> When you talk about going into business it is not clear what the company
> does or how "the profile has changed dramatically". Can you give more
> details? Does it still exist? Run by high school pupils?
Yes, I definitely can give more details :)
NP is one of the most important things in my whole life hence the one
I've written most about.
This text should cover the company quite well from those aspects that I
think you find interesting. It is concentrated on the early times
continuing from where the http://an.org/inet98/friday13.html#Background
left you last week.
I wrote the text this afternoon and send it to our list where this
message is copied too. The guys have been commenting it quite a lot
already so I corrected some mistakes but there's probably plenty still,
at least in the language. Most of the facts should be straight now.
You can read it from http://an.org/inet98/netppl.txt or from this
message. I won't publish it before hearing more from the others but you
can read it now.
--- an.org/inet98/netppl.txt ---
Net People Oy (Ltd.) was founded late 1994. The initiative came from
originally from the same Jukka Orajarvi who had put the whole OuluNet on
it's track two years earlier.
The ten founding members were three older (about twenty three years)
students from <otol.fi> and seven of us high-school kids, sixteen to
nineteen. I was seventeen, soon turning to be eighteen at the time.
All we seven had more than a year experience in administrating the
schools' UNIX-servers, taking care of people's accounts, teaching other
kids and teachers and a strong technical background from the earlier
years. Some had been active in the demo scene, some also as
hackers/crackers, most could program some and everyone was familiar with
the Internet and spend a lot of time there.
The older three had been using the 'net a lot too but didn't have the
same service oriented background. All of them had been working already
either for their school (the polytechnic) or for Nokia (like
everyone..). We young were proud to make a [vala] for not to work for
Nokia ("the rubberboot factory") ever .. ;/
The business idea was simple: provide people and companies in the
Oulu-area (with?) Internet-services. Of course there were already many
companies doing it in Finland. The first to provide access to the
Internet is, as far is I know, <clinet.fi> that started it back in '86
already. Also <eunet.fi> had been around since early 80's and was
marketing for private users in the 90's. So we bought a Twinhead
Sun-clone running SunOS 4.1.3 and connected it first to the school's and
after a couple of months to the commercial network of the local
telephone company <opoy.fi>. The idea was that the telephone company
would take care of the access, i.e. the modem pool part and we would
handle the rest: user's e-mail accounts, home directories, web
services, customer support, customizing and programming, installing
intranets etc.
Problems started right in the beginning: the first server we got didn't
work. The supplier's service was bad and we couldn't really cope with
it. Somehow the boys managed finally to put things work and so we got
the server running in the beginning 1995 and could start using it.
The telephone company had trouble as well, actually theirs were lot more
severe than ours as they couldn't get the modems working until .. (how
long did it actually take??). As our customers were supposed to be the
ones using the telephone companies access, which didn't work, our
business didn't really start up that well.
We did have some other projects already, our first CEO was excellent in
finding them, so by the spring we were working on them and got our first
income for the company. What we charged of our work didn't really even
cover the costs but we didn't know it and it sounded like a lot of money
so we were happy. We spent great, even though troubleful time together
and partied a lot.
Most of us, I believe five of us seven young experts which makes half of
the whole group, were graduating from high-school that spring so work
was more like a hobby anyway. The company was a nice way of getting
together and gaining loads of server resources and fast access to
ourselves as there were no customers yet.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention that we didn't have any physical office,
none at all. Why would've we needed one? All papers were on the net,
decision making on different mailing lists and most of the discussion on
irc. In practice there was no separate governing board but everybody
could participate in all decision making as much as they would like to.
School class rooms and nice bars and cafes were quite comfortable for
meetings and we had to travel a lot around the area installing servers
etc. anyway so the net made a good office.
The CEO and other important people had mobile phones for customers to
call but we <[email protected]> ourselves didn't really care about them
in the beginning. Soon, however, the company bought for the people who
needed to be reached one. I got mine next summer ('95) and that's when
I learned really to use a telephone. Their turned out quickly to be the
other important communication channel besides the Internet itself.
(Nowadays digital cellular mobile phones are more common in Finland than
any other one telephones - their use exceeded the conventional
copperwireds' in September 1997. I gave mine away fall '97 when I moved
here to Amsterdam - no one has them here anyway and the net is much
nicer .. I guess I need this peace for change. We're expecting the
whole telephone network to converge to be a part of the Internet by the
end of '98 as Nokia and others release new portable / wearable network
devices that handle both sides. Too bad the change is always slower
than we'd expect.)
I can't still use a fax but many people in the company had to learn it,
uh.
Soon we were to confront other difficulties too: the customers were
complaining that they had hard time contacting us. As business started
growing the important people were busier and not reachable by their
mobiles. (That was quite typical of us: we didn't advertise or really
even look for customers but they had to find their way to us and still
we sometimes neglected them totally if there was something more
interesting going on on the net.) The customers were not yet used to
e-mail or it didn't work so that was no option for them.
So we decided to rent an office, put the servers there and also the fax
machine. The technology park <otm.fi> was a good place as most hitech
companies in the area are based there, including Nokia. The park is
also only a couple of hundred meters away from the university of Oulu
where most of us young started studying fall '95. The technology park
itself and the companies there started to be interested in the Internet
too so there was a lot of work for us. The first task for us to do was
to put up the server <otm.fi> for them and take care of the networking.
It turned out to be that I was the one tied up at the office that
summer. I answered all the phone calls, most of the e-mails, looked
after our own servers <friendly.netppl.fi> and took care of the services
of the technology park <otm.fi> creating new accounts and helping people
etc. Actually it was just the same I had done for a couple of years in
the school before but this time it was in the middle of corporate
business world. Besides the technology park itself and Nokia our
customers included companies like Elektrobit, Wasala <pressi.com>,
BusCom etc... of which some are doing quite well nowadays.
Besides taking care of the everyday business and answering the office
phone I was also responsible for a new service we started that summer.
It was a telephone support service for Finnish people who had trouble
with the Internet called 9-NET-9 (the number was 0600-9-net-9). It cost
about a dollar (5FIM) a minute and was open from 8am to 8pm, Monday to
Saturday i.e. every day except Sunday's. When I was not at the office
I put a .forward to the number so that it'd ring my mobile.
Quite often, after three-four months of that work, I had such a strong
routine that people's problems were quite easy to solve even in the most
awkward situations where the mobile use allowed me to go.
Once we climbed on the roof of the university to see the view with
Heikki. It was a beautiful, bright spring-winter's day, strong wind
though. Of course someone called the number just then and I had hard
time finding shelter behind some constructions so that the wind wouldn't
disturb the discussion. Some other time someone called early Saturday
morning when we we're still partying the Friday night .. I couldn't
even remember some of those calls afterwards (you know how we Finns
drink) but friends always told they went ok.
The now legendary 9-NET-9 wasn't profitable like most of our services
weren't. As I mentioned earlier the deal with the telephone company
<opoy.fi> was that they'd take care of the access and we the rest of the
business. We were supposed to share the profits that the access would
bring in - after all we'd have to take care of all the support and
service development - but as we didn't have any agreement of that on
paper it didn't quite turn out to be that way. We did get a fixed
payment, 30FIM which is about 6$, for every user who had a mailbox and
access to usenet news and irc servers plus the room for homepage on our
server. It seems, however, that during the past years of net business
(94-97) only charging for access has been really profitable for ISP's.
We also charged the technology park a fixed monthly sum for access to
our servers and administrating their own server. Then we were active in
many kinds of projects and really enthusiastic about them but most
didn't profit as they were supposed to.
The monthly income kept us alive and travelling to install systems and
teaching, organizing work-shops etc. was quite profitable. Still it
took more than a year before any of us could really get paid for what we
did. Even the three-four months year '95 I worked almost full-time
didn't bring me any money but it was ok. No money, yes Honey! i used
to say :)
By then end of '95 the Internet Boom started to reach Northern Finland
more than before and our services got more popular. Unfortunately we
didn't have real products to sell and were not so good workers either.
Studying and other interests took a lot of time and thoughts and as the
company couldn't really pay for work no one could concentrate on it full
time.
There were also new people starting to work on the business. The
technology park and some companies there were not always too satisfied
with our service and hired some other students to work directly for
them. We, for whom the net was almost like a religion and the company
our own tribe or church, were a bit scared of that development.
Fortunately also the other networkers in the area were our friends since
there were not many, if any, Internet professionals in the area that
would have not been on #oulu on irc and/or active with the OuluNet
school network during the past years. So we approached those new people
and asked them to join us, which they happily did, so we became a group
of fourteen. Eventually those new people were to become the following
two CEO's and the current core of the company but of course we didn't
know it then.
Apart from new workers we needed also money and especially someone with
business skills. I can't remember how consciouss I was of that need but
succeeded in finding a solution in the beginning of year 1996 anyway.
It was quite a coincidence:
I had been, actually for the first time, alone in Helsinki in october
'95 for a party and went back there with some friends to spend the
new-years eve 95-96. Then, after returning back to Oulu after a couple
of weeks, I was spending my time at the university and working at the
office next to it. One Tuesday afternoon I was browing through the
national sfnet.(discussion).www.* newsgroups, a part of daily routine,
and saw one message from some guy in Helsinki looking for "people who
can write html" and a telephone number which to contact. I was tired
and bored after working all day so I made a call, guess I was wondering
about moving to Helsinki.
It was quite surprising to hear that the person who had put the short
message had such big plans. He was looking for the best people in the
country to form a group and start making real business developing
Internet services for companies. From the message I'd thought that it
was only some boring weak html-writing startup but he was a real
capitalist with successful running businesses already. I told him about
our company and we decided to meet in Helsinki next Saturday.
So I travelled back south again on Friday and was going to sleep
overnight in an apartment of a friend of mine to be fresh in the meeting
the next morning. The friend is actually one of seven of us young first
OuluNet and netppl -people but he had moved to Helsinki that autumn to
study law. He was (and is) still participating actively on the mailing
lists and took/takes care of the law and other bureauchracy. Anyway, as
I was arriving in Helsinki already he called me that there would be a
party that Friday night. One other guy, actually an older brother of
one other netppl-founder of my age from Oulu, was leaving to do his
military service and had a farewell party before it. This friend I was
going to stay with was there already when I was finally at the railway
station in Helsinki so I had no other choice than to go there too. It
was a great party but I didn't get much sleep .. and even those few
hours were on the plain wooden floor because there was no furniture in
the aparment.
Next morning my phone rang. Luckily I woke up since it was the
businessman I had the meeting with. He asked me to come to lunch in the
center. The others were still deep asleep as I left.
The meeting was a success. We ate well and talked constantly for about
three hours about where the net business was going and what we - his
contacts and resources in the business world and our group of experts -
could do together. His idea was to found a separate marketing company
that would market our products in Helsinki, where all the money and
business in Finland is, and we could work on them where ever we'd like
to (Oulu, that is) and get actually paid for it. His condition was that
he'd have to own 50% of the company as it would guarantee we would work
in a reliable way. He assured, however, that he would not force us to
change the way we work - he said he thought we were like artists who
couldn't really be treated that way without killing all the creative
drive.
I reported the results the same evening on the net for the other's to
read. Of course the whole deal sounded promising as we were in
financial trouble and didn't have any resources for anything. Only
selling the majority share sounded problematic. Since the beginning all
we ten had owned equal shares, 10% each, which was for us a natural and
a democratic way to organize the company. One vote per person - that's
how things work, we always thought. But we were facing a dead end and
this man's promise of good global/international contacts and resourses
was promising. He, being about 40 years old at the time, had been
working internationally most of his life and also also got his education
for international marketing on the other, the business side of the
Atlantic ocean.
The CEO decided to meet him as soon as possible and so we went back to
Helsinki again. Things worked well. We really felt good together and
were surprised how well this man could understand our spirit and think
of how we could work. Almost like he had always been one of us -
perhaps he should have. After the long discussions we had at his house
we felt like going for it. There was only one change in the original
plan that our brilliant CEO came up with: he suggested that perhaps
there was no need for a separate marketing company but the man could
invest straight to our business and start working in tighter
co-operation with us in the same company. This was a totally new
thought for everybody but finally, after a good night sleep and
[harkinta], we decided that it'd be the solution we would propose the
others <[email protected]>.
After discussing the matter back home in Oulu we invited the man to meet
us there, had sauna together and were planning the future together. He
and the other new people we'd asked to join earlier would become
shareholders so that he'd get the 50% he insisted and the rest would be
shared among us. Everybody felt that it was a beginning of a new era.
We had told him everything and he, as a hard-boiled business
professional, could point out the mistakes we had make and describe
several solutions we should consider. He also had some customers with
projects and international partners ready waiting.
The spring 1996 and the following summer was the time when all those
promises started to come true. Like the seeds had finally started to
grow. I was spending half of my time in Helsinki and some of the others
travelled there more too. We also started our first project there. It
was actually really a good one:
The customer was the best known auction house in Finland that sells high
quality antiques and fine art plus even valuable old car classics. They
were about to modernize their information system and digitalize the
whole process of making the auction catalogue.
The catalogue is central in their business: it has to made in time and
well since most people make their buying decisions based on the pictures
where the quality of the print plays a central role. Putting all the
information together is also a hard process. Demanding customers make
it even more difficult as they quite withdraw their items away or bring
in new ones to sell at the very last moment. The traditional
photography and print methods are so slow that the auction house can't
adjust to customer's needs so they hoped that the digitalization would
be an answer.
Another company was working on the database and digital imaging so that
our task was to participate in that process to create the on-line
version. Our goal was to do it so that the same database and same
pictures that the new system would use to publish the paper catalogue
could be used to automatically create an interactive the web-version of
it. I was responsible for our part of the project (at the age of 20)
and this time we were in no hurry since we had time the whole summer.
On the whole the project went well, or at least better than usually,
since we had failed to keep the deadlines quite often before. One of
the older guys back in Oulu built the database-interface for the web and
it worked well. We could also get the system process the images that
were created for print to be suitable for the web with little trouble.
The interface and the search engine for the on-line catalogue we're also
ok and finished in time - it was pretty neat to search for all silver
rings you could buy with less than 5000FIM or check how many classic
Ferraris the company had sold during the years.
The only trouble was the overall graphic design of the site: the
customer wanted to have all kinds of information, like their history
etc., on the site and gave as the texts as we had agreed. We had asked
them who would make the graphics and the design that would be needed to
make the site look well and they had promised to deliver them. In the
end they didn't - it turned out that they had misunderstood our question
and gave us only the paper catalogues to show as what the style was
supposed to be - so we had to do the design ourselves and they were not
willing to pay for it. I can't do professional graphics myself and we
had no money to pay anyone so it was a severe crisis. Finally, after
two weeks of panic as the dead-line was coming close, the CEO made the
graphics and the whole design himself in one night with my assistant.
The result was, especially at that time when a lot of web design was
really poor, quite good and the customer was astonished because it was
so much more than they had expected. The project was finally
successfully over, except that the pages were not technically finished
so that some other people had to go through them back in Oulu. The CEO
and I had to travel elsewhere to teach already and so that we didn't
have the time to finish them and that caused some quarrel.
No one of us got paid of the whole project. The database designer did
the web engine as his masters to graduate from the polytechnic. We did
our parts for fun and to learn and just because we had to. The company
didn't charge enough so the income covered only the expenses - travels,
telephone calls, secretary's salary and other running costs. Of course
it was quite sad but at least we had managed to finish one real project
and got good publicity from it.
Before the work in the spring we had been to Stockholm in Sweden (my
first time there) to present the plan for the bigger auction house there
that owns this Finnish one. They thought it was an interesting plan but
didn't believe that we (Finns) we're needed for them to accomplish the
same. Actually they said that they were already about to publish
something "the next Thursday". Several months later in autumn when our
work in Finland was published with a lot of interest from even the
international press - I believe that the service was the first full
on-line auction catalogue with database and search capabilities and nice
pictures in the whole world! - the Swedes had still absolutely nothing.
If you know Scandinavian history (or current ice-hockey) you might have
a clue of what this meant to us ;)
The autumn after that auction house summer was to witness even a better
project with even more work, publicity and no pay. The Swedish royal
family was coming to visit Oulu and the town wanted to get everything
out of it. Our CEO was involved in the planning and - being the
amazingly creative propeller he is - came up with great ideas, found the
partners and convinced the representatives of the city to go for it. So
<[email protected]> worked like hell most of the August and when the
royal came we had just finished everything - in fact just the same
morning after a 28 hours day of work - to be ready for the show.
The result is still present at <URL:http://www.ouka.fi/victoria/> and
was a good example (and one of the first in the world, I believe) of how
modern Internet communication services combined with mobile digital
technology can be used to share important events with people across the
world as they happen. The site functioned as a press center for the
international media and was also the fastest news channel for the
public.
We had borrowed to digital cameras from Canon and the hospital in Oulu
that the photographers were using. The pictures taken were transferred
immediately from the field from the back seat of a taxi using a laptop
with a GSM-datalink to our office. There they were photoshopped and
published for the press to use and people to watch with short
explanations of what was going on. Best quality pictures were 1200x800
or even larger so they were good enough for the print media to use.
Some places the royal visited had video-cameras installed so that we
could send their stream live on the net too. We had also a digital
pocket camera and we <[email protected]> were using them ourselves, some
pictures I took of the princess Victoria arriving to the technology park
were published in real-time too :)
Of course today with all the media giants using the web extensively to
report the Olympic games all that is nothing new. Back then, one and a
half years ago in the far north of Scandinavia - in the middle of
nowhere, if you prefer - it was quite an achievement for a bunch of
youngsters. The one coordinating the work that day the royal visited
was 23 years old at the time and later became the next CEO of Net
People. I was nineteen myself like most of the technicians taking care
of ISDN and videoconferencing systems, the CU-SEE-ME link, the outgoing
MBONE-feed and the basic web services. The girl (there is one in the
group! :) finishing the pictures for the press was eighteen. All
world top professionals I'd say. The middle-aged man who had bought the
half of the company was sitting in the office in Helsinki, 600km (400
miles or so) away and happy to follow everything on the net.
All that was '96 and before. By the end of that year and during '97
then the company has organized, established and gotten serious on the
whole. Business has slowed down and is quite boring compared to the
crazy early times but at least the ones working nine-to-five every day -
instead of 30 hours a day and then disappearing - get paid and can live
a normal life. The customers can trust on them. The current (third)
CEO has a family with a child and the workers have to pay their rents so
they can't do it just for fun anymore like I (we) always did. There's
still much of the spirit left.
Most of the founding members of the society (it wasn't really a company
in the beginning) are somewhere else: the first leader, creator and
spirit maker CEO moved to countryside and is working there on his own
projects, some of us young are busy studying other things (law,
sociology, languages, cultural studies) in other parts of the country or
abroad, some professionals have changed to different companies for
better pay or different work etc. Many of the originals are, however,
working full time now. I think that, combined with the newcomers, they
together form the core of about eight active people at the office. And
naturally also we who are away, only for a while I hope, still hang
around on the net as always.
The main product is our own package called Net Access which is a basic
service for people and companies to use Internet from home and/or office
with a modem or an ISDN connection. We have our own modem pool now
which brings in the basic income from about 1,500 customers. There are
also some cable modem users. The server services are ok, for example
the whole an.org is on netppl's systems in Oulu which I happily use from
all over the world every day. Some people are working on projects,
mainly building websites sometimes combined with more advanced database
facilities.
The biggest challenges in the future is to find a new business model as
the whole service-business is changing. Although the good local service
is a strenght globalization seems to be necessary. A long-term strategy
has been to form good partnerships and try to move out from the tiny
markets in Northern Finland (only some hundreds of thousands inhabitants
there and tightening competition) for the global markets. This is one
reason I've been travelling and meeting ISOC people and why I came to
live here in Amsterdam which is about the best place for international
business on the continent.
I also hope that the soon-to-be-born Finnish chapter of the Internet
Society will help us to take this step. Otherwise the fight is lost and
we will die away as the old world (telcos, big media, IT corporations
etc) is taking over the net as is establishes to be just a regular part
of the society. Then those delightful memories of the past years will
be nothing but an useless effort - but there's nothing I hope more than
to show the world that it was only the beginning. Revolution!
Or at least a good life.
+ an + ~ Toni ~ : (t . !