Buutti Oy joined InnoVisitor — story from the idea of students to a growth company

Mikko Koistinen and Peetu Nuottajärvi, founders of the software company Buutti Oy, visited our living room for the InnoVisitor event. The duo opened up Buutti's journey from 2016 until today to the audience.

The story started from four students at the University of Oulu and their desire to help people code better. The founding team wanted to help especially young people, students and the unemployed to develop their programming skills and get into the industry. As many junior coders may have noticed, getting a job in the industry without experience can sometimes seem almost impossible. The consultancy business in particular relies heavily on CVs. So, the coder's own enthusiasm and high motivation can easily be overshadowed by a short CV.

The idea of teaching coding and robotics to young people came up, so the men got down to business. In 2016, after several days spent in the cubicles of the University of Oulu, the code school took its first shape, and Koodikärpät was born. It allowed young people to work on programming, robotics and graphics in a two-week summer job at the Fab Lab at the University of Oulu.

From Koodikärpät to consultancy and towards new growth

The following year, programming and robotics training was offered under the name "Buutti". According to Mikko and Peetu, the company's name has received somewhat mixed feedback, but at least it stands out from the crowd. There is a logical explanation for the name: when people want to take their career in a new direction, they can "boot" their career and start from scratch.

The trainings gathered a large pool of skilled and motivated people in the company's networks, which led to a new insight: could we do more with this group? The answer was quickly found when companies started asking for experts for their own projects. Moving into the consulting business seemed like a natural next step, and eventually a separate business unit, Buutti Consulting, was set up alongside the training activities.

The company continued to grow with new vigour, and in 2022 they has over 100 employees. According to Mikko and Peetu, working in their own growth company was rewarding, but understandably stressful. In 2023, there was a kind of relief in terms of work pressure with the acquisition of Buutti Oy by Netum. Mikko and Peetun think that the acquisition has brought a lot of good things: the company cultures fit well together, and employees have more career opportunities than before, for example in data analytics and cyber security.

So a lot has happened since 2016. Buutti currently has more than 100 employees in Oulu, Tampere and Helsinki, and about 80 of them are software development consultants. New winds will certainly blow in the future as well, as Mikko and Peetu are planning to enter the international market.

We at the Innovation Centre are looking forward to seeing what kind of turns Buutti’s journey will take in the future. We hope that Buutti's story will inspire other students and researchers at the University of Oulu to develop new ideas all the way to entrepreneurship!

We at the Innovation Centre can always help you to spar over ideas and start your own business! For example, it is possible to apply for Proof-of-Concept funding through the Innovation Centre, aims to execute the first implementation of an invention or idea having commercial potential. You can apply for funding of up to 5000 euros for a single project.

Feel free to contact our business expert Ville Saarenpää: ville.saarenpaa@oulu.fi