Jeffery:
Well just like do we like to do is jump right into things? So welcome. Thank you very much for joining us today Costa. I’ve been waiting for this call for a while because I’ve been excited to dive into all these great projects that you’re working on which is very exciting and I’m sure you get to hear this lot. But the way we like to start is if you could share a little bit about your background a little bit around um kind of where you started the things that you’ve been up to today.

And then one thing about you that no one would know.

Kustaa:
Wow. So something about my background and something that nobody knows. Um let’s I have an IT. Background so worked in uh IT. Companies in different types of sales roles. Hewlett Packard HP for a long time more than 10 years. And then uh at Microsoft and at both companies I I was doing service sales more or less. Well at Microsoft had kind of the whole account for Nokia and Innocent at the time, and Nokia, Siemens Networks or the networks business. And about, well, 10 years ago, a little bit more than 10 years ago, I started to had enough of the corporate life and wanted to do something else.

So I started to look at what I could do. And I had made some just a couple of angel investments by that time. So I thought that, okay, let’s see how the working life is with the startup companies. And uh, I did that for a year and I kind of liked it.

So here I am, 10 years after and I have maybe 30, 40 companies in my portfolio, a number of others that I’m somehow connected to, advising or mentoring or helping out in one way or another.

Jeffery:
Very exciting.

Kustaa:
And I’ve been doing that very to that nobody else knows. So this is not a complete secret, but in uh, in Finland, uh, there was a very famous uh, startup Accelerator program called Startup Sauna that was started like 2008, 2009, I guess something in that timeline.

And um, it’s now been on hold for a few years, but I’m actually the first angel investor to invest in a company that was owned at the time, but they changed the name after the first batch, but I invested in a company called Audio Draft. The company still exists. Very happy about that. It hasn’t been a big success yet, but we’re still hoping for it to be, but did my first agent investment into the first batch of that?

Jeffery:
Awesome, awesome. We’re having a little bit of internet connectivity issues, but well, it looks like we’ll be able to work our way through them. So I want to kind of go back a little bit to your tech background and then explore kind of how that’s um really enticed your angel investing. So if you go back to your Hewlett Packard and your Microsoft days on the technical side, what are the things that really stand out the most that you learned about companies? Was it because while you were in these big conglomerates that you were getting access and exposure to early-stage companies and then it was giving you kind of this framework for how you invest today, or did it just become random learning and you just don’t go into early-stage startups?

Kustaa:
So how I got started uh and kind of the impact of the technology companies. So, um uh let’s, I’ll give you a little bit longer answers. So I think because what I learned from companies like HP and Microsoft was kind of how large organizations work and that has been very useful for me in many ways, so that there are processes and there are forms to fill in and you need to give feedback and you need to receive feedback and your these ways of doing things if I put it very clearly, and that’s uh has been helpful in order to understand kind of how to work with the large companies.

So, for startups, sometimes working with a large organization is not very easy because there’s so many people you need to talk to and you don’t really know who actually makes the decision. And it could be that the real decision-makers or the budgets are sitting somewhere completely else that you’re thinking about. So, so that that I think has been very very good learning experience and of course the corporate culture, how it’s created, how it’s maintained is very important. Also to understand HP for example, fantastic example of uh of a large company that’s been successful and uh um it’s kind of like the original startup, so started like in 1938 or something in Palo Alto when there was no Silicon Valley. So that’s good to remember that those guys actually created Silicon Valley to some extent. So it’s great to go back to the roots in some sense, so happy to be kind of rooting for that type of legacy.

But then if I kind of look at how things worked in in HP, in Microsoft. So both companies are kind of technology-driven. So there’s a lot of uh new technology, new innovation, they are creating all the time. And uh that also draws uh the attention of uh other companies, usually, they are kind of small or medium-sized companies that uh kind of connect with the large companies to create some sort of a service suffering or solution. And hp had like 20 years back or actually more than 20 years ago they had this uh a function called HP bazaar that was uh like, well well it’s basically what we call coworking spaces nowadays. So it was like an open area. I think they had like five or six of them around the world. One was in Espoo in in in Finland and then they had one in Singapore and somewhere in India.

Yeah, I think shanghai and san Francisco so on. But anyway, the idea was that they opened up like their internal office space and invited uh small technology companies and larger ones also to join in, they held events, Pizza coca, cola, hackathons and so on. And the idea was to create uh buzz around kind of what HP is doing, but also to promote uh kind of all different types of technologies and see what can come out of that.

So um when you’re kind of uh involved in that type of an environment, it’s kind of easy to get excited about the technologies and find contacts and companies to collaborate with and explore.

Jeffery:
So because that gave you the exposure to almost new and exciting tech that was coming into the world, it gave you that opportunity to explore those new technologies and then implement them into the business, which gave you exposure to the world.

That startups, even though startups might not have been coined as start-ups at the time? Probably just a business, um, there was leading some cutting edge technology and you guys were able to start working with them. So in that kind of context, did you kind of feel that your structure and governance and the things that you were learning in the corporate world, as you started to work with these new companies, you started to kind of see this different style of working different aggressive types?

Maybe a little bit more open to pivot and change because they were working with you and you start to kind of learn that whole dynamic of a startup, even though it wasn’t, I can’t remember what it was called back then if it was a startup where they were just classified as um, new-age tech or something? But did you find that that type of style of work rubbed off on you?

Kustaa:
Absolutely. Because I was representing corporate life.

So that was very, very different. So I had my calendar fool even though I didn’t do anything and kind of the processes don’t work themselves, but they need the people to actually make it happen. So, uh, I think the simple answer to your large question there is, is that yes. Uh, it’s kind of what I enjoy actually a lot in my work life today is the flexibility and the possibility to impact my own schedules very heavily and, and the speed of decision making, the agility of, of decision making in a small company, you make a decision and you can change your direction in one meeting and hopefully, be successful with your decision. But the that’s that’s basically how it goes.

Jeffery:
It’s true. And I’m having so many flashbacks of this conversation of my time when I worked in big corporate, which was back in 2001, and I worked as a software engineer and help build a lot of platforms and worked in a lot of different things.

And what I remember about that is that a lot of startups would get fed into myself because people didn’t know what I did. I was just this internet thing and a lot of those companies that would come in, uh the energy that you got from them and the excitement level of them pitching you this new product, it was almost like a start-up would come with this laundry list of here’s all the things we can do and let’s do them all. And you’d be like, how do I how do I help with all this? And, you know, I remember one specific story worked in the warehouse and with working in that warehouse, they were doing an upgrade at the time to um putting in the new land system so that the remote taking system for scanning all your products. It was the name is going to elude me at this moment. But they were they were upgrading it. And they were upgrading it to pure wifi system. They were upgrading it to a docking system which was still plugged in. And I remember seeing this and thinking, man, your technology isn’t even as advanced as what’s out there, Why aren’t we using the wifi tech? And it was because big businesses needed to slowly upgrade. But we had all these companies pitching us, you need to do this and you need to do that.

And the excitement level around how fast the technology was moving really got you excited. But then in big corporate they weren’t able to handle that rapid change. They were only able to make the next leap and then the next leap because they needed it to be fully tested and make sure that there weren’t any problems.

And when you think back rightfully so is that maybe they were right that that slower process enabled them not to have dead zones, things that wouldn’t connect having handhelds that were useless. So I think that technology as fast as it runs and as fast as start-ups and the world wants to work is that sometimes you do have to have that base level to kind of protect what is your business and how it operates your thoughts?

Kustaa:
Yeah, it’s exactly as you describe it and that kind of is so if I turn it around a little bit. So when the startups grow, they become scallops and growth companies and whatever, something at certain point, they become big companies and uh those are kind of the issues that they need to tackle on the way to becoming like more mature, they need to establish the process is how they can function as a big company.

And I think these are fantastic problems to be solved or challenges to tackle as as your business growth and but it’s important to understand the stage you’re at and uh yeah, what can I say? That’s kind of a very good description, I think you gave of the situation at the time then.

Jeffery:
And I think, is it, I think it’s Malcolm Gladwell, I believe it was him and one of his books, or it was somewhere in there, but shares that, you know, the optimal size of a business is 100 people.

And once you get over that it starts to become very processed and it has to be processed in order to ensure that you’re all part of the same team and you’re all kind of driving on the same path over that starts to get a lot more uh slows things down and big corporations obviously there are hundreds of thousands of people in them. So is there a mentality anywhere that says, you know, I don’t want to grow my startup any bigger than this because I want to continue to evolve and grow or is it all the growth is always to go into being this big company and being 1000 person company.

Is that always the mandate for a startup, especially when they’re trying to integrate in and become a scale-up or move across the world.

Kustaa:
I think it depends on the company’s so not all companies are intended to be huge, 100,000 employee companies. Some companies can be very good functional companies, even though they have like 100 employees and generate maybe some tens of millions of revenue or you know, less or so.

But I think it’s, it’s about being successful in what you do. So you need to have services or products that others are interested in paying for and using. And that’s kind of the, I think the secret to the success. I, but I think it’s uh, uh, for all companies, rapid growth and reaching huge numbers, uh, it’s not the way to go. Some somehow kind of better off I think being smaller ones and they can be very profitable and good businesses though.

Jeffery:
Well, you just mentioned the keyword to that is that they can be very profitable. So do you think it’s the fear of an investor like yourself that’s going into these early companies that your mind and your growth is about growth and being 1000 person company because that puts bigger dollars into your pocket in the end as an investor. But is that kind of the mindset of every investor that’s going in thinking that they have to be a unicorn, that they have to be massive? Or do you think that there is a bit of a mindset that says, hey, you guys are great at this size, you’re making a lot of money are very profitable. Maybe this is the better way of looking at your business. Is that something that comes across your mind?

Kustaa:
I don’t think anybody says that out loud, uh, in a pitching situation. And uh, nobody, well, I look at maybe 100 slide sets per year, listen to about 100 pitches a year. And uh, that’s, that’s a very good pace for me. But uh, I have to say that, uh, I don’t recall a single presentation where somebody is proposing something less than a hockey stick of, of growth and to be honest, I don’t know how I would react.

Maybe it would be a shocking good experience to actually see a presentation where somebody is proposing a little less growth because they want to build more profitable company or they want to build a better product to be more sustainable or something like that. Actually, that might be a good idea for some themes to try out and see if they can capture the attention of the investors better that way.

Jeffery:
When I started my first company, I, I was at a, a wedding in the Dominican and I met an entrepreneur and he had been an entrepreneur for 10 years, running a larger business. And his advice to me was, you won’t know you’re a company until you’ve been a company for five years and I held that one pretty dearly because as I was building my company, I kept saying to myself, my God, I’m coming up to five years, I still don’t feel, I know what I’m doing right and I don’t know if I’m doing it perfect. So I always challenged myself and then at year five I realized and I said, oh man, I had this epiphany, I think I’m on the right track, I feel like I’m doing the right things. So maybe he was right that it needed time to mature and grow and understand what you’re selling and what you’re building. But it’s also the mindset of, am I trying to be a hockey stick or am I trying to be a global brand or business or can I just build something that’s profitable and that’s also a good thing and I wonder if there is a way that with these 100 companies that you see that if someone did take that approach and say you’re not really a scalable company, but you have some really good tech and you’re, you have a really good business model here.

You shouldn’t try to over aggressively, do this go slower because the bigger potential for you is that you could probably hit hockey stick growth in year seven or 8.

But if you go on the trajectory are going now, you’re not gonna get there, you’re going to fail. So instead of having you fail, try this method and go a little bit slower, don’t over hire and overspend but grow with your tech and grow with your customers, you’re going to be successful, but it’s going to take it 10-plus years. Do you think that that would change the mindset of the entrepreneur and think ah they don’t understand me or they don’t get me or would it actually make them think, hey, you know what? This is a long-term play and maybe I should be less aggressive and not burn my dollars and burn myself out.

Kustaa:
Um yes, I could say that I could give that type of advanced nice. Uh and in in many cases I guess it would be very appropriate to do that.

Nobody wants to waste anyone’s time and money and it’s always good to give accurate advice to somebody, but uh very often, also the entrepreneurs are very passionate about what they do. So to be honest, they don’t always listen. And if they hear the advice, it could be that they just, you know, don’t, don’t understand or they just overlook that as well, which is of course not good. But, you know, building a new venture, new companies, uh, It’s 24 times seven type of works or kind of understandable. So very often my role as an angel investor is to kind of keep the feet to the ground and try to point the direction and just gently give a push that, okay. Have you considered that? Have you considered this? And how about if we next time do things a little bit differently? So and so.

Jeffery:
Well, it’s interesting because I take back the comment where or analyze the comment where you said your first investment is still around and it’s still doing well.

It hasn’t grown to what you have expected at this point, but it doesn’t mean it won’t. So I think it’s just setting expectations either in your own mind with the companies you’re investing in or it’s the coaching that may come out and that’s why that company is still here today and that’s why the company is still growing, they may have not exited, but they have significantly grown since the time you first invested in them and they’re still here, which I think speaks volumes to the company’s you pick for the companies that you get behind is that during a long duration doesn’t mean that it’s not successful, it’s successful in their own mind, but I’m sure a little push here and there could escalate them a little bit more.

So I guess you can take it that you’re doing a great job and you’re helping these companies move along because not many can say they have startups that have lasted and still out there after five years, 10 years, even 20’s.

So I think that’s that’s pretty pretty awesome. So if we if we take care and. Uh huh. Yeah. (Inaudible)

Kustaa:
Yeah just uh wanted to kind of uh Uh say that uh this uh company that’s been around for more than 10 years now, it’s uh they they have people to their business model several times.

So uh it’s not that it’s still doing exactly the same thing as it set out to do, but they have changed and and uh people did a little bit to kind of the business there in and I think that has been a good learning and and it’s a good example that you need to adapt also to the market conditions, how your customers work and uh change your business model accordingly.

Jeffery:
And with those pivots, did you find that did they have to go and raise more money to make the pivot so that they were able to continue to be successful? Or were they able to utilize what they had originally built and make that pivot on the dime of the business?

Kustaa:
Uh, it’s, it’s a split, uh, sometimes yes, sometimes. No. So it has depended on the situation a little bit. Basically. The new ideas have come from the old model of doing things and then suddenly everybody’s realized that they were not doing the right things because the customers are heading somewhere else. We need to be where the customers are or we need to meet the new requirements. And then it started a process where the business model and services have been kind of reconsidered, uh, rebuilt basically.

Jeffery:
Very exciting. So in this kind of learning and process that you’ve gone through over the last 2030 years of being in tech, you also created venture firms and you started to utilize these as a way to invest.

And I’m going to call you a pioneer because you’ve started these a lot earlier than most investors have. It’s not common to see that somebody has been investing in startups for 10, 20 years. It’s been kind of more of a new phenomenon in the last probably 5-10. So how do you feel that you coming into this space early has also helped you better understand types of startups or things that you like to invest in. How did that shape over the last 10, 15 years that you’ve been doing this?

Kustaa:
Um, so how, how it’s changed my, uh, where you’re working significantly, I would say, because when I started the start up investments, like immediately after the corporate career, uh, you know, I was full of, uh, tech and, uh, software and, and, uh, I was looking only basically technology startups, because I thought that I know everything about that. And of course I was wrong, but you that’s how it goes and kind of uh learned uh over the years a little bit that okay, there are other companies, other industries uh that might be very good investments as well.

So lately I’ve been looking at very very different types of uh companies and like I think most business angels we work in networks, so I have a network of friends uh that uh when there’s a new slides that I call somebody who I know might be interested in that type of a case and vice versa. And that’s kind of how I’ve I’ve sort of uh stumbled onto uh friends who some are specialize in uh impact investing and some specialize in food investing and so on.

And sometimes the cases are very interesting. So it makes tends to actually investing in education, for example, which I never considered as a business at all, but a good friend of mine is very, very passionate about education, so, been making a few investments in that sector as well past years, food, very similar situation. And, uh, to answer your question about the, uh, kind of venture model or utilizing investment companies as vehicles, I don’t think there’s anything special about that. For me, it was, uh, very, uh, sort of natural evolution to use an investment company. So I have one, um, kind of like a family office, one which are used for personal Investments. Then I have another one called random ventures that, uh, I own 5050 with Angel investor, friend of mine. And, uh, you know, depending on the case, making investors men’s from either or vehicle. And, uh, it’s, it’s really just a tool to make the investments.

Of course, the random ventures, one has a little bit of a philosophy behind it. So we make small, fast tickets to businesses that we understand very little about. And, uh, the first investment was into a dog food company that makes, uh, domestic dried dog foods in Finland. And I’m very allergic, no pets at the Walton and household. And my friend said pretty much the same thing. But we were both sold when we were told by the company that 100% of the dry dog foods in Finland are imported.

So we thought, okay, that, that, that’s not good. So that needs to change. So, uh, made sense to make an investment into the company and they’ve been surprisingly successful. So that has been a very good good investments of,

Jeffery:
so going out of your comfort zone has been a good thing?

Kustaa:
Yes

Jeffery:
Well, that’s awesome. Uh, which is good because a lot of, um, angel investors, I find that they have the room to be able to expand their portfolio because they will work with other people, learn from them and make that investment. And it does become a success. Even like I said, when they know a lot about one area, that one area, sometimes, maybe you have blinders on to it as well because you think that all this might be too hard to do, this might be a fast wind or and find out that it’s not, and it took a lot longer because maybe the tech has advanced further than you could have imagined or how you worked with it.

Whereas someone coming into a new space that hasn’t seen tech or hasn’t been able to operate the same way this new change could really bolster a new big company out of it. So that’s, that’s exciting. And I think a lot of investors probably should take that mindset more to partner with people and look at like-minded or people that have stronger skills in different areas so that you can make some exciting new venture investments?

Kustaa:
Absolutely, yes.

Jeffery:
So one of the things that really attracted to me to what you guys were doing or what you were doing is that you have a couple of ventures that you’re currently working on, which are, I think massive, massive, massive impact, especially on the country’s. So I have to touch on this before we go into the rapid-fire questions. But can you give us a little bit of an understanding and share a bit more about the tunneling project and how this is all put together and how you fit into this?

And are you an investor in it? Are you running the project? How did the project get started? Um, all that stuff would be love. I love to hear about it.

Kustaa:
All right. So I’ll give you the short version of the tunnel stories. So about five years ago, um, uh, a friend of mine, Peter Vesterbacka gave me a call one saturday morning, I said that, hey Kustaa, I know what we’re going to do next and Kind of his, uh, he was in, uh, in Estonia in Tallinn that day.

He had attended the Latitude 59 startup events um, there the previous night, fantastic event by the way everybody should attend. Uh, um, they had at the dinner table been talking about kind of how convenient it would be. Uh, if we would have a tunnel connecting Tallinn and Helsinki and it will be very fast to connect with the railway through the tunnel.

Nowadays, it takes about 2.5 hours with a ferry. And uh, it’s, uh, not very frequent travel and, and so on. So it’s, it’s a little bit, uh, a lengthy to go over and back. So anyway, Peter said that, um, maybe, uh, you could kind of, uh, find the funding for this project. So I said, sure, why not? I know a little bit about funding and fundraising. And then I asked him the question, how much funding do you expect us to need to build a tunnel, Sounds expensive. And he said, yeah, they told me about €15 billion. So, um, that’s, uh, that’s a lot of money. I told Peter and, and, uh, asked him to give me a day or two and I’ll figure it out.

Jeffery:
Only a day or two to raise that. That’s good.

Kustaa:
Well, it was a Saturday. It was a Saturday morning, so uh, needed to think about it. So Monday morning I kind of came up with the thought that okay, who, who has this type of money, okay, maybe the european investment bank, but they probably have money. So I went on the website and there was help desk number and I called them and introduced myself uh the guy going on the line said that, well, he was very helpful, he ran through their instruments and then he came to the numbers that kind of how large funding they can offer and uh, tens of million to hundreds of million.

I said, oh that little, don’t you have any more or any bigger instruments than that? Um Then he started to ask, what is this project? So I told him that we’re building this tunnel to connect Finland and Estonia, that kind of got a started Peter is uh is a very uh visible figure in the public, He’s he’s the guy who was working at Rovio to create the Angry Birds saga uh and he’s done a lot of other stuff too and uh he was kind of the following week then in media attending one hackathon and he kind of raised the topic there and said that okay we’re building this tunnel and let’s see what happens and then that kind of lead to many things and uh we’ve known each other for a long, long time and we’re both kind of doers so so when we get something, some idea that how do we make things happen then we don’t plan too much, but we start to do things and we kind of plan as we move along.

So we then started to attend if, how, how this type of tunnel infrastructure can be built. And then we found some partners to help us, we called PricewaterhouseCoopers to help us with the business plan and calculations in the first place.

And uh, then we just started to work it and now, about five years after we’re running a project world’s longest undersea railway tunnel, 103 km long and connecting the capital cities of Estonia and Finland and creating a very large new metropolitan area, hopefully in the future. Um, so that’s uh, that’s kind of the short version. Um, and yes, I’m, I’m running the company uh, doing a lot of practical things. So I’m an entrepreneur in that sense. Uh, uh, Peter and I have been funding the company from the beginning, so we’re also investors in the company, But of course, we don’t have €15 billion euros to start with.

That’s a, that’s a lot of money I have learned. But we have committed investors. We have, uh, companies organizations who actually know about constructing tunnels. So we work with them and, and doing environmental impact assessments in both countries, um, doing tunnel design detail design. Uh, lots of politics are involved. So we have had to do a lot of kind of political lobbying and make sure that everybody understands that what we are doing and how it’s impacting the countries in the region and so on and for us the tunnel is just a detail. So it’s, it’s uh, it’s just one little detail of, of kind of the whole plan. So, what we actually set out to do is to, to create economic growth into the area. So we have uh two fantastic countries.

Finland has created a number of unicorn companies I think we are in top one or two place, this VC Capital venture capital uh two per capita in the world, Estonia. Number one in creating unicorn companies per capita in the world. So 1.3 million be people and they’ve created seven unicorn companies so far, skype, for example originating from Estonia and so on. So there’s a lot of good activity going on in the area and that’s why we call it the Finest Bay Area uh finessed. So it’s a player word but it’s not just any Bay Area but it’s the Finest. Nobody can kind of argue that it’s not.

And for us this tunnel will enable us to create kind of this economic boost. We hope that it will attract more start up founders students to come and study in Finland and Estonia maybe start their own business and be successful, stay and live here and change the world on their behalf. So that’s kind of the nutshell story

Jeffery:
well, it’s an amazing story and I get goose bumps just here because it’s a massive, massive, massive project and Estonia does have an awesome ecosystem.

I’ve met so many great entrepreneurs in Estonia. The government is so well backing the whole ecosystem. And of course in Finland doing the exact same thing. Uh they’re bringing people in all over the world to help them build huge and a massive undertaking, but a great ecosystem as well. So did you guys, when you’re doing this process to build this out, was a lot of it based on um what the through traffic would be. So did you have to analyze all the flights going in and out of both countries and how, how much economic value can really come back to each cities so that you can kind of define the cost?

Is that the idea of getting both countries built into this so that they can see the value that would come out because you’re undertaking Maybe it’s 15 billion, but I’m sure when it’s done it’ll be 30 billion because it probably will have a lot of nuances that will get corrected fixed startups will come in. There’ll be a lot of real, amazing building this. But has there been in that analysis, is it really all about how these two countries can come closer together?

Or is it more about how many jobs can we create and how much value can we bring back to the ecosystem in both countries?

Kustaa:
That’s a very broad question. Uh it’s it’s all of that and more uh kind of when we started to build the business case we did it exactly as you would do it for any any business, small business, you know you take an excel sheet and you start from there. But we fortunately found some like very good business models that like frameworks that have been built. So we have been using the World Bank Railway reform toolkit methodology. That’s like the manual alone is like 650 pages or something like that.

So the economist Yeah like 1 summer when he built the model. But uh kind of based on that we um we just estimated uh different types of uh parameters, uh traffic volumes, cargo volumes, ticket pricing, lifetime of a tunnel and so on and all sorts of interest rates, inflation rates and so on.

All the basic stuff that you need to build the business case. And we got some very good numbers out of that, so that was encouraging and then we kind of just worked it from there, the actual impact calculations and estimates were done by a professional market research agency in Finland that does that all the time, and they found a very good reference case for us. There’s a tunnel and a bridge combination that connects Sweden and Denmark that was built about 20 years ago.

And uh that gives us a very good reference point that what happened when the Urasund Bridge that connects Malmo in Sweden in Copenhagen in Denmark opened that basically uh employed all the unemployed people in in in Malmo area in Sweden, they all went to Copenhagen to work and all the Danish people bought second homes or first homes in Sweden, so the property prices went up. So it has been a very good collaboration overall for those countries, so we anticipate something similar will happen between Finland and Estonia when the tunnel opens.

Jeffery:
Amazing, Amazing.

Kustaa:
It’s just yeah,

Jeffery:
how do you sleep at night? I’d be so excited all the time working on this project, I wouldn’t be able to sleep, I wouldn’t be just wanting to keep going another cup of coffee and another field out.

So I guess the big question sleep well, uh the big the next big question before we transition again, but what what’s the, when you break ground, what does that look like? What’s the timing?

Kustaa:
Well, we hope that we could start to drill and blast or bore next year. So 2022 uh it’s gonna require a lot of hard work, but that’s what we’re aiming for And uh we have set ourselves the target that the trains will be running 24th of December 2024, so that’s not far away.

Jeffery:
it’s not at all. That’s awesome. Well I look forward to hearing more about it and uh if you need us to raise some money over here, we’d be more than happy to I think that would be very exciting to be able to jump into a massive project like this.

Okay, I got to ask one more question. How do you think this project will scope and change the way other countries look at themselves? Do you think that this will open up more countries to want to do something similar?

Kustaa:
I am sure more countries will want to do something similar because it sets an example that something like this can be done and it’s going to have a big impact on, on, on the people, on societies, economies and so on. And I’m not saying we’re the first ones and this is not the tunnel is not even our idea, it has been Flowing around in Finland Estonia since like 1850s or something. I think the first reference points and as I mentioned this Sweden Denmark example, they’ve done it already and now they’re actually planning a new tunnel. But one thing if I I may uh still kind of connect uh this huge megaprojects uh back to kind of what we were talking about and what kind of I think it’s the focus of this uh podcast series or webinar series is that for us, the tunnel also acts as an accelerator for different types of innovation and technologies because it’s such a large project, it allows us to look for innovation that helps us to build a safer tunnel, faster, uh, more cost efficient and so on.

And we have found many, many good technologies that will help us to do that. And uh I think that those are kind of the when you said that you’d like to maybe collect a few friends in Canada and the US and come and help us to build a tunnel more than welcome. But maybe I invite you guys to come and over and invest into these little startups and technology companies that are going to help us to build a tunnel because that’s kind of where the big value add is, I think for all of us.

Jeffery:
I wholeheartedly agree with that, that’s a great way to segment it into the conversation we were having before as well, where it was bringing companies in to work in this space, opening up a whole new realm of of a startup ecosystem that no one would have thought could exist because You know, 20, 30 years ago when they were doing this startups weren’t as prevalent as they are today. Um and it was the same discussion we had about the minds and going underground and acting like it’s Mars and bringing all these startups from Israel around the world that are looking to go to Mars and utilize that new tech and the only space they can do is it underground and it’s you know, 50m underground and that’s where they want to test that start-up equipment.

So I love that and I like the way you’re thinking is that there is such a big opportunity for a whole new area of startups to come in and start finding ways to burrow quicker, faster, change the way concrete is being structured and made.

There’s a lot of things that can come out of this one project that can open this up around the world and create a whole different mega project industry. And it’s built around a lot of startups that would come in and of course it’s going to have the base, which is your main construction, your main data analytics companies, but there’s so many startups that can now build and become a part of this big engine.

Kustaa:
Exactly.

Jeffery:
Very exciting.

Kustaa:
Exactly (Inaudible)

Jeffery:
Yeah, well, I love it.

Kustaa:
Glad you like it.

Jeffery:
Yeah, no, it’s very exciting. I want to move to Finland now. We need a big project like this. Um All right, so we’re gonna have to plow through some of this stuff quickly because I know I don’t wanna take up, I would talk about this all day with you because it is very exciting. Not too many people can say that they’re gonna startup, that’s building a mega tunnel that’s worth 15 billion. So very exciting on top of all the other investments and things that you do. But just quickly, one question I always love to ask is what does it take, and maybe this is the story you don’t even have to tell one because you just told me what it takes to be a startup and what it really entails.

But I always like to look for a story and all the time that you’ve been investing in, You’ve had your venture firm for 30 years. So you’ve been investing a lot, seeing a lot of startups throughout time, you’ve seen the world change. Is there a startup that really just comes to mind that you just love the story that perseverance and what they went through, got them to having an awesome build-out or they went through a troubled time and they were able to get through it. Is there any heartfelt story that really pops to mind that really announces what it takes to be an entrepreneur and what it takes to be a startup.

Kustaa:
One company uh comes to mind and it’s actually one that connects with the tunnel project very closely that we’re working with at the moment.

I haven’t invested in the company maybe down the line, but it’s a company called G. A. Drilling from Slovakia. They’ve been around maybe eight years, 8 plus years. They’ve done maybe a well let’s say tens of patents, uh about 100 people have been working there and uh they do plasma drilling. So the patents and technology they have created this is to help a real uh faster boreholes. And they started to work with the Decommissioning of oil wells. So they basically, when oil will dries out, they’ve used the technology to decommission that close it down uh in a cost-efficient way. But they last year when the pandemic hit us. So they started to suffer because less and less uh people could travel and there were less and less oil wells needed and decommissioned and so on. So it’s really the business. But we started to talk to these guys a couple of years ago already. And uh when uh when they do the vertical drilling, kind of everybody realized that, oh, they can also do horizontal reeling. So when we plan to use tunnel boring machines for our tunnel boring, uh we were now investigating and testing how we can use this plasma drilling on the tunnel boring machines.

So the first estimates are that we could actually use these plus more drilling and make eternal boring machines go maybe even up to 10 times faster than with the conventional methods. So that’s a fantastic example that where we can find innovation that can help us to be more efficient.

And for this company, it’s a great example that they’re not people think, but they’re kind of just looking at their business from a different angle and that’s helping them to find like a new way of, of, of reaching out to the industry and maintaining the business basically.

Jeffery:
That’s brilliant. And I think to, to add on to that, which is a great story, is that when you start to go through adversity or you start to put yourself in the thick of a problem, you’ll start to realize that there are other problems that can come out of that, that you can solve, and then your business can decide which one is going to bring the most value back to your customer and which one is going to be a larger, more scalable solution.

Um, as long as you’ve got your eyes and ears open, you should be able to find these problems and you won’t find them if you’re not in the thick of it, they don’t just appear out of nowhere.

They really have to be in there. And I’m sure you guys in this project, you’re going to come across a lot of little problems that you’re going to think, man, I need someone to solve this problem because it’s costing us a lot of money or a lot of time and it’s such a small nuisance that is going to be there forever because it needs to get solved. So it’s pretty innovative and pretty exciting because you might create a lot of new companies just out of building this tunnel that you probably didn’t imagine.

You’ll start with 100 startups helping you, but you might end up with 1000 because there might be that many little nuance problems that you’ll come up with, that can turn into a big escalating issue that if you don’t create a solution for it, you might not be able to move the project forward.

Kustaa:
Exactly. And we’ve only been talking about the physical stuff now when we get to the digital travel experience, that’s when we feel that we are even more comfortable with what, what’s kind of lined up. So fantastic things to come.

Jeffery:
Oh man, so exciting, so exciting. Very, very, very cool. Alright, we’re going to transition now into the quick, rapid fire questions, so we’re ready to go?

Kustaa:
Okay.

Jeffery:
All right, what is your favorite part of investing?

Kustaa:
Meeting the new people.

Jeffery:
Okay. How many companies do you invest in per year?

Kustaa:
On average, 2-3 new companies

Jeffery:
Love it. Any specific verticals that you like to focus on?

Kustaa:
Uh, in the last couple of years, food has been, uh, kind of a new vertical that I’ve been focusing on.

Jeffery:
I love food. Food’s awesome for investing. I agree. Uh, do you have any due diligence requirements that you need in order to make an investment?

Kustaa:
Uh, in addition to kind of all the usual stuff, numbers and, and, uh, validation? Uh, I mostly look at the team. Are they capable of delivering on the promise? So that’s very important for me.

Jeffery:
Okay, what are your timelines if you make an investment from the start to the end of the investment?

Kustaa:
Long term? Uh, And as we spoke, the path of each startup is a little bit different. So, but, (inuadible), long-term investment

Jeffery:
Okay. Outside of the team requirements, is there any, um, paperwork or anything that really stands out in the company that you really want to make sure that if you’re going to put your money in, it has to have these key things.

Kustaa:
The basics need to be in place. So, uh, shareholder agreement is super important and, uh, uh, that, uh, of course the content there is company by company again, but a good fair shareholder agreement needs to be in place,

Jeffery:
so some element of governance?

Kustaa:
Yes.

Jeffery:
Okay. Do you lead rounds?

Kustaa:
Uh, sometimes, but I’m very often, uh, kind of the one of the first or the first. Okay, an investor in the companies, so in that sense, yes, yes, I do live around every now and then.

Jeffery:
Okay. Do you have any preferred terms? Perhaps shares? Common safe? Anything that you like best.

Kustaa:
Uh No, not really. I try to avoid very specific deviations from kind of a very standard package. So try to keep it very simple and straightforward.

Jeffery:
Okay, do you do follow on investments?

Kustaa:
I do.

Jeffery:
Okay. Do you take board seats?

Kustaa:
Yes, I uh uh every New year’s resolution, I look at how many board seats I have, and uh last year I had like, 21 And I made a promise that I need to cut it to have because I don’t have the time and I think I’m down to 18 now, so I’m very happy.

Jeffery:
That’s good. A little bit of chopping frees up some of your time. Okay. Last question, what was what was the story that got you started in investing in early stage companies?

Kustaa:
What was the story, I suppose the success of others? Uh That’s very encouraging and uh very good role model. So kind of seeing how people are able to grow the company’s into successful businesses and that that’s lead by example,

Jeffery:
So that’s what triggered you got you excited and you’re like I got to invest in these guys, this looks too cool, I gotta jump into it?

Kustaa:
Yep

Jeffery:
I love it, I love it. Okay we’re gonna ask a few more personal questions and then we’re all wrapped up and we’ll probably have to do part deux because uh I’m gonna want to learn more about this tunnel business because uh it’s very exciting, I want to dive into that deeper. But so on the personal side the personal questions are as follows. 1st 1, what is your favorite sports team?

Kustaa:
Favorite sports team. I like to watch ice hockey. So I’m gonna sayJokerit, its a Helsinki based ice hockey team playing in the K. H. L. So the uh Russian league.

Jeffery:
Very exciting. So they would be uh I guess at the end they could be playing Canada in the finals against uh Finland or something. We could probably have. That happened. I’m sure it’s happened a few times.

Kustaa:
Absolutely

Jeffery:
Very cool. Well it is our national sport. Well actually basketball might be our national sport soon because I think the expense of hockey it’s uh it’s changed the way Canadians play sport. But hockey was I guess our number one sport as well. Uh Favorite movie and what character would you play in the movie?

Kustaa:
Wow. Favorite movie. Uh You got me, let’s say Star Wars, I love the whole series um all of the sequel and so on and um not Darth Vader but let’s say Han Solo type of person.

Jeffery:
Han Solo. I like it, It’s a good character, it’s good and you can’t go wrong with Star Wars. It is the fan favorite, big fan myself. One of uh, one of the interviews I did earlier on, um, he also picked Star Wars and he was Yoda. So, uh, I thought you can’t go wrong by being Yoda, I’m like, all right, that’s good. I said, I actually said, I thought you were more like, um, what’s this guy’s, what’s his name? Landzo?

I said, I thought your more on a Landzo and so, and he’s like, no, I’m a Yoda was like, done, done so very exciting. All right, Last question, what what is your superpower?

Kustaa:
Um, my superpower, I am actually, I don’t know how to uh, I need to describe it, I don’t have a word for it in English, but uh, I have, well, I have patience, so uh, I’m patient enough to wait for things to happen. So if something doesn’t happen immediately, then, uh, I, I wait, I work towards the desired goal. So a patient investor, patient entrepreneur and so on.

Jeffery:
I love it. It’s a good skill to have. And as you mentioned earlier, you’re a doer. You like to get things done. So it’s a, it’s a good passive-aggressive style of getting things done. So it works out awesome. Well, Kustaa, I want to say, thank you very much for your time today. We learned a lot. I took notes. I always say I won’t what I do because I can’t help it. It’s my, uh, my way of remembering everything that goes on. But again, thank you very much for your time today. We will have to do a part two because we’re going to have to follow up on this massive project.

Kustaa:
We’re happy to do a tunnel edition for you guys.

Jeffery:
Uh, that would be amazing. Very exciting, very exciting. So, the way we like to end it is we like to leave it with giving you the last word. So, anything that you want to share or say to entrepreneurs or say to investors, I leave it for you to share that.

And again, thank you very much for your time today.

Kustaa:
Thanks and, and, uh, to everyone, uh, listening and to all the entrepreneurs there, be persistent, be patient and, and, uh, uh, focus on the goals you want to reach. You’ll, you’ll get there one day.

Jeffery:
I love it, awesome. Thank you very much. Again, cost you for your time. Okay, that was pretty amazing. It’s not very often that you get to chat with someone building a $6 billion tunnel or building a project or a business that’s six billion. Uh, so really cool. Really cool. So I think that a lot of great things that, uh, Kustaa talk about our, you know, just the perseverance, the drive stick into your goals.

Um, and I love the best part of it was that he likes, he’s a doer, likes to get things done and just taking an idea of, uh, someone calling you and saying, what do you think of this and the excitement level to jump on that and actually start building a project and getting close to breaking ground in the next year. You can’t get much more of a doer than that. That’s pretty phenomenal. So, and you’ll see, look man, where there’s a will, there’s a way it’s been talked about for over 100 and 50 years, Someone wanted to build this tunnel and these guys are the ones doing it. They were able to put pen to paper and make it happen. So, you know, you’ve got big lofty goals and dreams, you’ll find the way to get there and they certainly did.

So not only from an entrepreneur side, but also from an investor side, these very exciting stories, Um, and he’s been a venture capitalist for over 30 years. And again, that is pretty amazing what they’ve accomplished and what he’s done. So in saying that, um, thank you for joining us and we will all connect very soon. So if you can share, like, posts, tweet all these great things, socially push out, we’d love to learn more.

So feel free to send us an email, also at info at OPN.ninja. Uh, and we would be happy to get you on our podcast if you’re exploring a change in the world of investment, thank you. Have a great day.