Kamal Arifi is an Oulu based, Head of Business Innovation at SSAB, the largest steel company in the Nordics. With an extensive background in Corporate Strategy, Operations, and Business Development, Kamal spearheads the current shift within the steel and mining industry through the development of new applications, exploration of novel market segments, and successful implementation of commercial strategies.

With international and entrepreneurial experience in Finland, UK, and France, Kamal brings a blend of technical expertise and strategic leadership and is primed to support startups through the intricacies of business growth and successful transformations.

Aino Toppi serves as the Innovation Portfolio Lead at OP Financial Group. Her passion for emerging technologies and innovation has led her to gain experience across a range of industries, including financial services, software, and design. Her background in product ownership, sales, and innovation management has enabled her to develop an evidence-based and customer-centric approach to identifying and creating world-class services.

Beyond her work with OP, Aino is dedicated to mentoring the next generation of innovators. She is excited to share her experience and insights with the startup community, supporting entrepreneurs to innovate successfully. Her commitment to advancing innovation has earned her a reputation as a respected leader in the field.

Anela has a background in sales and marketing and is currently working as a digital CX & MarTech specialist in one of Finland's largest media houses. For seven years she has witnessed on the front line what it takes to disrupt a traditional media industry and create a whole new innovative strategy that utilizes all the possibilites of the modern digital era. She is also a board member and international officer at JCI Tar Valley Oulu.

Jarmo is a healthtech expert and has 25 years of international mobile technology and business experience within EMEA U.S., and South America. He has been a member of several business and technology unit boards and has ramped and set up mobile-, internet- and service competencies and competence centers. He has built industry, government and leading academic relationships to create sustainable ecosystem for new initiatives.

Minna is the OuluHealth Network Director and is passionate about helping healthtech startups thrive. She’s leading the creation of the new Oyster incubator program in Oulu that will aid in the building of new healthtech startups.

She’s also a driven entrepreneur with years of experience in various fields.

Marko is a serial entrepreneur and inventor. He is the winner of 3 innovation competitions, author of 6 patents and a serial entrepreneur with over 25 years of industry experience.

Elina is a Customer Success Specialist currently developing services & processes in the world of cloud data warehouse development and operations. She has a deep enthusiasm for applying design thinking principles and service design methodology to business development, community building, building brand narratives, and creating seamless, human-centric experiences.

Elina's approach to new challenges is to embrace a beginner's mindset - be curious, explore new ideas, build MVP's, test assumptions, and iterate to continuously improve. With years of previous experience in developing higher education entrepreneurship concepts and culture, she is passionate about new business ideation and improving ways of working.

Jason is an Innovator and Software Developer. "Jbear" as his friends call him, has started or partnered in 8 different startups spanning almost 15 years. He is known in the Oulu community as part of Polar Bear Pitching. JBear regularly works with different ideas and startups to create better impact.

Currently, Jason is working with a small team to increase backend development by up to 4 times. Jason is confident that this tool, codenamed Gaudium, is the competitive advantage in no-product consultancies.

Product director with a lean startup mindset. Passion for building services through problem-solving, with a positive impact for customers. Matti loves taking on a complex problem and making it simple.

Besides working in product management, Matti has experience in growth, marketing and strategy. He has strong knowledge of both B2B and B2C products. He also has experience in building customer-facing products where excellent UX is crucial to B2B product, where overall business model and continuous quality of delivery matter.

Pasi is an Oulu based serial entrepreneur, developer and digital architect with over 25-year experience in building software products. His last startup, LastBot Inc, builds on utilizing generative AI for automating various human occupations. With over 1000 hours spent on practical research and development, Pasi is among the most experienced large language model specialists in the Europe.

Dr. Anna LaValle is a Lecturer at the Center for Ubiquitous Computing in the University of Oulu. From 2012 to 2014 she was an early founder and a Research Scientist at Oculus VR that released the Oculus Rift headset igniting the boom of economic consumer grade VR headsets. She made fundamental contributions to the head tracking methods and core mathematical software used in Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR.

Apart from being a a postdoctoral researcher at Duke University and a teaching professor at University of Illinois, Anna has developed and taught courses on virtual reality, C++, and data structures.

Peetu is an Oulu born entrepreneur and software developer. In the last 8 years he has been programming web- and mobile applications for 10 different startups. Peetu is also one of the cofounders of Buutti, a software education and consulting company that has been listed among the fastest growing companies in Europe. Buutti was acquired by Netum in 2023.

Currently Peetu is working at Buutti developing software for an AR start up, project managing a few new software products and as a "hobby" bootstrapping a new startup for ordering drinks at bars and festivals.

Paula is an internationally experienced digital age business leader and entrepreneur. She has for example led Habbo Hotel marketing ops to reach tens of millions of teens globally, led the launch of Finland's biggest online banking website and operated as CEO of an edtech startup and as CGO of a RaaS company.

Jason is an Innovator and Software Developer. "Jbear" as his friends call him, has started or partnered in 8 different startups spanning almost 15 years. He is known in the Oulu community as part of Polar Bear Pitching. JBear regularly works with different ideas and startups to create better impact.

Currently, Jason is working with a small team to increase backend development by up to 4 times. Jason is confident that this tool, codenamed Gaudium, is the competitive advantage in no-product consultancies.

Rajul is a London-born entrepreneur now based in Oulu. He has been involved with startups and online business since 2000 in the UK, EU and USA, with a passion for fast pivots to unlock growth without borders or limits. His company Positive Partnerships Global Oy applies data science, AI, online advertising, bootstrapped tools and disruptive branding to generate leads at scale on a shared risk/reward business model. His focus is on rapid scaling through a compelling market offer, automation and positive cashflow with a lean global team.