Business Angel of the Year 2021: Jari Osmala

The Angel of the Year award was given to Jari Osmala, who has acted as a business angel for 10 years. He has actively participated in angel investing activities, helping several large-sized companies grow and internationalize. 

Jari Osmala is also a regional angel of FiBAN in the Kuopio and Northern Savo Area. He has long and versatile experience in operating in internationalization, strategy, and board work in the international business landscape, and noted how the quality of startups in Finland has improved over the past 10 years.

Exit of the Year 2021: Janne Jormalainen and Reima Linnanvirta

Exits play a crucial role in the continuity of startup funding, as typically exit profits are returned to the startups in the form of new investments. 

This year, the Exit of the Year award was given to two business angels, Janne Jormalainen and Reima Linnanvirta, who made an impressive exit with the startup Whiteboard.fi. 

“With Whiteboard.fi everything matched – an ambitious, skillful founder, a good investor team, and already a million users. The entrepreneurs knew what they were doing and they had their hearts in the game,” Jormalainen and Linnanvirta described. 

Whiteboard.fi is a Finnish education startup acquired by Kahoot, a global ed-tech company with 6 million USD. Whiteboard grew exponentially reaching more than 7 million users in a 30-day period, where angels were able to exit within 100 days from the pre-seed investment.
Read more about the pre-seed stage investments to Whiteboard and the exceptional exit story of Whiteboard.fi

Honorary member: Reima Linnanvirta

In addition to a successful exit, Reima Linnanvirta was given an honorary member award for decades of accomplishments in the startup investment landscape as an active angel investor, experienced board member, the chair of the board of FiBAN in 2020 and 2021, startup mentor with extensive experience in growing B2B businesses.

Congratulations on the well-earned recognition Jari Osmala, Reima Linnanvirta, and Janne Jormalainen!

Find more about FiBAN`s annual awards.

More information:

Amel Gaily
Managing Director, FiBAN
amel(at)fiban.org