1998: A prisoner in my own life

The summer sun burned the streets of Helsinki, but I lived in the shadows. The cold concrete walls of a warehouse were my prison — the same mechanical, endless routine eating me piece by piece.

I had studied at art school. Creativity ran in my veins like fire, but in there it was slowly going out. Dusty boxes, rusted shelves and other people's old things felt like my own funeral. The clock ticked so slowly that every second stretched into eternity. I loaded goods and organised shelves until I could feel myself dying inside.

Life had stopped. I was waiting for something big, some kind of rescue — and it never seemed to come.

A call from fate?

The phone rang in the middle of an ordinary day. It was Janne Aaltonen — a call that would change the rest of my life.

Razorfish: a door into a new world

I answered. Janne's voice was calm, the way it always was, but I could hear there was something in this call.

He was a friend, a mentor, a teacher and a brother, and he knew me better than anyone did. We'd made logos and posters for our band together. We'd sat up whole nights at a Commodore 64, coding games. He wrote the code. I sat next to him and threw ideas at him. It was always like that, and it was always fun.

He saw something in me that I hadn't been able to see myself: a spark, potential, something waiting for the right moment to catch fire.

"Come and work at Spray," he said. "I'll teach you everything."

Spray Interactive — later Razorfish. The same company he had gone to interview at using the hundred markka — Finland's currency before the euro — that I had lent him only a year earlier.

That money I had earned in the warehouse had felt like a small sum at the time, but to Janne it had meant everything. And now he was calling me in. He hadn't forgotten.

Websites, coding, design — words that were foreign to me, but that lit a flame inside. Janne knew what interested me; he had seen it in every C64 session, in every logo.

He knew that someone was withering in that warehouse who was meant to create, not to carry boxes. Now he was paying back that hundred markka — not in money, but in a chance to change my life.

For the first time in years I felt something other than emptiness. It felt like the direction was finally right. The opportunity I had been waiting for in the dark of the warehouse was finally in front of me. The same warehouse money that had saved Janne would now save me. The circle closed, and my heart pounded so hard I thought it would stop.

But the demon woke up

As fast as the hope caught, a familiar voice woke up inside me — the same one that had kept me in the warehouse far too long.

"Sure, you've thrown ideas around," it whispered. "But Janne has always been the one who writes the code. You've just been sitting next to him. A bystander. You can't do this on your own. You're too stupid for this. You have no education, no real experience. Go back. At least there you were safe."

Safe. A word that tasted bitter — safety in a prison where the soul died a little more every day. I could still hear Janne talking, but his voice seemed to come from far away. Fear had grabbed me like a hand around the throat.

What if I fail? What if everyone sees that I'm just the guy who sits beside the real talent and watches them work? What if I let down Janne, who took a risk by bringing me in?

Then I remembered the warehouse: the dust, the boxes and the slow, quiet withering. I decided I wouldn't listen to my demon — not this time.

1997: Razorfish Helsinki — the centre of the digital revolution

In 1997 Spray Interactive landed in Finland like a tsunami, carrying visions that few people understood yet. They were pioneers — mad visionaries, plenty of people thought — who firmly believed the internet would change everything. And they were right.

The Helsinki office was like a magic room where creativity and technology fused together in a way nobody in Finland had seen before. The future was being born there, one pixel and one line of code at a time.

The walls were covered in sketches, Post-it notes and wild ideas. There was electricity in the air — the feeling that something big was happening all the time. And I, a former warehouse worker from among the dusty boxes, walked in. The doors opened and I stepped into a whirlwind.

The probation period — or hell on earth

Razorfish was full of exceptionally talented people — people who spoke code like a mother tongue and saw design where I only saw pixels. And then there was me: a man who could barely open his email without instructions. The same man who had always stood beside Janne while he coded.

Three months of probation. That much time to prove I belonged here — and at the same time far too little, if I made a single mistake. One wrong move and I'd be back among the boxes, on an hourly wage, dreaming about what could have been.

The pressure was crushing. I felt it in my chest every morning when I woke up, and in my stomach every evening when I tried to fall asleep. Every line of code could be the mistake that exposed me as a fraud in this world of geniuses. Janne had taken a risk for me — I couldn't betray his trust.

Fighting myself and everyone else

Every morning I woke up in a cold sweat, fear tight in my throat. Every night I went to bed with the same feeling in my chest — exhaustion and uncertainty mixed together.

I worked from morning to night, from afternoon to morning. Weekends were just a continuation of the week; there was no difference between a Saturday and a Tuesday. I learned. It stung. I failed. I got up and learned more.

Janne was a patient teacher, but even he had his limits. I saw the question in his eyes: is this man going to make it? Was I a good investment or an expensive mistake? Was I more than the guy who threw ideas around at the C64? More than the guy who designed band logos while Janne did the real work?

I was fast, but not fast enough. Some colleagues looked at me with curiosity, heads tilted, as if trying to solve a puzzle. Others didn't look at all — which was worse. "Who is that? Why is he here?" I heard it in the tone of voice, I saw it in the glances when they passed me in the corridor. But I didn't give up. I couldn't.

Behind me there was only the warehouse: dust, boxes and a slow, silent withering.

Ahead of me was the chance to really live for the first time — to be more than a pair of hands moving things from point A to point B. The chance to prove to myself, to Janne and to everyone else that I was more than an ideas guy. That I could write that code too. That the hundred markka hadn't gone to waste.

I wasn't strong. I was scared every single day. I woke up to fear and went to sleep with it. But you can still fight while you're afraid. And I fought — every day, every night — until my body screamed for mercy and my head felt like it would explode from all the knowledge I was forcing into it.

Still I kept going. Because it was the only option.

I never went back to the warehouse. Never.

The first big project — Peugeot.fi

Then it happened: I got my own project. Not a small side job, not a "give us a hand with this" task, but my own responsibility.

Peugeot.fi.

I sat at my desk with the news still fresh in my mind and felt two forces pulling me in opposite directions. Pride — for the first time in a long while. I had earned this. I had survived probation. I had proved something.

But alongside it ran another feeling: fear. That same old voice whispered, "Now everyone will see the truth. Now you'll fail in front of everyone."

The project was demanding. A car brand's website wasn't some simple portfolio, it was real business — real customers, real money. And I was responsible for it.

I worked days and nights. Weeks blurred into months. The lines of code grew, the bugs got fixed, the design got sharper. Every day I was certain that today everything would collapse. It didn't collapse.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

It got excellent feedback — from the client, from colleagues, even from the ones who used to glance at me sideways in the corridor. I felt something new in my chest, a feeling I hadn't had in years.

Confidence.

Maybe, just maybe, I belonged here after all.

The mentor's last lesson — Fortum

Then came Fortum.

If Peugeot was big, Fortum was a giant — the most complex project I had ever seen. At the time it was probably the biggest project in Finland. Work that could swallow entire teams and spit out exhausted people.

And they were offering it to me.

I sat in a meeting room listening to requirements, schedules, expectations. Every word felt heavier than the last. Every deadline looked impossible. This was too much. This was the moment that would expose me as a fraud.

Then Janne came over. He didn't say much, but the words he did say weighed more than anything else.

"You're ready for this."

I looked at the man who had seen me in the dark of the warehouse. The man I had lent that hundred markka. The man who had believed in me when I didn't believe in myself.

Why did he say it right then — exactly when I doubted myself the most? Maybe he saw it in my eyes. Maybe he knew me too well. Maybe he remembered his own fear when he first walked through the door of this same building.

I took the job.

Fighting the giant

The Fortum project was long. It was exhausting. It was everything I had been afraid of and more. There were nights I slept on the office sofa.

The team worked without rest. Code was written. Bugs were fixed. Deadlines were met — barely, but they were met.

Finally the project was finished.

It didn't just get finished. It was a success. The site won awards in industry competitions. The whole team was proud. Even the client was surprised — positively, of course.

And me? I sat at my desk, looked at the finished pages, and felt something I had never felt before.

I was no longer the warehouse guy throwing ideas from the sidelines.

I was no longer the guy who watches while Janne codes.

I was a professional.

A real professional.

That hundred markka I had lent Janne had turned into the most important and the best investment of my life.

The dot-com bubble: when dreams turn into nightmares

The year that ate the dreams.

The first signs were subtle. Share prices wobbled. Clients started asking about price more than about vision. Budgets tightened. Projects were cancelled.

But we kept working. We were still building the future. We were Razorfish — pioneers, visionaries. We couldn't be stopped.

Then the bubble burst.

The money machine ate the soul

Razorfish changed in front of our eyes — slowly, like poison spreading through water. First you noticed the small things: the tone of the meetings changed. Vision was replaced by the word ROI. Innovation turned into cost efficiency.

Then came the bigger changes: layoffs, shrinking project teams, and deadlines that used to be tight but realistic — now impossible.

A company that had once cared about a new and better future turned into a cold money-making machine. Every client meeting felt like a calculation: how can we invoice more, sell more hours, do less and charge more?

It was heartbreaking.

The original vision — the belief that the internet could genuinely make the world better — was gone. In its place there was only fear: fear of bankruptcy, of failure, and of everything we had built collapsing.

Janne changed too.

That was maybe the saddest part of all. A man who had always been optimistic, who saw possibilities where others saw problems, was now stressed. There used to be a shine in his eyes — enthusiasm, belief, a dream. It had been gone for a long time already.

I noticed it in meeting rooms, in the way he talked to clients. And in the look he sometimes gave me — no longer a mentor teaching his student, but a tired man just trying to get through one more day.

Sometimes I found him sitting on the office balcony, staring into space. I didn't ask anything. I didn't need to. I knew.

We all knew.

Something had to change

I sat in the office one evening, alone. Everyone else had left hours ago — or years ago, mentally. I looked around. The same walls that had once been covered in wild ideas and Post-it notes were now just… walls. Empty and cold.

I remembered how it felt to walk into this building for the first time: the excitement, the fear, the hope, the dream.

Now I felt only emptiness.

This wasn't why I left the warehouse. Not why Janne called me. And not why I lent him that hundred markka.

The dot-com bubble wasn't just a financial collapse — it was a collapse of dreams. The breaking of a belief that we could build something meaningful.

Something had to change.

But what? And how?

2001: A new start — Aaltonen & Vuorela, a jump into the unknown

"Let's go."

Two words. Janne said them one evening while we sat in Razorfish's empty office. Not a question, not a proposal — just a statement.

"Let's start our own company."

I looked at him: the man who had once called me out of the warehouse. The man I had lent that hundred markka. And the man in whose eyes I saw that shine again — for the first time in a long while.

"Aaltonen & Vuorela," he said. "The two of us. Let's do this properly this time."

I felt the familiar fear rising. Our own company? Now, in the middle of the dot-com aftershock, when the whole industry had collapsed? We were mad.

But then I remembered: we had always been mad. It was mad to leave the warehouse. It was mad to believe in the internet. It was mad to jump into Razorfish with no experience.

"Okay," I said in the end. "Let's do it."

Aaltonen & Vuorela was founded in 2001 — the same year the world was burning. The same year every sensible person said: "Don't do it."

We did it anyway.

We dodged the bullet — barely

The internet was still in its infancy, but we believed. We were small — two men, two computers and an office that was basically a closet in a bigger company's spare space. But we had something Razorfish had lost: a dream.

Not a dream about money. Not about growth. A dream that we could build something meaningful — something that would genuinely help companies. Something where vision wasn't just a word on a PowerPoint slide.

Then the news came: Razorfish had filed for bankruptcy.

The giant that had felt immortal had fallen. The company that had been our home and the place of our dreams had collapsed. Colleagues and friends who had stayed there were now out of work.

We sat in our office reading the news in silence. Janne's hand shook as he held his coffee cup.

"We dodged the bullet," he said quietly.

"Barely," I answered.

We had jumped off a sinking ship seconds before it went under. If we had hesitated, if we had stayed, we would have been there with them.

When the salesman wakes up

Janne turned out to be a fast salesman. That was a surprise to both of us. He, who had always been a coder, a technician, the quiet man at the computer — suddenly he was selling like a seasoned professional.

The client base grew fast. Too fast, sometimes it felt. Red Bull, Trainers' House, Elämystaikurit, Suomi-Yhtiöt — names we wouldn't have dared to dream about a few years earlier.

When our company turned one, we sat in a bar, tired, happy and a little in disbelief.

"Do you know what we just did?" Janne asked, raising his glass.

"What?"

"A million markka in revenue."

We looked at each other — two men who had once sat at a Commodore 64 coding games for fun. Two men, one of whom had been in a warehouse and the other broke on his way to a job interview in Helsinki.

We toasted that million. A moment I will never forget.

We hired more people. Things were moving fast. Maybe too fast.

Life grows bigger than a career

In the middle of all of it — the projects, the deadlines, the growth and the stress — my life got a new dimension.

Minka was born.

My daughter. Small, perfect and completely dependent on me. When I held her for the first time in the hospital, everything else — the company, the projects, the clients, the deadlines — suddenly felt small.

Not meaningless, but small.

Suddenly I had a responsibility that was bigger than any project: responsibility for a life that needed me. Not eight hours a day, not just on weekdays, but every moment, every day — forever.

Entrepreneurship demands a lot. It takes your mornings, your evenings, your thoughts, your worries and often your sleep too.

And now there was someone who needed all of that and me as well.

I couldn't be mentally all-in in two places. Nobody can.

When the difficulties started to appear — and they inevitably did — I felt for the first time that maybe I wouldn't make it after all.

Lessons in entrepreneurship — why didn't it all go to plan?

At first entrepreneurship looked so simple. The two of us, a shared vision, a shared history. What could go wrong?

Everything.

When brothers start to fight

It happened slowly, like a wound getting infected. First just a small pain you can still ignore. Then it starts to sting, then to ache — until it's all you can feel.

In the meeting rooms where we had once designed the future, we now argued. In the office where we had enjoyed working together, we avoided each other. In projects that used to be shared wins, we looked for each other's mistakes.

Janne — the man who had saved me from the warehouse. The man I had lent that hundred markka. The man who had been more than a partner — a brother.

Now we looked at each other with strangers' eyes.

It was heartbreaking.

I tried to be present at home for Minka, but my thoughts were at the office. I tried to focus on the company's problems, but my mind wandered home. I was stuck between two worlds — failing in both.

The irony — when success feels like defeat

We had just moved into new premises on Mannerheimintie, right in the heart of Helsinki. It had been our dream — an office that would tell everyone we had made it. From the window you could see the Three Smiths Statue. The heart of Helsinki. Exactly where we wanted to be.

I looked out: the city lights and people hurrying home. This was the moment we had been chasing. An office in the centre. Success. Recognition.

But it felt empty.

Just as I had achieved something I wouldn't even have dared to dream about in the dark of that warehouse, I was forced to pack it in.

The irony was crushing.

The end — or a new beginning?

In the end we sat facing each other, partners for the last time. The Three Smiths Statue stared at us through the window, three men together forever, forever swinging their hammers.

Unlike us.

"We have to end this," Janne said quietly.

I knew. I had known for weeks. But hearing it said out loud — it felt like someone had punched me in the chest.

We had no choice but to go our separate ways. It was bitter. Not because Janne had been a bad partner. The opposite. He was brilliant as a salesman, as a visionary, as a person. But sometimes two good people just don't fit together anymore. Sometimes visions diverge. Sometimes the road forks.

It was a lesson — not that we had failed as people, but that sometimes even success demands a sacrifice.

When the demon returns — for the last time

I looked out of the window at the Three Smiths Statue. Three men, together forever.

I whipped myself. How could I have ruined this? How could I have lost my best friend? How could I have failed exactly when we had achieved everything?

Then the familiar voice woke up — the voice that had been quiet for a long time.

The demon from the warehouse.

"See? I told you you wouldn't make it. Go back. At least there you knew your place."

Fear took hold. I was completely on my own now. No Janne selling, no partner to share the responsibility. Just me — and my uncertainty.

I doubted myself. Everything I had learned. Everything I had achieved.

But the fear was pointless — and Janne was right

My fear turned out to be pointless.

That was the start of the most eventful and most successful project of my career — a project that continues to this day. In it I learned that Janne had been right all along: I was ready. The skills I thought I had borrowed were mine after all.

But that's another story. A story I've told elsewhere.

This story — from the warehouse to Razorfish, and from Razorfish to Aaltonen & Vuorela, from partnership to working on my own — is the story of how I found myself.

Of a hundred markka that saved two men and changed two fates.

Of how sometimes you have to hit the bottom before you can get back up.

Of how good partnerships can end — without anyone being in the wrong.

And of how that demon whispering "you can't do this" is always lying.

And it's a story about a brotherhood that lasted — even though the company didn't.

Thank you, Janne, for calling me back in 1998. Thank you for seeing something in me that I couldn't see myself.

In the photo: Samuli Nivala, Jarkko Vepsäläinen, Sampsa Kemppainen, Toni Laturi, Anna-Roosa Lappalainen, Jyrki Rinne, Junnu Vuorela, Vesa Virlander and Aki Snellman — Grand One 2009.*

Valve Helsinki

I worked on my own for a while, until the phone rang again.

A colleague from Razorfish — a voice from the past, from a time that felt like yesterday and like a century ago at the same time.

"Would you be interested in a position at a company called Valve?"

Valve. One of Finland's most successful and most awarded digital agencies. A name that made any professional in the industry stop and listen.

You don't say no to an opportunity like that.

I stayed at Valve for over five years, until my path continued to a startup called Scoopshot. I've written more about those in my client stories. Thank you for reading my story.

My clients over the years, across different companies

Razorfish: Mandatum Bank, Finnair, Pohjola, Fortum, Neste, Peugeot.fi, Nokia, Canal+.

Valve: Tieto, Nokia, Nelonen, Moomin, Kärkimedia, Marimekko, TripSay, ThingLink, Veikkaus, UPM, Pelaajalehti, MySites, BooxTV, Garanti Bank, Selekta, Unicafe, Valio, Sanoma Media, Habbo Hotel, SpeedHero. (Including a year as an in-house designer at Nokia N-Series Software.)

Aaltonen & Vuorela: Trainers' House, Suomi-Yhtiöt, Red Bull, Battery Energy Drink, Skate SM, Elämystaikurit, Futurice (Ilmeviesti), Innopoli.

Who is Junnu Vuorela today?

My name is Junnu Vuorela. I'm a senior UX/UI designer and product clarity consultant based in Helsinki, Finland. I've been designing digital products since 1998, and I've run my own business for the last ten years.

The job title is longer than the job. What I actually do is make products make sense.

Most of the products I'm called in to look at aren't broken. They work. Someone built them carefully. But somewhere between the founder's head and the user's screen, the point got lost — and now the team is arguing about button colours when the real problem is that nobody can say, in one sentence, what the product is for. That sentence is where I start. Everything else — the interface, the flows, the visual system — follows from it.

Twenty-five years have taught me where clarity goes to die, because I've watched it die in every kind of room there is. In agencies at the peak of the dot-com boom. In the same agencies when ROI replaced vision. In my own company, where the problem was never the work. And in a startup, where the whole thing rests on whether a stranger understands your product in eleven seconds.

What I do:

- Product clarity work: finding what a product is actually for, and cutting what it isn't
- UX and UI design for digital products and services, from first concept to shipped interface
- Design systems and typographic systems that hold up after I leave
- AI-assisted design and development — using the new tools properly, without letting them decide anything that matters
- Working as a design lead or art director inside a team that needs one for a while

Who I work with: founders and product teams at Finnish and international startups and growth companies, usually the ones who are past the first version and have realised the second one needs to be understood, not just built. I work in English and in Finnish, from Helsinki, remotely or on site.

Where I've been: Razorfish (Spray Interactive) 1998–2001. Aaltonen & Vuorela, co-founder, 2001–. Valve Helsinki, over five years. Scoopshot. Independent since then.

Recognition:
Mindtrek, Grand One, FWA, and 11 more. (14 in total, but who stops at a weird number like that?)

The journey continues: where do we go next?

Now you know where I come from and what kind of person I am. I've been up and I've been down, but I have always believed in the power of the internet to change the world.

If you want someone who cares about the outcome as much as you do, get in touch. Let's make something meaningful together.