Jouko Ahvenainen
Co-founder
Grow VC
Jouko Ahvenainen is serial-entrepreneur and private investor, and co-founder of Grow VC, the first global peer-to-peer micro-funding service for startups. Jouko is also a partner and board member in other finance or investments companies, like Springboard Venture Private (India) and Replicon (Finland). He also co-founded data analytics businesses (e.g. Xtract). Before his serial entrepreneur career Jouko held senior positions at diverse technology firms including Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, Powerwave Technologies Inc., Nokia, and Sonera. In all roles he has been a key driver to create new business. He is one of the pioneers in social media marketing, and personally had significant role to develop and sell the first social marketing intelligence solutions for mobile and media companies. He has also traditional marketing experience, starting from some well known political campaigns in mid 90′s. Jouko has vast experience of international business in Asia, Europe, and North America; he has lived and worked in Finland, Malaysia, UK, and the US, and run business in Hong Kong.
Jouko has worked in teams to close several VC deals (from 150k USD to 15M USD), and also closed many large customer deals and been responsible for 40M USD annual revenue. He started his first own software business when he was 16-year-old. Jouko also is also a Certified Adviser in NasdaqOMX First North list at Helsinki and Stockholm stock exchanges. Jouko is on the boards of various start-up companies, and is a co-founder or seed investor in six companies.
Jouko is a regular speaker in many marketing, start-up funding, mobile and web conferences including SXSW, Mobile World Congress, CTIA, Next Conference, Echelon and Singapore Infocomm conferences around Europe, Asia, and the US. He is also a co-author in Social Media Marketing book.
Jouko holds an MBA from Helsinki School of Economics / McCombs School of Business, at the University of Texas, Austin and a M.Sc.(Tech.) from Helsinki University of Technology.