From Bootstrapped Startup to Finnish Tech Unicorn: RELEX Solutions' Rise w/ Johanna Småros, RELEX Solutions

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Billion Dollar Moves™ with Sarah Chen-Spellings | Global Venture Capital

Episode Title: From Bootstrapped Startup to Finnish Tech Unicorn: RELEX Solutions' Rise w/ Johanna Småros
Guest: Johanna Småros, Co-founder, RELEX Solutions
Date: July 18, 2024
Host: Sarah Chen-Spellings

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Episode Theme Overview

This episode features Johanna Småros, co-founder of RELEX Solutions, a Finnish technology unicorn specializing in advanced supply chain and retail optimization. Through candid storytelling, Johanna walks listeners through her unlikely path from academia to entrepreneurship, the evolution of RELEX from a bootstrapped startup to a $5 billion-valued global force, and the core leadership, culture, and technology lessons that define the company’s enduring success. The conversation unpacks decision-making under uncertainty, capital strategy, the Nordic innovation context, and the realities of scaling a global SaaS business—especially as a woman founder in tech.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Johanna’s Origin Story & Early Influences

Timestamps: [03:05]–[06:18]

• Career as “accidents”: Johanna describes her path as “a series of accidents”—from not planning to study technology, switching from electrical engineering to computer science (“Programming is quite creative. You build stuff and then you get it to work.”), to falling into research via a supportive supervisor.
• Family influence: Her family (engineer father and brother) never questioned her ability, focusing on curiosity and perseverance over specific achievement.
  • “It’s a good message that... anyone can do STEM things.” (Johanna, [05:09])

2. Academic Roots & The Supply Chain Problem

Timestamps: [06:18]–[10:56]

• Research in applied supply chains: Johanna and co-founder Mikko worked directly with businesses, keeping academia “practical.”
• Core thesis: Early research focused on collaborative planning, forecasting, and replenishment—groundbreaking at the time but, as Johanna says, “I did research on it and concluded that this won’t fly.”
• The complexity of consumer supply chains:
  • “Even a small neighborhood store has thousands of products... in a big US retailer [it’s] like 100,000 items.” (Johanna, [10:20])
• The COVID-19 toilet paper crisis as recent proof points to supply chain complexity.

3. From Research to Bootstrapped Startup

Timestamps: [11:03]–[15:13]

• Origin of RELEX: After their dissertations, Johanna and her co-founders decided to turn research on automated store replenishment into a business, having confidence in automating perishables—previously manual and complex.
• Entrepreneurial naïveté:
  • “How hard can that be? I did not know how complex that is. We kind of optimistically got it started...” (Johanna, [13:20])
• Building vs. partnering: Initially hoped to “infuse intelligence” into existing systems but realized “there is nothing to optimize”—so they built end-to-end systems.

4. Customer-Focused Product Evolution

Timestamps: [15:13]–[19:41]

• Every customer as R&D: The first years: each client engagement was like an R&D project—developing bespoke solutions for various retail verticals (from bookstores to tires).
• Finnish context shaping strategy:
  • “Finland is one of the smallest markets in the world... We would never have been able to just specialize in one retail vertical because we have like three grocery chains. That’s it.” (Johanna, [17:55])
• This necessity bred a highly configurable, versatile product architecture—enabling global scalability.

5. Scaling Beyond Finland

Timestamps: [19:41]–[23:17]

• Versatility as a superpower: Early need to generalize (due to Finnish market size) gave RELEX a competitive edge later.
• Internationalization:
  • First outbound market: Sweden, leveraging Johanna’s language skills and cold calling.
  • “The smallest possible step to begin with...and then in parallel we started working in the UK and Germany. It worked.” (Johanna, [21:38])
• Johanna—an introvert—surprised herself with a talent for sales, reframed as “walking in and helping”.

6. The Role of Co-Founders & Team Evolution

Timestamps: [23:17]–[26:28]

• Choosing partners:
  • Not friends, but respected colleagues with proven accountability and execution.
  • “It’s so much easier when you have brilliance and execution in the same head.” (Johanna, [24:08])
• Everyone wore many hats; marketing became critical at scale.

7. Tech Evolution, AI, and Sustainability in Supply Chains

Timestamps: [26:28]–[28:53]

• RELEX as a tech pioneer: Early adopters of in-memory computing, even building their own optimized database out of necessity.
• Now: Machine learning standard in demand forecasting; launching GenAI-supported client helpers.
• Example challenges: Handling cannibalization in demand data for perishables.

8. Funding Philosophy: Bootstrapping, Raising, and Choosing Partners

Timestamps: [28:53]–[33:00]

• 10 years bootstrapped: Chose customer revenue (consulting) over early seed capital:
  • “It would probably be spending as much time [getting] €100K–€200K from investors as getting the money from clients.” (Johanna, [29:08])
• First raise in 2015: For US expansion, aimed for investors who would give “stamp of approval” for global clients and accept minority stakes, with flexibility on timelines (not forced exits).

9. The Finnish Startup Ecosystem: Then & Now

Timestamps: [33:00]–[34:55]

• 2005: No ecosystem: Most students went to big corps or consulting; entrepreneurship was weird.
• Now: Supercell and others provide successful examples; more resources for startups, and Johanna gives back to new entrepreneurs.

10. Finland as a Talent Base & Company Culture

Timestamps: [34:55]–[39:37]

• Why stay in Finland: Exceptional STEM talent, lower operating costs, and egalitarian, low-hierarchy culture—“you get access to all that knowledge from all the employees...super helpful when starting your company.” (Johanna, [35:15])
• Cultural framework:
  • “Don’t do stupid things” and five explicit values:
    1. Customer is a friend: Honesty and problem-solving
    2. Colleague is a friend: Low hierarchy, value for all expertise
    3. Deliver measurable value: Tangible client impact
    4. Stop stupid things: Ruthless about letting go of what doesn’t scale—"We have to kind of not be nostalgic.”
    5. Supposed to be fun: Work should remain enjoyable

11. Looking Ahead: Future of RELEX and Supply Chains

Timestamps: [39:37]–[41:22]

• Biggest challenges ahead:
  • Breaking down silos—connecting planning between supply chain, merchandising, sustainability.
  • Technology essential to enable collaboration at scale: “Otherwise it’s just too costly.” (Johanna, [40:54])

12. Rapid Fire: Lessons, Failures, Being a Woman Founder

Timestamps: [41:22]–[44:08]

• On failure: Johanna rarely uses the word—co-founder team helps each other recover quickly.
• Advice for women in tech:
  • “We need more women in tech and then we’ll have tech unicorns founded by women.” (Johanna, [43:00])
  • To founders: “Find a problem you can fall in love with...if it’s a difficult problem, all the better...many bits and pieces will just fall in place naturally.” (Johanna, [43:41])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Startup Mindset:
  • “How hard can that be? ...I did not know how complex that is.” (Johanna, [13:20])
  • “Naivety is the entrepreneur’s blood.” (Sarah, [13:36])
• Team Unity:
  • “It’s just so much easier when you have brilliance and execution in the same head.” (Johanna, [24:08])
• Culture/Values:
  • “Stop stupid things...the essence is that we have to also let go of things...we have to kind of not be nostalgic.” (Johanna, [00:00], [39:09])
• Why bootstrapping?:
  • “Getting that money from clients instead...you learn about what’s really urgent and important.” (Johanna, [29:40])
• On being a female unicorn founder:
  • “There’s lots of female entrepreneurs around the world, but tech unicorns needs to kind of be tech to be a unicorn...We need more women in tech.” (Johanna, [43:00])
• Advice to all founders:
  • “Find a problem that really makes a difference, that you can fall in love with...if it’s a difficult problem, all the better...” (Johanna, [43:41])

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Structured Timeline of Key Segments

• [03:05–06:18] — Johanna’s early life, education, family influence on STEM mindset
• [06:18–10:56] — Supply chain research, CPFR movement, complexity of consumer retail, RELEX thesis
• [11:03–15:13] — The move from academia to business, early startup naivety, building product from scratch
• [15:13–19:41] — Every client as a unique R&D project, benefits of Finland’s market limitations
• [19:41–23:17] — Scaling internationally, Johanna teaching herself sales, first foreign clients
• [23:17–26:28] — Importance of the right co-founders, evolution of team roles
• [26:28–28:53] — Technology choices, AI/ML evolution, challenges in forecasting perishables
• [28:53–33:00] — Philosophy behind bootstrapping, shift to raising capital, strategic choices in fundraising
• [33:00–34:55] — Evolution of Finland’s entrepreneurial ecosystem
• [34:55–39:37] — Why Finland works for RELEX, company culture, explicit values
• [39:37–41:22] — The future of supply chains and RELEX’s role in breaking silos
• [41:22–44:08] — Rapid fire Q&A, lessons on failure, success, women in tech, advice for future founders

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Overall Tone & Takeaways

• Authentic, reflective, and practical: The discussion is honest about uncertainty, failure, and the unknowns of entrepreneurship. Johanna’s humility (“series of accidents,” “did not know how complex it is”) and focus on fundamental principles—problem obsession, trusting your team, culture as an active tool—not only illuminate RELEX’s rise but offer universally adaptable lessons.
• Finnish/Nordic values: The episode provides a nuanced look into how regional culture—egalitarianism, directness, low hierarchy—shapes startup trajectory, recruiting, and leadership.
• Long-term vision: Both host and guest emphasize solving hard problems, building versatile and sustainable companies, and retaining integrity as scale grows.

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For More:
Follow Billion Dollar Moves™ and Sarah Chen-Spellings on your favorite podcast platform and social channels. If you’re a founder, funder, or fan of global tech innovation, this episode offers actionable guidance packed with depth, candor, and inspiration.

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Transcript

[Johanna Moros]

The stop stupid things. Yes, that's been really hard to burn. The essence is that you have to also let go of things. What worked when we were, let's say 100 people probably doesn't work when we're 500 or at least when we're 2000. So we're constantly going to add new things because we have to. But to make room for those, we need to make sure that we also clean out things that just don't serve us in anymore. They might have been like super important. We have to kind of not be nostalgic.

[Sarah Chen Spellings]

This episode is brought to you by Helsinki Partners, a city marketing, investment and talent attraction company owned by the City of Helsinki. Helsinki Partners is offering two unique programs, one designed for international scale up founders and another for international LPs and VCs. Both programs aim to help fund founders and funders just like you, build a relevant network in the new Nordics and discover the right opportunities in the region. The next edition for these programs will be held in Helsinki around Slush, the world's largest gathering of venture capital, in November. Applications now open until August 18th. Don't sleep on this one. Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Johannes Moros, co founder of Relex Solutions, one of Finland's leading unicorns. In 2021, relax solutions raised in a

[Interviewer]

funding round led by Blackstone at a

[Sarah Chen Spellings]

5 billion euro valuation to help retailers and brands avoid food waste and tackle disruptions in global supply chains. In our conversation, we delve into the intricacies of supply chain solutions, explore the latest trends of sustainability, and discuss her evolution as a leader, including a favorite new mantra I will be adopting of

[Johanna Moros]

don't do stupid things.

[Sarah Chen Spellings]

Enjoy. Welcome to Billion Dollar Moves. I'm Sergeant Spellings and on the show I travel across the globe in search of the unexpected leader. Every week it is my job to deconstruct the billion dollar moves of unicorn founders and funders, many of them underestimated long before they became iconic, many of them unexpected leaders just like you. This show is about unfiltered conversations on success, failure, fear and courage in the pursuit of the next big thing in tech adventure. Now, before we hop in here, I have a quick favor to ask you. About 80% of the listeners of this podcast have yet to hit the follow button and it would really help me out if you would smash that follow button wherever you're tuning in from.

[Interviewer]

The bigger the show gets, the bigger

[Sarah Chen Spellings]

the guests get and the more stories we can amplify across the global venture ecosystem so that we can all Keep making billion dollar moves together.

[Interviewer]

Now let's get started. What a poster child, really for Finland. Tell us a little bit about. You know, we always start with the personal, right. What is a crucible moment of your life that sort of shaped you?

[Johanna Moros]

Well, first of all, thank you and thank you for the kind words.

[Interviewer]

You're most welcome.

[Johanna Moros]

I mean it. I feel the pressure of living up to that. Expect. Yes. Moments. I think there are a few quite important moments, depending a bit on how you want to frame it. My version of the story is that my career is a series of accidents. So first of all, I did not plan to go to a university of technology. I just didn't know where to apply. My brother, who is also an engineer, called me into it. I needed to do a minor on the technical side to be able to call myself an engineer. I started with electrical engineering. I realized that, no, this is not for me. So I switched to computer science and realized, oh, I actually quite like this. Programming is quite creative. You build stuff and then you get it to work. The second thing was again, a bit accidentally landed a summer job in a research group. They quite liked me and they managed to get some funding so I could stay on to do my master's thesis. As part of that, I had a very inspiring supervisor. So he just told me that now, Johanna, you need to write some research papers on your stuff. I thought it was like old men with beards. And then it was like, oh, look at these. Just do the same thing, right? So then I just ended up becoming a researcher.

[Interviewer]

Before we go there, I mean, you talk about men in beards, right? And of course it sounds normal to you to choose the path in technology because that's what you sort of grew up with, with your brother. And I know you had a single father who didn't make a differentiation in gender, but truthfully, it is. We know the facts, right, that women are not as prevalent seen in tech jobs and in entrepreneurship. I mean, you know, the work that I do in the gender venture funding gap. How was your upbringing such that you were able to think that I could do it too?

[Johanna Moros]

Yeah, I don't think there was ever any questions about, you know, can I do it? It's more like, what do I want to do? So I do think that in my family, engineering was in high regard. My dad's an engineer. My brother knew that I want to go into engineering, like super early on. I was the only one who was a bit wobbly on what I want to do. I do think that that comes from Home. That's always been super encouraging. And he knew that we got good grades, so the only things he asked about was, how did that math exam go? How did that physics exam go? And then if I got stuck on some homework or whatever, he had endless patience because of course I threw tantrums. He would sit there and breathe and wait for me to calm down, and then it would work through those things together because he was kind of. He knew that, of course you can learn this. It's a given. Everyone can learn this. I think it's a good message that, yes, it might be difficult at times, but anyone can do STEM things.

[Interviewer]

So you were already in research and thinking about academia, but with a practical element, not many people from academia decide to take action. How did that shift happen for you?

[Johanna Moros]

I think maybe it was a smaller shift than for some other people because we had done applied research, so we were working with companies. And I think that was also why we decided not to continue in academia, because the part that we really enjoyed was kind of coming up with better solutions and testing them out with companies. But you can take it only so far, because you can take it one step and then somebody actually needs to implement it if you want to take further steps. It kind of turns into science fiction if nobody implements any of it. I think the frustration is so slow, the impact. Maybe it was there, maybe it wasn't.

[Interviewer]

Bring us back to Johanna. As a student here doing the research. How did you pick a topic? You've been in business for almost 20 years, two decades. What was the core thesis of that research? And I believe you did it with your co founder, Mikko, is that right?

[Johanna Moros]

Yeah, so we were in the same research, and then the third co founder, Michael, joined a bit later. So he actually did his master's thesis for me. But, yeah, he actually did research on many different topics. They were working with different companies. So we also kind of followed what they. They felt was urgent for them. And we had a lot of flexibility. As long as we had funding, we were delivering to the partners what they wanted. We could fill up the rest of the time with doing things that were just generally interesting. So I did a lot of research on supply chain collaboration because it was really hype 20 years ago. Yeah. Everyone was talking about collaborative planning, forecasting, and replenishment. And I did research on it and concluded that this won't fly.

[Interviewer]

I'm deep in this world with you, but perhaps our audience isn't right. So when you talk about supply chain here, what are we talking about? What kind of Research were you doing?

[Johanna Moros]

The world is full of supply chain. So you basically need to have a lot of different companies involved to get for example a physical product to a consumer. So you have all the ingredients, you have components, you have whatnot, you have factories. Putting this together, you have distribution, maybe you have stores. It's a whole system. And I think the pandemic actually kind of demonstrated how global and how complex these supply chains typically are. There's lots of moving parts. But the research we did was specifically on consumer supply chains like groceries, normal everyday things. It's obvious that if you collaborate you will get efficiency. But there wasn't a whole lot of collaboration happening. And then in the like early 2000s the CPFR movement was growing out of things that Walmart was doing with their suppliers. Everyone was excited. Now finally they'll start sharing information and collaborating. And my own dissertation was on where it actually makes sense and why it's not happening and why it was too difficult. If you were to have a retailer sit down with all of their hundreds of suppliers to look at a plan together and collaborate, you just can't do it, don't have time for it. You don't sit down and look at those forecasts together, but share the information and flag certain exceptions, for example, for review. Together we looked at many things. So store replenishment was just emerging.

[Interviewer]

That is basically how quickly you know, plan as your inventory.

[Johanna Moros]

There's a lot of stuff in stores, right? People don't think about it, but even like a small neighborhood store has thousands of products and then a Finnish hypermarket, 50,000 SKUs, so stock keeping units and then a big US retailer and have like 100,000 items. And then you need to make sure that the shelves are free stocked continuously. Especially in physical retail, if the goods are not there, it's really hard to buy them and then you're going to lose out on sale.

[Interviewer]

And we experienced that during COVID everyone was buying toilet paper. Yes, there was not enough toilet paper going around in distribution.

[Johanna Moros]

Join the whole of humanity in the quest for more toilet paper.

[Interviewer]

So 2005, 2006, you have the basic idea for what this would be. Was there a vision for a step by step plan? I mean you were bootstrapped till very, very late as well, which is pretty unusual. Talk to us a little bit about the evolution of the business over almost two decades now.

[Johanna Moros]

So in 2005 we both defended our dissertations with Nikko and we were both in the same place of what next. And then we thought, well, maybe we should take this idea of improving automated store replenishment and see if we can make something out of it, that's what we started with. So in the begin, it didn't have much more than our research and confidence, based on that research, that you could actually automate these difficult things like perishables.

[Interviewer]

So you mean everything was manual, where basically the stock people will have to say, okay, I'm low on mangoes. Yes, go and get it.

[Johanna Moros]

People walking around in stores and punching in numbers. You have the demand forecast. Demand varies. If something is promoted, if something else is promoted that's going to have an impact, then the weather can have some impact, then the season has some impact. If you're doing this manually, you need to look at what you have on hand. I would think about if you have something coming in and then you also need to figure out is it coming in tomorrow or the day after. So how many days of coverage am I aiming for? And then if you have thousands of SKUs, you can't really spend more than a second making that decision. So it's kind of a no brainer that you should automate these things. But back in the day, companies were able to automate the simple things like canned food, but they really needed help to automate the difficult things. And our original idea was that we would infuse some intelligence into the existing systems, for example, which forecast model to use for which products. But then when we got started, we realized that there is nothing to optimize. We quickly realized that if we want to actually deliver what they were planning to, we have to build those systems.

[Interviewer]

We actually have to build the infrastructure.

[Johanna Moros]

And I was like, well, how hard can that be? Yeah, I did not know how complex that is. We kind of optimistically got it started and then step by step actually realized how much.

[Interviewer]

Well, naivety is the entrepreneur's blood, right? Like that's how you know so many entrepreneurs that have been on the show. I was talking to you about James Rogers from Appeal. One of his struggles was understanding the supply chain and the incentive structure. And he's done it for almost 10, 11 years now. And he said the same thing, like, had I had known how damn hard this was, I wouldn't have started. And it was the same for you. What was the first product like? What did you focus on?

[Johanna Moros]

Very simple forecasting and replenishment solution that we delivered to consumer electronics company. It was definitely not best in the world. Luckily we did not know either too much about the competition. That would maybe have been another reason to just go home. Yeah, it Solved the problem. So we were like agile and cheap option that sold really tangible problems. We got that going and then every client after that was for the next couple of years like an R and D project at the same time. So everyone had their kind of specific challenges. Like in bookstores, Christmas sales are huge and all the books you sell at Christmas are new. So you don't have historical data. That was the key challenge that we needed to solve for them. And then winter, summer tires here in the north, it's that first snowflake. Yeah. Then it's like boom. Everyone needs tires. Some nice interesting challenges to solve along the way. So then we kind of added and added and sold more and more things.

[Interviewer]

So basically it was not vertically driven. You would go into tire company and pitch a pilot R D project. Is that how your market entry was in the beginning and here in Finland? Of course. Of course we have to speak a little bit about that.

[Johanna Moros]

We started out in Finland, so I think we spent pretty much the first four years or so in Finland. Finland only maybe, you know, some Finnish companies have subsidiaries in other countries. Some international touch point, but. But really in that phase when every client was an R and D project, we focused on Finland. It took some guts from them to invest in us and we kind of understood it from the get go. Tech startups was not a thing back in the day. It was not an opportunity in many people's minds. It was a risk. So we really invested in taking as much of that risk out as possible. So for pretty much all clients that we started with, we started with a simulation exercise where we took their data and then we kind of put our system on autopilot. Like this is how our system, without anyone touching it, would have forecasted and replenished. And here is what actually happened and now you can see the difference. So they could see exactly what would happen to their inventory levels and their on shelf availability and their goods handling costs by using RELX on autopilot. And then the next phase was a pilot. In the early days we actually had a money back guarantee that they can step off anytime and we'll just refund them. But they paid us. So their risk was the work that they needed to put in, but we never needed to refund anyone. That's great.

[Interviewer]

So basically the business model from the start was almost like a consulting model. And then it became more and more, you built the infrastructure so it becomes a software as a service kind of model. How many clients do you have today?

[Johanna Moros]

I'd say about 500.

[Interviewer]

500 and big, big store names. And we were talking about Asia, America, Latam, that's growing as well. All of which are different. Right. More complex, different regulations even on the data that you capture. Talk to us a little bit about how that scale up happened for you. Starting from Finland as I suppose an R D hub.

[Johanna Moros]

Finland is one of the smallest markets in the world. So in some ways you would think that it's, it's not a great place to start a company.

[Interviewer]

And give us a sense here, for those that don't know the size, we

[Johanna Moros]

have a population of about 5 million. Yeah. And if you think about retail, we would never have been able to just specialize in one retail vertical because we have like three grocery chains. That's it. We have maybe two chains of bookstores. That's it. We have one furniture retail chain. It's, it's small.

[Sarah Chen Spellings]

Small.

[Johanna Moros]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Small but mighty.

[Johanna Moros]

Yes. And that also explains, as I mentioned, you know, consumer electronics, agricultural retail, car tires, big brands in clients that we landed. But that was a blessing. It was a bit of a challenge, but it was actually a huge blessing for our R and D effort because really early on we needed to think carefully about what kind of things that are built into supply chain planning have to be in the product itself, have to be super efficient, like forecasting. You have massive data, you have to spend a lot of time to get the performance right so that you can recalculate these like billions of forecasts. Think really carefully about how we build in that configurability so that we can deal with fresh products and we can deal with furniture and we can deal with like super peak season products like vintage tires. That's been so valuable then going forward and scaling all kinds of clients because everyone has something unique.

[Interviewer]

I love that. I just want to pause a second because this was an aha moment for me. You can't be a specialist, you have to generalize almost at the start, which gives you an upper hand because then you're versatile, you're able to adapt in different markets.

[Johanna Moros]

Yes. And that's also why we have such a great implementation track record. Always when you implement something, it's still quite a complex thing. So even if you do all the planning and preparation perfectly, there will be some surprises. And then if you have a system that's configurable, you can just work around those while continuing the implementation. You never need to stop something just because you have an issue. So that's been super powerful. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So tell us a little bit about some of the complexities here. For us that are not experts in this, what were some of, I guess, your failures, if you can speak about that, or early mistakes that you didn't expect coming out from this business?

[Johanna Moros]

This is going to sound.

[Interviewer]

Where do I start?

[Johanna Moros]

I don't want to rode a client under the bus.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Johanna Moros]

We've talked about car tires. It's quite obvious that if you're buying new tires, how many do you want of them? You want, you know, one, two or three? No, you want four.

[Interviewer]

Four?

[Johanna Moros]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

For the whole car?

[Johanna Moros]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Johanna Moros]

Yes, yes. But that sounds obvious now. But, you know, most replenishment systems, you look at demand, it might be something like 2.5 tires per week. Okay. On average.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Johanna Moros]

But then of course, you sell zero and then you sell four, and then you sell zero, and then you sell maybe eight, you start piloting and then you realize that. Yeah, it's not very helpful to have three tires in stock. You reconfigure that. Yes. It has to be multiples of four. Yeah, makes sense. So that's like a simple example. You would think of it beforehand.

[Interviewer]

And how about getting into bigger brands? Like, how did that happen? I mean, I understand you mentioned you started perhaps with the Finnish subsidiaries. Right. But how did the market entry happen for the work that you do? I mean, if a Finnish company is tuning in as well and you were able to do it, what feels almost quite seamlessly, how did that happen for you?

[Johanna Moros]

Yeah, I'm glad that it looks easy. I think it did require quite a lot of hard work and some trial and error. I don't say that I would recommend this, but the smallest possible step to begin with it was in 2009. So three or four years in, we felt that now we have a product like something that's repeatable. You're going to sell and deliver pretty much the same thing with some configuration. But it's still kind of a product, not an R and D project anymore. And then was time to go international. We actually had a bit of pressure because we had managed to get internationalization grant and the clock was ticking. Nothing's happening. So then I decided that I guess I need to make it happen. I'm Swedish speaking. So started cold calling the Swedes to see if we can get traction in any market outside of Finland. Then we managed to get Sweden going. Then I did the same for Norway and finally Denmark. And then in parallel we started working in the UK and Germany. It worked.

[Interviewer]

So an introvert realized that she's good at sales.

[Johanna Moros]

Yes. I never pictured myself in sales because I Had this idea that sales is about pushing stuff at people who don't maybe even need it. But it was so different. When I started getting these meetings, I walked in, I realized that they have all these challenges that I could actually help them with.

[Interviewer]

So you have two other co founders. Of course. We want to give them full credit. Tell us a little bit about choosing the right partners. I've heard you say this exact line, which is pretty hard to say. We work with a ton of entrepreneurs. But you said this about your co founders. If we were faced with a big decision, I would trust that Mikko would make the exact same decision that I would make, because we come from the same place. How did you get to that place with partnership?

[Johanna Moros]

I think it was really helpful, Davi, if I never like friends. We didn't hang out. So we really met at work and we worked together. And you could see how you take accountability, how you deliver things, how you work. I also seen how brilliant they are. But, you know, being brilliant is one thing and then being able to execute on that brilliant.

[Interviewer]

That's a different thing.

[Johanna Moros]

Yeah, it's just so much easier when you have brilliance and execution in the same head. And I really felt strongly about that. The co founders, these are people who are really bright, but they also get things done. Of course, in the beginning, everyone did as everything. Yeah, we hired a couple of more, but still it took a while before we were even 50 people. I think that's why it worked because we weren't picky. Everyone did a lot of different things and wore a lot of different hats. But I think Michael probably has had the largest number of official title because I think he's been like cfo and he has let our R D be, went into the U.S. michael went there to start up, relax in the U.S. i think the most constant thing has been Mikko as CEO. And then for me, sales kind of grew out of a necessity, and I quite liked it. But then, of course, you need to have people to deliver. So that's where operations come in. When you start to have traction, you need to have people so built up the teams there. But marketing was really a byproduct of having a baby and not being able to travel 150 days per year anymore. Then we thought, well, marketing is increasingly important when you want to grow fast. Absolutely. It's not that important in the early days when you still have to kind of find those evangelist clients. It's a very personal thing. But then when you really want to scale, marketing is of course, super important. So we had good marketing people, but it's fairly complex space. I think my role in marketing was more to kind of really make sure everyone understood the problems we're trying to solve.

[Interviewer]

Supply chain as a whole has evolved over the years. The question on sustainability in supply chains, I guess the inflection point of the pressure of what sustainability even means has changed. Can you walk us through a little bit about where we are today? I mean, of course it's 2024. I can't leave you without talking about AI and ML. And you've been deep in data all the while. How has this shift happened over the years in the almost two decades of your work in supply chain?

[Johanna Moros]

Technology has been pivotal, of course to us. I did mention flexibility and configurability as a key thing to be able to accommodate various needs from quite different types of clients. And that really pushed us very early on into in memory computing. That was kind of an emerging technology back then. Weirdly enough, we built our own in memory optimized database because we couldn't afford buying it. There weren't that many options out there. So we ended up building our own database and the whole system around it to get that flexibility and performance that we needed. Now machine learning is kind of mainstream in demand forecasting, but when we started everything was time series forecasting because you just couldn't do it. Back in the day, we pretty quickly launch a gen AI based helper for our clients so that they can ask questions about like why, what is this, what happens if I change this, what does this parameter do, what should I adjust? Because now I'm seeing these and these things and the next step is to connect it to actual client data in the client environment, make it easier to analyze what's actually going on in the supply chain and provide recommendations on how they can, for example, improve the forecast. But some challenges in demand forecasting is, for example, you promote this product, then it's actually going to eat away from the demand of this other product. Especially if we talk about perishables, it's super important to capture this cannibalization as well, because otherwise you have goods that spoil unless you manage to kind of lessen replenishment of those goods while at the same time increasing replenishment of the promoted product. So that's kind of a simple example, but it's been quite hard to capture in data.

[Interviewer]

I guess the other bit that's important is you are one of the only Finnish companies that has raised, what is it, over 800 million euros now. So you had one of the largest funding rounds a couple of years ago, I believe 2022. Is that right? 2122. Okay.

[Johanna Moros]

I have to say, time flies.

[Interviewer]

So that is during the high of COVID where you raised this huge round and of course you earlier made a little bit of a shift from doing a bootstrapped function into private equity.

[Johanna Moros]

The bootstrapped for the first 10 years. And that was a decision based on initially we thought about do we want to raise seed funding or not. And then we decided to get, let's say 100,000 or 200,000 from somewhere. It would probably be spending as much time as speaking with potential investors as we would be getting that money from clients.

[Interviewer]

And speaking to clients, you mean revenue is a way that we can raise money.

[Johanna Moros]

Then you can learn about what's really urgent and important to those clients.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Johanna Moros]

So we actually just opted that let's go and get that money from clients instead. And that involved doing some things that, for example, consulting. In the first year, I did a lot of consulting. We grew at a base where we could manage to grow based on cash flow. We were also very scrappy and lean when expanding within Europe. But then in 2015, when we had made the decision to go in to the us, we raised our first round just to have the finances needed for

[Interviewer]

someone in Finland building a company that is seeking to be global, what would you say were your early mistakes in thinking about how to scale here?

[Johanna Moros]

Yes, luck has played a part, but I also think we made some kind of sensible decisions back in the day. One thing was that we decided to do everything in English from day one. We need Finnish and Swedish and a mix of both. But we decided to have everything in English, for example, localize the UIs. English first.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Johanna Moros]

Just to make it easier for whomever we employ, for example, to be able to work with us. When we were looking for funding, we chose Summit Partners and we wanted a funding partner that would be able to also give us like a recognition, a stamp of approval, something that the US market would recognize. We didn't have in the beginning. Those references, local references in the market and something that companies think about when choosing their technology partner is that will they stay? What happens if they land just us, but no other clients? Will they be around? Will they get service? Will they support us when we have some difficulties? So we wanted to kind of also be able to signal through our investors that we are here to stay. They are investing specifically for us to go to the US So we chose Summit because it was US based. But they also have A European team making the day to day communications. I think we were in a great position back then because we had been profitable and growing fast for a decade. So that's kind of a nice, nice way of standing out.

[Interviewer]

Sure.

[Johanna Moros]

So we actually had quite a lot of people reaching out to us and we told many of them that not now and then when it was, oh, it's now. Then we started setting up meetings and then we had a few kind of key things that we wanted to have a look at. We also wanted to have funder that was okay with owning a minority of the company because we were not willing to let go of more than a specific share. Very smart at that point. And we didn't need to either. And we wanted to pick a partner that wasn't like stressing about fund timelines. We did not want to end up in a situation.

[Interviewer]

But that's like, okay, five years, time for an exit.

[Johanna Moros]

Now we need to have whatever liquidation event.

[Interviewer]

And that's an important point that I did want to touch about the exit and liquidation landscape. I mean, you've been around for 20 years. You have brought in a private equity partner in some ways to scale even bigger. I think you, what, 2,000 employees right now. Where do you see the Finnish entrepreneurial ecosystem moving towards? How have you seen it really support you as a founder?

[Johanna Moros]

To be honest, there wasn't much of an ecosystem when you started Relex. There weren't many people who thought that I'm going to start a technology business. Out of the people we studied with, I think most went into big corporations or then management consulting. And then we did this weird thing of going into research first. That was pretty weird. Starting a company that was also pretty weird back in the day. So I think that's changed massively now. There's a lot more really focused interest. I want to become an entrepreneur. There's more information available. There's more classes at the university about entrepreneurship. There's also more examples. Yes, we are an example. But then we have companies like Vault or supercell. Supercell is just so massively successful that everything fails in comparison. Back in the day, we didn't have a whole lot of network to support, but maybe we can now then support some newer entrepreneurs.

[Interviewer]

So why did you stay? I mean, you could have had a choice of going to the U.S. right? That may have been a more natural choice in some way, given what you're doing. You were talking a little bit about talent and all these things like what do people need to know about Finland today? And the entrepreneurial ecosystem today.

[Johanna Moros]

Yeah, I think Finland actually has turned out to be a great choice for us. We still have the majority of our R and D in Finland, although we have clients all over the place. But Finland really has such great talent, especially in software development, but in R and D generally, so we have lots of highly educated people. And to be honest, also comparing to Silicon Valley, it's more affordable for a company starting up to build on the talent pool we have here. I do think that Finnish, or perhaps more broadly, Nordic culture, also plays a role. We don't believe too much in hierarchy here in the Nordics. We don't like people to be bossed around or being bossed around, which also means that you get access to all that knowledge from all the employees, junior ones, the senior ones, different backgrounds and so on. And that's actually super helpful. You're starting your own company because you don't have all the answers. So you need to have people around you who are willing to offer their opinion and their expertise. And I think in Finland that's quite natural.

[Interviewer]

But of course, part of that has to do with your culture that you created here.

[Johanna Moros]

Right?

[Interviewer]

I mean, scaling from 50 to 100 to 200 to now 2000. I was telling you at coffee earlier that one of my favorite culture framings frameworks that I've ever seen, ever among all the entrepreneurs, is by you don't do stupid things. Tell us these five elements of the culture that you've created.

[Johanna Moros]

We asked our employees, what do you value at realize and what should we preserve going forward and we document it. We didn't really know how to use these values, so they got parked. They were stored on Miko's hard drive for several years. And then the chairman of our board back in the day, Andrew Bletherick, told us that we were probably something like 400 people. You're growing in all these different countries and your culture is so important that you need to preserve it. You have to work with the values and make them explicit and tell people about them. Okay, good news. We have these values here.

[Interviewer]

In Mikko's hard drive from years ago,

[Johanna Moros]

we did a new round asking people what they value as relax. And it was the same result. So we had managed to preserve the culture. That's amazing. We just hadn't done it explicitly. We started working with the values and communicating them and so on. But yeah, customer is a friend. It's not about like being friends, going for beers, that sort of friendship. It's more about respecting each other and being honest for Example, when you implement something, something looks bit fishy, something's going a bit south, speak up, solve the problem like you would do with a friend. You, you don't try to hide things. You, you tell them that you have a nature colleague is a friend. So that's kind of the low hierarchy that you kind of assume that intentions and also value everyone's expertise. Sometimes the best expert is very junior and we deliver measurable value. That's really what motivates me still, to be able to move the needle at clients. So having those tangible KPIs, when we do things together with clients and being able to put a price tag on it, it's kind of undisputed. But this is the value that's super important. That also means that we don't just kind of implement the solution and be like, ah, we've done our job. We also need to keep monitoring those results and go in together with the clients to figure out if we're not seeing the results, then the stop stupid things. Yes, that's been really hard to bird. So I think we've had like five different words. But the essence is that we have to also let go of things. So what worked when we were, let's say 100 people probably doesn't work when we're 500 or at least when we're 2000. So we're constantly going to add new things because we have to. But to make room for those, we need to make sure that we also clean out things that just don't serve us anymore. They might have been like super important. We have to kind of not be nostalgic and make sure that we also do the maintenance of. I love it. The fifth value. The fifth value, yes. It's supposed to be fun, so life

[Interviewer]

has to be fun. Looking ahead, Relex Solutions, I mean, it feels like you're in a different company now today from when you started. So that keeps you motivated. But what are we looking ahead to? Like, what can we expect? Where do you see Relex going?

[Johanna Moros]

We work with supply chains and kind of retail planning, the commercial planning. We've had a huge impact already. But still, most of the planning is still in silos. So you have the supply chain people with their KPIs, then you have the merchandising people with their KPIs. Nowadays you also have the sustainability people

[Interviewer]

with their KPIs, which has shifted significantly over the years.

[Johanna Moros]

Yeah, but many of these decisions are not like seamlessly connected. So you still have the issue of we made this Decision in assortment planning. But now it's actually causing a problem in space planning and a problem in supply chain planning. So now we're gonna go back and forth. So I do see that there's still a lot we can do by connecting these different planning processes. We're seeing a bit of collaboration emerging, but it's still far from having like one supply chain.

[Interviewer]

And is that to do with incentive structures? Like there is a reason that why this continues to exist?

[Johanna Moros]

No, there is incentive structures, but I also think that the cost of collaboration still needs to come down. So if we are doing things manually, there's just limits to what you can do in a supply chain with thousands of different entities that are somehow interconnected. I really think technology has to be part of the solution, otherwise it's just too costly. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And Relex Solutions is going to be part of that solution and driving that hopefully in the next few years. All right, well, we've come to my favorite part. This is rapid fire. Billion dollar question. So this is when we might sweat a little bit. I know we've been here for a while, but the first thing that comes to mind. Earliest childhood memory that you still remember, which continues to make a mark in your life.

[Johanna Moros]

Dad helping with the homework moment.

[Interviewer]

You felt like you failed.

[Johanna Moros]

How embarrassing. I should have something. I don't think failure kind of exist in my vocabulary. I think actually that's the beauty of having three co founders. Every once in a while, one is like, ah, this is too much. Then two others go, ah, we'll pull through. Yeah. So then you forget. That's amazing. But yeah, I've had moments.

[Interviewer]

What was it the hardest one? Airport.

[Johanna Moros]

You're coming down with the flu. The flight is delayed. You're stuck in the middle of nowhere. Everyone's going home because they're kind of shutting down the whole airport because you're gonna be on that last flight if it ever gets there. Gets there? Yeah.

[Interviewer]

When you were doing like a sales pitch and all that and all wasn't going through. Fill in the blank.

[Johanna Moros]

Successes have managed to get this far without going crazy. That's some sort of success.

[Interviewer]

That is some sort of success. And this is a final one that I have to ask. Out of 166 tech unicorns in Europe, only 19 have women in the founding team. And you're one of them. What needs to change for more women led unicorns to emerge.

[Johanna Moros]

There's a bit of selection bias here. There's lots of female entrepreneurs around the world, but tech unicorns needs to kind of be tech to be a unicorn. In like, most of the cases, I think the issue, we need more women in tech and then we'll have tech unicorns founded by women. I think that's kind of really the big, big missing piece there. Yeah. Okay.

[Interviewer]

And the final thing for anyone tuning in, a woman who's wanting to be the next Johanna in tech, a founder in Finland who's building, a funder who's investing in Finland. Final words of advice, Find a problem

[Johanna Moros]

that's super relevant, that really makes a difference, that you can fall in love with that problem and you'll have endless energy to work it out. And if it's a difficult problem, all the better because then there will be less people who can actually solve it. So I really encourage everyone think hard about the problem. If you find the right problem, many kind of bits and pieces will just fall in place naturally. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Well, Johanna, for falling in love with the supply chain problem of the world, thank you for your leadership. This is why we're here today. Congratulations on your version of success. High five for Billion Dollar Moves.

[Johanna Moros]

High five.

[Sarah Chen Spellings]

And thanks so much for tuning in this week for more inspiring conversations just like this to help you lead, build and invest better. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts and on socials on Billion Dollar Moves podcast and Sarah Chen Global. And yes, if you want to keep hearing from us, pledge your support for the show by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, a five star rating on Spotify, and telling a friend, I'd really appreciate it. I'm Sarah Chen Spellings and you've been listening to Villain Dollar Moves.