Emmi Kavander, is a strategic storyteller, angel investor, Co-Founder and CEO of Kavanders & Co., a Switzerland-based company providing services in international business development, communications and fundraising for early-stage businesses, and in scouting investment opportunities for professional investors and VCs. She is also a wife and the mother of her almost-two-year-old daughter.
As a strategic storyteller, she turns data and analytics into stories that compel actions, such as investment or sales. To ensure maximum yield for businesses, she makes even the most technical content understandable, rememberable, and stand out.
Emmi Kavander was born in Finland and has lived, studied and worked in Germany and Switzerland for more than 15 years. Before founding her own business, she spent most of her career in sales and in work related to strategic planning and implementation. Combining that with a strong passion for cognitive psychology led her into communications.
Since 2019, Kavanders & Co. has successfully supported positive impact businesses and helped entrepreneurs and innovation off the launchpad: supporting businesses to cut through the noise, ensuring a stable foundation for their business, and facilitating their success, growth and funding.
For more information on Kavanders & Co. visit their website here.
Here we sit down with Emmi, to learn a bit more about her journey as a female entrepreneur.
Q. WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO BECOME AN ENTREPRENEUR?
Emmi: Our daughter. But that would cut the story a bit too short. I was not planning to become an entrepreneur but instead had very ambitious corporate goals. One of them was getting a seat on the leadership team of a global, stock-listed company by age 30. I achieved that, but it didn’t feel as good as I thought it would, and I started questioning my purpose.
About five years ago, everything changed. I had a severe traffic accident and according to the doctors, it was against all odds that I would survive. When I did, and even learned to walk again, the thought of making this second chance at life count was awoken. But my husband (and Kavanders & Co. Co-Founder Henrik Kavander) nor I yet dared to leap into entrepreneurship and step away from climbing those steep corporate ladders.
Fast forward a couple of years, and we found out that we were expecting a child. This surprising news gave us the push we needed. Instead of going for the safer employment route in this exciting time, we understood that it was our responsibility and calling to ensure this world to be the best possible place for all our children and the generations to follow. Two months after our daughter Edith was born, so was Kavanders GmbH.
Our world carries a great deal of innovation that can positively impact our environment and society. These innovations are born from deep technical knowledge and passion. They can solve critical issues that the general population is unaware of but significantly impact their lives or bring new added value to our planet and its life.
What these companies often miss, however, is business, communications, and fundraising experience, thus making it hard for them to reach the market and get the funding they need to make their impact.
Kavanders & Co. was born out of our desire to give back to people and our planet. We do this by ensuring that ideas of positive impact don’t get lost in the noise of the big players and that the existing state-of-the-art solutions get challenged by better ones.
Every day we wake up to ensure that we leave this planet the best possible place for all life on it. Our mission of “making your impact case successful” and “changing the world – for good” is driven by the passion for making this world the best possible place for the future of all children.
We offer world-changing entrepreneurs flexible support on strategy, communications, marketing, and business development so that positive impact innovation has better and faster chances to get off the launchpad. Doing so includes investor relations and building a compelling investment case to raise funds needed to get onto the market and get a foothold in it. Helping entrepreneurs with all this is our core and backed by our own experience across industries and stages of companies, from startups to listed ones.
Q. HOW DID YOU GET STARTED?
Emmi: My husband, Henrik (originally from Sweden), has been globalizing tech businesses as a go-to-market strategist, implementer, and leader across five continents for more than 15 years. I had worked in various sales positions and had started the Finnish site of an internationally operating sales organization which I grew to nearly 50 people.
I had done a lower degree but been more of a “learning by doing” kind of person, and had been fortunate to have been entrusted with good positions and work based on my experience, and traits of learning and adapting fast. I wanted to strengthen my theoretical knowledge and started my Bachelor’s degree. Being an impatient person, I did not want to spend the standard 3.5 years on it. I was on a mission and had time-bound goals that I had set for myself for my later career, and those 3.5 years would have messed everything up. I asked the study council how fast one could finish and she told me the fastest had been someone doing it in 16 months but she had a lot of credits from previous studies, which I did not have. She told me it was thus impossible for me to do it as fast. In my mind I told her “just watch me”, and graduated in 14 months while working full-time the first six months of my studies.
I then went over to working as the right hand of the CEO at a global business, and eventually, as my last “real job,” I led the corporate communications including capital markets communication of an international company that is listed in Prime Standard at the Frankfurt stock exchange.
Henrik and I started our business with just him and me, selling our expertise as consultants, interim leaders and doers to fill the gaps for companies with an urgent need within our knowledge. Today, we are a core team of five, regularly working together with an international network of professionals – allowing us to tailor the team to every client based on their individual needs.
Q. WHAT WAS YOUR BIGGEST STARTUP CHALLENGE? WHAT STEPS DID YOU TAKE TO OVERCOME IT? WHAT DID YOU LEARN?
Emmi: In the beginning, as it was only my husband and me, all our cases were very much tied to someone wanting to work with one of us specifically, which is not a very scalable business model. We started taking in people to work with us and explaining to our existing clients how we could do more for them by involving specialists and extra hands for execution. Any new client we took in was already presented with a team from the beginning of our talks.
Another tough one was pricing. When you are just getting started, you will want to ensure income, so it is tempting to give a discount. That can easily lead to overworking yourself as you will need to do a lot of hours to build a cash flow that allows growing the business. At the same time, you barely have time to look for new clients and even less to woo them. This is a terrible combination. Today we have two pricing models—some things we will do for free, and the others we offer at full price unless we have really good reasons for it. I have very philanthropic ambitions for the future, but to get there, we need to build our business first to a level that allows that.
Q. WHAT IS THE MOST MEMORABLE THING YOU’VE DONE SINCE YOU STARTED YOUR BUSINESS?
Emmi: Making the first investment through our own company into a startup was surely a memorable milestone; even though we had invested in some before becoming entrepreneurs and one of them has done an IPO, another one is preparing for one. With our business, we were the first investors into Kikodo (www.kikodo.io), a disruptive EdTech that turns STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) subject content into a next-gen learning experience. Kikodo gives learners a tutor-like experience through AI-powered instant feedback on their answers.
Every business has a lot of firsts, and I think that many of these will be the things that will stay in one’s memory over the coming years. Another first was hiring our first full-time team member in addition to us founders. It is a great responsibility, and we wanted to make sure that we can offer stability and good working conditions, including competitive monthly pay. We worked double shifts to ensure a solid base and then grew our team. Today, we have five core team members and will be adding more people to it in 2022.
We are also already preparing for some exciting news next year, again it will be a first, and it will be a game-changer for us and the companies and investors we work with. Unfortunately, I can’t say more yet, but it will be interesting for sure.
Q. WHAT IS ONE BOOK YOU RECOMMEND, AND WHY?
Emmi: I have a soft spot for platform strategies, so the “Platform Revolution” by Geoffrey G. Parker, Marshall W. Van Alstyne, and Sangeet Paul Choudary would be the one for me. I can warmly recommend this book for those wishing to understand the platform business better! And honestly, I think we all should. Platforms are here to stay, and we will only see more of them emerging. But platform strategy is an entirely different animal compared to traditional strategies. It’s not just like learning to write with your left hand (if you are right-handed), but more like writing with your left hand with mirrored letters. It looks familiar, but everything is different. This is how platform strategies are.
Q. WHAT ARE YOUR TOP 3 FAVOURITE ONLINE APPS, TOOLS OR RESOURCES AND WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT THEM?
Emmi: WhatsApp, Asana and Canva. Having WhatsApp on my desktop was a game-changer for me. I don’t like writing on my phone and handle many things in business through WhatsApp across businesses and continents, so being able to message anyone through my laptop instantly is just brilliant. Asana helps my team and myself be organized and stay on top of things, and Canva is an excellent tool for creating designs oneself. Naturally, it does not and should not replace a designer for specific campaigns or brand building, but for something quick or getting ideas, it is excellent!
Q. IN TERMS OF LEGACY, WHAT IS THE MARK YOU’D LIKE TO LEAVE ON THE WORLD?
Emmi: In one sentence: I want to be perceived as the “mother” of high positive impact innovators, but the non-mothering kind. What do I mean by that and why did I choose that wording? A mother will give her children all her knowledge, experience, guidance but not seek the limelight herself. She wants her children to shine. But, there is also an element of tough love, which is not always pleasant. In my opinion, a good mother will objectively judge her children’s abilities and talents and not create false hope if they are not good at something. I am known for being straightforward in my communications and demanding, and for some, it can be tough to handle. But, I would never demand anything from anyone that I would not be willing to do myself. A mother is also not a best friend – there is always a certain distance and mutual respect for it. And where friends can’t help you, a mother can do miracles. When I moved on my own at a young age, my mother gave me a poem that I find sums it up quite well: “I can sow the sails and guide the ways, but I can’t influence the winds.”.
How this connects with our business at Kavanders & Co.: We envision that by 2030, we will have helped 1 million impact cases on their journey. We will scale our operations to become the number one choice as a trusted partner for entrepreneurs to grow and succeed in their ventures, while at the same time being an important partner for investors to find the best cases and to manage those portfolio companies.
We believe that the only way to build environmental and social sustainability is to help develop sustainable business models.
Q. IN ONE SENTENCE, WHAT’S THE BEST ADVICE YOU’D GIVE TO SOMEONE JUST STARTING OUT ON THEIR ENTREPRENEURIAL JOURNEY?
Emmi: There are two things. I consider myself privileged and grateful to have received a lot of great pieces of advice throughout my entrepreneurial journey and to have had outstanding mentorship. This would be one of my recommendations to anyone starting a business: find a great mentor and surround yourself in general with people that are smarter and better than you.
The second thing relates to the first one: listen to what they have to say without starting to think about your response. This is harder than it sounds, but we often speak with smart people and only listen to respond, leading us not even to hear half of what they said or misinterpret due to a lack of focus on what they said. There is a reason why we have two ears and one mouth – successful people use them in the same relation.
To keep up to date with Emmi and her journey, connect with her on her Instagram and LinkedIn.
