Janne Jormalainen, Chair

Janne Jormalainen is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor. He is chairman of the board in five start-up companies. Janne made his early career in large corporate environment, then moving to entrepreneurship. At Nokia, he was in charge of multiple functions and businesses; managing for example business with over 800 M€ in annual revenues. Since 2005 he has been working as an entrepreneur in multiple industries and founded several companies. In 2015 he sold SPU, a company producing energy efficient building materials, to Kingspan Plc. He has lived and worked in the USA, Europe and Southeast Asia.

Sami Etula, Vice Chair

Sami Etula has worked for over 10 years as a problem-solver, expert and trainer of companies seeking growth. Along the way Sami had time to see how to get wet and get out of there. Some doctrines have come from funding, scalable business and ownership. Sami’s particular strength is to find completely new solutions to complex entities.

Pia Erkinheimo

Pia Erkinheimo describes herself as “Jacqueline of all trades when it comes to innovation”. She has been looking the journey from idea harvesting (idea crowdsourcing) and concepting to Go-to-Market – phase in many roles: sponsor, dealflow manager, angel investor, advisory board member, chief digital officer etc. Pia promotes open innovation and works regularly with the European Commission.

Esa Mäkeläinen

Esa Mäkeläinen is a former investment banker and current software entrepreneur since 2000. His software company, Valuatum, focuses on financial analysis software (equity research and creding rating/scoring models) for banks. Esa/Valuatum Oy has done startup investments since 2011 and focuses mainly on software companies operating with same SaaS-model as Valuatum or distrupting businesses in fintech, energy, cleantech or bioeconomy sectors. Esa has been in FiBAN board since 2017, and he wants to continue developing relationships and cooperation with the best crowdfunding players, improving screening and other internal processes, and measuring profitability and effectiveness of FiBAN investments with aggregate numbers.

Ali Omar

Ali Omar is an passionate entrepreneur, medical doctor, MBA, angel investor and technology-enthusiasts. Ali is born in Finland and raised in Northern Finland, Kainuu. He is famous for his fast talk, intensive business couching and epic story-telling in LinkedIn. His passion is to help entrepreneurs thrive and grow. Ali is an investor in OGOship, Jolie Natura and Claned. Motto: I execute, therefore I am. 

Torsti Tenhunen

Torsti Tenhunen has 19 years of entrepreneur, leadership and angel investor experience in digital service business, marketing communication and corporate strategy. As an angel investor he has made over 20 investments, 2 exits and 1 IPO. Torsti is known as an unaffected unfair competitive advantage seeker, service innovator and brand strategist.

Teemu Varpanen

Teemu Varpanen is a software industry expert with 25 years of experience in both small- and corporate sized businesses. Focusing on very early stage companies with idea, passion and good team chemistry. Actively building bridges between people, teams and ecosystems.