just drink your coffee just in like a big sweep.

Mikael [00:00:42] Yeah, I did. Yeah, but we needed to start at 10:30, so.

Tomi [00:00:45] I'm going to drink a bit.

Mikael [00:00:47] Go ahead.

Tomi [00:00:49] So welcome to Allies podcast.

Mikael [00:00:51] Thank you.

Tomi [00:00:52] And today we're going to talk a bit about your story from going from a small or small, mid-sized, maybe company to a stock listed thousand people company. And the transition along the way from becoming from going from software a guy to a CEO.

Mikael [00:01:10] Yeah.

Tomi [00:01:10] It's very interesting.

Mikael [00:01:11] It is. Yeah.

Tomi [00:01:13] So let's start with your background a bit. How did you end up in the software industry to start with?

Mikael [00:01:19] I've been very like entrepreneurial. all my life. So? So I started as an entrepreneur already in high school basically. And very soon we made a couple of friends we started to work with with IT software, basically. So so it's been a thing for me since since I was a child, interested in computers, interested in software. I have been doing quite a few years of of like software development myself. I'm not really that good at it, though. So that meant that I went from from being that that guy who writes the software to being the guy that that, you know, engages the customer and whatever it's called, project management or specifications and so forth. But yeah, it's been like that from the very beginning. So I guess it's like.

Tomi [00:02:08] What was your first computer?

Mikael [00:02:11] It was a Commodore 64.

Tomi [00:02:12] Yes! I was, I'm a seventies guy. I'm born in 79. So my dad bought me a VIC-20.

Mikael [00:02:20] Oh, really?

Tomi [00:02:21] I had that. First.

Mikael [00:02:22] My friend had one of those. So that's where we started.

Tomi [00:02:24] Very good. Yeah, exactly. And then you went to, you go to C-64. What was the next one after that?

Mikael [00:02:32] It was it was a PC after that. So, so I went directly from that to say.

Tomi [00:02:36] No atari?

Mikael [00:02:36] No, no, no.

Tomi [00:02:40] Damn. So it was 2-86, 3-86?

Mikael [00:02:43] I think it was a 0-86 one of the early IBM computers. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Tomi [00:02:51] Oh, Jesus. I remember those. But my, my experience in coding was I read this Microbitti like paper or magazine, and there was this 600 line code where there was a bouncing graffiti wall. This was for Amiga 500. And I was like, Yeah! And then I, then I did it for several hours and then it didn't work. And I was like, What's wrong? So probably they made a mistake in the printed version. That was the end of my my software career.

Mikael [00:03:21] Yeah, I've done that too. But but the debugging part is then it's not maybe that interesting to go true to the printed part and compare it with your screen.

Tomi [00:03:32] No, it was horrible.

Mikael [00:03:32] Yeah. Not the thing that maybe got people into into coding. I don't know, but.

Tomi [00:03:37] Yeah.

Mikael [00:03:37] Yeah.

Tomi [00:03:38] Okay. So, so what kind of companies did you have, by the way?

Mikael [00:03:42] Small companies are working in like import business for a while and, and had had a lot of small business with with my friend and then we had a, an IT consultancy basically. That's what I've been doing since then for, for 25 years now, I guess 25 plus years now. I guess there are people that wanted us to help them that became customers and we wanted to do that. So yeah.

Tomi [00:04:10] So. Well then it means you, you experienced the Internet boom in the in the early 2000.

Mikael [00:04:16] Yeah, yeah I did to some extent. Yeah. But I've been building websites too, so not my thing.

Tomi [00:04:23] That was a hard currency back then.

Mikael [00:04:25] Yeah but but, did go through that too. Yeah.

Tomi [00:04:29] Can you seen that. My only experience from that is I, I was still in school and I bought, everybody was on this hype of buying shares of these Swedish companies like. So I bought e-con media lab, you know, this Swedish company. I was like, Wow! And then I lost everything.

Mikael [00:04:45] Sad, but maybe you learnt something.

Tomi [00:04:47] Yeah! No stocks for me.

Mikael [00:04:51] Later we had also a company and into web hosting business so so I've seen some of that to a building building like small data centres and and that became a thing. So that was interesting too. But most have been into building custom built software for for customers in various industries.

Tomi [00:05:08] And what led you to Gofore in 2010?

Mikael [00:05:11] Ah, In 2010, we had sold five years earlier, one of our businesses I was working for, one of the mid-sized Finnish IT service providers, and basically it was, uh, let's say that the challenges were not really the kind of challenges I was interested in back then, and I knew the guys had to Gofore. I knew these are guys that are ambitious, they are fun to work with. They have good ideas. So. Basically that was that that that was the idea and I haven't regretted it. It's been 12 years almost now. It's actually 12 years now. At the end of this month. So so so a long, long period. But it's been really interesting and it's Gofore has become like the project for me in my life.

Tomi [00:06:02] Yeah. And I mean as I mentioned earlier here when you started in 2010, we're talking about for first of all, the world was a different place in terms of, well, we didn't have I don't think we even had Instagram. We didn't have WhatsApp. Like it was a different time, but the company was also different. You had like 100 people.

Mikael [00:06:24] Actually 20 plus people, very different from now. Yeah, I think in 2010, we and I might remember not right. But I think our net sales was like 2 million in that year.

Tomi [00:06:40] And now?

Mikael [00:06:41] Well now, for the last 12 months it's 131 plus million. So a bit different. Yeah.

Tomi [00:06:49] A bit different.

Mikael [00:06:49] Yeah.

Tomi [00:06:50] Yeah, it's quite good, right. So you started as, what did you do when you started in Gofore?

Mikael [00:06:55] I have done my fair bit of like customer work consultancy work also at Gofore. So that's what I started with. I actually brought up one of one of our longstanding customers when I came to the company and work with that. And that has always been pretty important for me. I like to understand what we do and and like to understand what our customers do. And that's why I liked doing customer work so much. What I then started doing on the side or whichever way you want to see it. But, but basically my role has been then to, to build like new opportunities, new business opportunities to start new business like internal startup kind of things inside Gofore So, so that's what I've been doing in a couple of, of different projects that we've had going from a purely software development consultancy into more of a like advisory consultancy, digital transformation advisory consultancy. Those have been the projects that I've been involved in.

Tomi [00:07:58] But you made quite the journey, to be honest, starting with 20 plus people and now you're thousand plus.

Mikael [00:08:03] Yeah.

Tomi [00:08:06] Thousand plus that's quite quick. That's like 100 per year for ten years.

Mikael [00:08:10] Yeah. Although it hasn't been 100 per year, it has been been like more of a 30 plus percent growth every year or so. So yeah. So a bit of a hockey stick.

Tomi [00:08:22] Yeah!

Mikael [00:08:22] Type of scenario there of course. But but yeah, that's what makes it so interesting I guess. New challenges all the time. And then also using the things that you've learned from from the earlier parts of the career to like understand what are the strengths of our company, why we are good, and then trying to to keep up with learning, learning all the new things that come with with size and come with responsibility, come with the bigger impact we have in the world and so forth.

Tomi [00:08:56] So go to 2010 and we fast forward to 2017. You become the CEO.

Mikael [00:09:03] 2017 was the year that we IPO'd. We went from being a private company.

Tomi [00:09:10] Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. 2019 was great.

Mikael [00:09:12] Yeah! So 2017 was a really, really big year for us as a company, going from from a company being basically owned by a few key personnel and the founders which are still there, they are with us at this day. And IPO'd, of course, a huge like project to huge change for us. Something that was a bit scary, too. But but I think they've done done well there 2017 was by the way, also the year that we did two other big things. We made our first company acquisition. We bought a company called Leading. Prior to that, that was not something that we had like thought of that that we could do. But since then it's become a big part of what Gofore growth strategy that that we have acquired like basically one company a year or and the other thing or the third thing in 2017 was that we were chosen as that a great place to work, number one in Finland.

Tomi [00:10:10] Congratulations!

Mikael [00:10:12] Thank you. It's been a while now, but yeah, we still remember it fondly. And and number two, in Europe, something that we have that was very central to our strategy from 2010 or so to become this company that that people want to work for. And that was something that's really big for us.

Tomi [00:10:32] And now we're going to fast for about two more years to 2019. Okay. You are being proposed being a CEO. What's your first thought?

Mikael [00:10:44] To be honest, the first thought was what? Me? CEO? Of course, we had a long period being like a like a founder led company. So the idea of changing that into something else was maybe the the big thing that that instantly, like I was thinking about and felt in the end, in the moment, like a very big change.

Tomi [00:11:12] Yeah.

Mikael [00:11:13] I think it's been being good for Gofore as a company though. Looking back at it now, I hope many people agree with me and it's been a really important part in like Gofore growing up to be a grown up company to be at be like not reliant on us on a single person not reliant on something that is like outside of the company. So, so it's been a really good, good thing. But yeah, the first reaction was, was kind of a shock. I've never been actually that kind of person that that thinks about my career in terms of what will I become next and, and what are the titles and so forth that but of course, I knew that I know this company. I know what this company is built on, what kind of like values, what kind of strengths and so forth. So. So in that sense, it I thought it might be a good choice.

Tomi [00:12:10] Was there any, was there any thinking about, you know, getting in an external CEO or taking it from inside? Do you know?

Mikael [00:12:21] I do know some of the discussions there and yeah, we went through the different options there and I think we pretty quickly settled on the idea that if we have somebody coming from the inside, that is something that will more play to the strengths of this company. We had no crisis. We had no like problems in the company that needed to be addressed or like have something from the outside changing things. So, so yeah, pretty quickly I think that the board and everybody was, um, was on board with the idea that it will come from the inside.

Tomi [00:12:57] Yeah. What do you think are the pros and cons if you just generally think about getting external CEOs? And I know this is very situation specific as well, of course, but your like first thoughts, do you would you prefer getting it from inside or?

Mikael [00:13:12] It depends on the company situation, of course. If you have a situation where you value continuity, value the strengths that the company is built on, then sure, if you have the ability to to grow people from inside the company, you should. That's what I think. On the other hand, if you have like driven into a dead end somehow or have problems that need to be addressed, it can be beneficial to have somebody from the outside.

Tomi [00:13:39] I totally agree. Actually. I think when it's when a when a company hits kind of a crisis, it's probably better to get an outsider to do some of the nasty decisions.

Mikael [00:13:50] Yeah. And not maybe be, having that thinking from the outside, not being like tied to the ideas that you have inside the company that very quickly become like the kind of thinking inside the company. And you can let loose about it if you bring somebody from the outside.

Tomi [00:14:11] Exactly! There are no attachments and like messy, like sticky stuff inside and yeah!

Mikael [00:14:15] Yeah.

Tomi [00:14:16] So how does it feel now after three years, CEO?

Mikael [00:14:18] Feels great. Yeah. I'm really proud of what we do at Gofore and Gofore being that the project of of my working life. It's really something that's important for me that that I can be proud of what we have done as a company, both in terms of like success in, in financial terms and growth and, and profitability and so forth. Building it, building a bigger company. But, but also what kind of company we all have become in terms of the impact we have on the world around us. We take really much pride in the positive impact. We talk about the positive impact. So, so so that's something that's for me personally is is really important and what makes me so, so proud of being CEO of this great company of this great community.

Tomi [00:15:09] Did you hesitate? How many sleepless nights did you have before? A few for sure?

Mikael [00:15:14] Yeah! Of course. It's a huge responsibility. And maybe, maybe it was for the good that you don't even, like, instantly understand the responsibility about being a CEO of a company over a thousand people. Of course, you have a huge responsibility.

Tomi [00:15:32] And a list of people.

Mikael [00:15:33] Yeah, that too. But mainly I'd say about the people working for the company of the customers. But sure, yeah. Listed. That's something that was a let's say a learning curve adjusting to the investor side of things. Very big change from from what I, what I had done then earlier at Gofore.

Tomi [00:15:57] What's been the, what would you say like main, the most difficult task of being a CEO? What would you say that is?

Mikael [00:16:06] It's about remembering that you are always there for the people. Remembering that the servant leadership and putting yourself, reminding yourself that you should always put yourself into that position. I think that that's that's I think the biggest thing. It means that for a person, for example, like me, I want sometimes things to happen very quickly. And being impatient or patient is kind of a different question there. You really, you really have to make sure that that the company, does evolve, does change all the time. It doesn't do it because you wake up in the morning having an idea. The dynamics are different, but it's even more important that the company and the organization is ready to change because otherwise I think from the learnings that we have at Gofore, growth in like this, this kind of growth wouldn't be possible.

Tomi [00:17:03] So let's talk about growth because you mentioned that it's 30% year on year recruitment growth. I know from my own companies how difficult it is in the tech sector to get the top talents. Yeah, there are always some companies that are, for example, Hyped that live on their brand. There are some. At some point everybody wanted to go to Rovio, to work, and at some point everybody wants to go to Supercell to work. And there are these sexy companies where developers want to go, Bolt was one. For, for you. How do you get this talent? Like what? How did you be able to get all this talent, attract this all this talent in this horrible, like world where it's really hard?

Mikael [00:17:52] What we try to do always is tell them what we are working on.

Tomi [00:17:57] Okay.

Mikael [00:17:57] So, so that's that's that's how we approach it. And that's where I think that the differences between companies are visible. We are.

Tomi [00:18:05] You get to work with these, these and these projects.

Mikael [00:18:08] Yeah, basically of course we can't always promise that these are the projects for, for individual recruitee, but these are the projects that Gofore has worked on. And this is the kind of impact we get from our work. And it's not for everybody, probably, but but we have seen that it's for an increasing number of people.

Tomi [00:18:29] What would you say from an employer branding point of view? What is the value, your value for an outsider? Like why would they come to Gofore? Is it only the project? What what are other components?

Mikael [00:18:42] It's not just that, but from a differentiation point of view that's really important for us. We've always been a very value, value based company and all of our management is based on our two values. First of them is that Gofore is a good workplace for everyone so, so that's something that we've had for 20 years now Gofore is of 20, this is our anniversary.

Tomi [00:19:07] Congratulations!

Mikael [00:19:08] So, so that's of course something that's very built into into the company and that's something that for the last ten years has maybe set us apart from the legacy players. Of course, we have a lot of players in the market now that that think basically the same but it's very in-built to what Gofore is and other value is that Gofore tries for our customer success. So so we have this strong customer focus also and that's where we get that the impact part also from that, that's what being a consultant that's we believe important for for most of the people that you get to work with things that have a have a like a meaning, impact.

Tomi [00:19:48] Yeah, that is actually very important when you talk about the current like the current worklife there is, you know, the great resignation, there is the quiet quitting. And and it seems that the COVID kind of even pushed these ideas a bit forward and do you notice these trends yourself in the industry? Like, are people getting like, oh, this is comfortable, I don't want to come back to the office at all and this kind of mentality.

Mikael [00:20:16] Sure, sure. And that that's something that we discuss a lot. Now, what does hybrid work in the end mean for our people? Of course, there's like the quick positives and that's for some people the quick negatives that you can see from it. But in the long run, I don't think we've yet seen all of the the effects of hybrid work and so forth. It's something that we discuss a lot, how we can approach these questions kind of as a community, as a team, always not not from a individual perspective and taking into account a lot of different viewpoints, what your teammates think about how you should work, what your customers think, how you should work, and how you yourself are comfortable with working. That's something that needs a little bit of a facilitation, and that's a discussion that we have ongoing and for sure we haven't seen like the end results.

Tomi [00:21:06] It's coming.

Mikael [00:21:06] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Probably. Yeah.

Tomi [00:21:08] We've been talking also earlier about the the software service companies basically copying each other in terms of offerings. And all of the sudden a lot of companies have the same offerings and you need to grow, so you need to offer more. But there is room for actually making a niche of yourself.

Mikael [00:21:29] Sure! Yeah!

Tomi [00:21:29] So how are you thinking around this topic?

Mikael [00:21:34] I agree completely and there are a lot of niches that the whole is made up of a lot of niches, I guess, because it's about people and and what people value, what people need. Traditional Gofore niche is one thing and that's what we are working on, on making and improving a lot. But we have moved also into into other niches and we want to as a as a group provide people with different value propositions, even different brands in terms of talent.

Tomi [00:22:05] Yeah, that's what I was thinking about because there are some companies, as I understand, creating like subsidiaries that are a little bit on the side, like Ben and Jerry's, Unilever kind of this thing exactly where they don't actually know that the other company is is some bigger one but rather niching themself as a small. Is that a strategy or pursuing as well?

Mikael [00:22:25] It is, yeah. We don't want to make it a secret or don't want to be transparent about it being part Gofore group. But but yeah, we do have that for different people with different expertize, people in different life phases in terms of what they value. Do they want the community also outside of their work times or do they valued their time outside of work? Do they need fancy offices that that allows them to have the parties and the community?

Tomi [00:22:56] Is it important with the party offices and stuff?

Mikael [00:22:59] Sure, sure. For some people it is, but not all.

Tomi [00:23:03] So do you know what what's the average age or the average mindset of the person that joins Gofore? Is it on the upper spectrum of age or is it younger ones? Is there?

Mikael [00:23:17] Well, we do employ quite a lot of or a variety of expertize. We don't just employ developers. We have, we have a strong like quality assurance capability. We have these consultancy advisory roles that the guys that produce the PowerPoints and so forth. And, and we have a change management consultancy also. So it's quite, the spectrum is broad. And that's probably something that at on the average age also is visible. It's, I think it's somewhere a little bit under 40 at the moment that the average age of a Goforean is, so so a lot of different people and that highlights the thing that we just discussed, we need to understand that needs and and what what different like segments of these potential employers, what they value and we need to have the answer to that.

Tomi [00:24:14] When you go international what happens there like, because then we have a start to get real language stuff actually going on and stuff. So how many countries are you actually working in at the moment?

Mikael [00:24:27] So we are in established in five countries, but outside of Finland and the main market we are really targeting is the German speaking European markets. So, so depends on how you, how you look at it. But yeah, we do a lot of stuff also outside of Europe for like Public sector stuff using that, the learnings that we have from the Finnish public sector and how you digitalize that and using the like open source technologies that we have in use in Finland also do to help countries also outside of Finland. But the main market here for us is that the European market and especially the German speaking market, where we are established.

Tomi [00:25:11] So when when you go to market, let's say in Germany, it's it's quite different from Finland.

Mikael [00:25:17] It is, yeah.

Tomi [00:25:19] So how do you do it? Do you go? Do you, do you acquire a local company or what's your strategy when you go to a new market like?

Mikael [00:25:29] That's something that we are, to be honest, learning. And yeah, as you say, it's different and because it's different you need to have a local presence. You need to have a local understanding. And that's of course, not something that you can yeah, you can acquire a company, but maybe that doesn't even help you in understanding what what kind of market you are really working in. So, so it's, it's been out for us quite a long process to it to establish ourself in, in the German market, get those German customers, get those local people, German people on board and, and build a team. We are yeah, we have done small company acquisition there. We are looking to like use that as then to to scale our operations there. But understanding the market is done by getting local and that's the key.

Tomi [00:26:21] Totally agree.

Mikael [00:26:22] That's the key to going to a new market.

Tomi [00:26:25] Yeah, I remember I was with my one of my start ups were going to the Spanish market and, you know, we knew it was a sports kind of software. And we settled in Madrid and, you know, we started we started basically back then just taking the Finnish copy and the Finnish branding and stuff and just just translated basically. And I remember we went to this digital agency. They're supposed to do a campaign for us, help us with understanding the local stuff. And our app was basically marketing itself as a sports bar. And then these digital Spanish digital people, they were like, Have you seen a sports bar in Spain? I was like, Oh, no, I haven't seen the sports bar. What the hell? And then we're like, Yeah, there is no sports bar in Spain. It's like, what? What, what, what? What do you mean why? Then I was like, Is this true? And they're like, Yeah, because every bar is a sports bar. It's a TV. It was it was an expensive kind of learning lesson from Spain when we went there. And, you know, you come from Finland where we have one gigabyte net at home, we have like limitless roaming. We can go wherever we want. We, nobody gives a shit about wifi. And then you go to Spain and you notice that we had this video software and we were like, it doesn't like reload and stuff. And we had to start thinking about like serious compression issues because the internet was so bad in Spain and, and they were, this was in 2015. They didn't have, you know, unlimited, they have to go buy two gigabytes of Internet and this stuff. And so we had to rethink a lot of our tech when going to that market. But in my mind, I was thinking like Europe, it's, it's fine, but it's not like you forget that the Nordics are like top, top, top.

Mikael [00:28:19] Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That if you take that from that like consumer perspective into a into a business perspective, we, for example, work with manufacturers of heavy machinery. And for for Finnish companies in that area, it's usually clear that, okay, everything is going to be connected. We are going to have 5G or whatever solutions there and software is going to play such a big part of of of what the machine is. Not every company, even when they are a little bit bigger, might be that mature in their thinking in the German market and they might not believe that everything will be connected, which is kind of an eye opener, of course, for you when you when you think it's so obvious thats what's going to happen.

Tomi [00:29:02] It isn't an edge or it competitive advantage or is it a deterrent, you're like, oh, do I want to go into this?

Mikael [00:29:10] Well, we like to think of it as a as a competitive advantage. And it, but ofcourse, we need to understand the differences there and approach the market on their terms. We can't com just do it too and say that that this is what things are in Finland, even, even though we want to use that to our advantage. But, but we want to like we need to translate that message into something that makes sense for the local market.

Tomi [00:29:35] You got to be humble for that.

Mikael [00:29:37] Yeah, exactly.

Tomi [00:29:38] Do you feel that your offering in terms of salary package, do people request more like six, seven -week holidays or is it going that way or?

Mikael [00:29:48] I think different people appreciate different things.

Tomi [00:29:52] Yeah.

Mikael [00:29:52] So, so you need to be ready to like offer them or choose what are the wars that you want to fight. So so that's I think that the main question. But there is at the same time, I think salaries is talked of more and more. And at the same time, there is a lot of discussion around the other things and what a good employer, employee relationship is about. And of course, flexibility, caring of our people. Yeah, we have a lot of issues in terms of mental health and so forth in our industry with experts that tend to overwork themselves and so forth. So, so really important issues, but you can't overlook the salary part of that, at all.

Tomi [00:30:45] But what about, what do you think about putting in the salary in the job ad? Are you pro or against.

Mikael [00:30:54] I'm I'm pro. But but at the same time, I'd like for many different people in many different phases of their career to to be interested in Gofore and contact us. So it could go also a little bit wrong if we give the like the wrong impression to people because we have so many different levels of seniority, different kinds of experience and expertize that we can offer people. So, so it, it would be hard to put that in a in a job ad.

Tomi [00:31:28] Yeah. That's it's a very divisive issue and there is like the strong against and there is this like of course you need to have it. And I'm a little bit in the middle. I'm like, I don't even know why you should put it like or at least put a fairly wide span because I think salary transparency can lead to a lot of problems also within the organization.

Mikael [00:31:50] Yeah, that's something that we have been thinking about and working for a number of years now and we believe that transparency in terms of salaries is a good thing. Of course, yeah it's not just a good thing and not just it's not an easy thing but we do publish salaries like internally, anonymously, but for our all salaries are like transparent to everybody so that you can see that what other people are in a similar role to you have in salary. So I think that's important. We also encourage people to publish their salaries with their name and with their like work history and so forth, so that we help. Maybe, maybe the junior ones especially help them to understand that what kind of parts be inside the company.

Tomi [00:32:40] Yeah, that's very nice. Actually, then they can see that. Okay, there is this background in the CV and, okay, this is what I can expect.

Mikael [00:32:46] Exactly. Yeah.

Tomi [00:32:48] Okay, nice. So should we be worried or optimistic about the future?

Mikael [00:32:55] I think we should be very optimistic.

Tomi [00:32:58] And why is that?

Mikael [00:32:59] Well the, if you want to discuss salaries and for the future, I think it's a good thing that salaries are going up and I think it's a good thing that Finnish expertize and knowledge is valued higher. Of course we are more and more in a global market and we need to see to it that Finnish expertize is competitive but, but I don't see, I don't want a future where where like Finnish expertize is valued because it's cheap. I want the future where Finnish expertize is valued because it's high level expertize and deep knowhow and that's that's what it is basically. And we should also learn to price it under that international market in that way.

Tomi [00:33:47] Where is Gofore in 2030?

Mikael [00:33:52] We usually talk about where we are in five years, so that's 2027.

Tomi [00:33:56] Yeah! A five year plan!

Mikael [00:33:57] But yeah. It's basically the same question I guess Gofore is a bigger company, much bigger company Gofore is a much more international company in 2027, Gofore is a much more impactful and like more taking part in public discussion about issues that are related to digital technology, not just that that like the technology but we believe in technology making lives better for all of the people. But that's not something that's automated and if you don't pay attention to how technology is used, and how everybody is brought to board by adopting technology. We are not automatically going to have a better society, so that's something that we aspire to be a part of the discussion and we talk about ethical digitalization. As I said earlier in the podcast.

Tomi [00:34:53] That's good branding!

Mikael [00:34:55] Yeah, it is! Yeah, sure, sure.

Tomi [00:34:57] So some kind of thought leadership on on these deep digital issues?

Mikael [00:35:02] Absolutely. Yeah.

Tomi [00:35:04] Very nice. I think my time or our time is running out. I want to thank you for coming here. Very interesting discussions, and I'm going to think about 2027 and go back to our podcast and compare with.

Mikael [00:35:20] You should. Yeah.

Tomi [00:35:22] So thank you for coming Mikael Nylund!

Mikael [00:35:25] Thank you, Tomi!

Tomi [00:35:26] Mikael Nylund, the CEO of Gofore. We could have continued much later, maybe I'll invite you back to continue but thank you so much! This was Allies podcast and we'll see you with our next guest next time. Thank you!