Morpheus: There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.

How to put concepts and theory into practise? Some years ago I started with the idea that business practise is the tool and what Gordon Gekko said in Wall Street was the essence. I was wrong. Now that I have matured hopefully a bit I can recommend books by Peter Drucker in line with military classics from Sun Tzu. I think management is the art of practise; managing the behavior of others is the challenge. Management is more about doing, discipline and courage than thinking and theory. I've also understood that each man is an individual with strengths and weaknesses; build on the strengths and you are on the right track.

Another area of my constant interest is entrepreneurship and innovativeness. How to change the values, perceptions and create new? Following Schumpeter I've tried to put creative destruction into practise. All institutions and organization outlive themselves unless they are recreated.

I have practically abandoned the idea of a career. Being an entrepreneur, independent consultant, thinker and practitioner is the 'path' I am in. I've founded a couple of companies and taken executive positions in organizations to develop my practical skills:

• Turre Legal Oy (2000 - ). I founded Turre (originally Turre Legal Consulting) with two friends to offer various kind of legal services under one brand and account. Started as a deskdrawer firm with virtually no idea where to get clients, the firm has grown slowly but steadily, and now we are five guys running a "virtual law firm" with an office in WTC Helsinki. I've consulted quite numerous clients with time-based billing and also held corporate training courses. My expertice is mainly in computer law.
• Electronic Frontier Finland ry (2001-2004). I was founding this non-profit with a couple of friends in 2001 following the US based EFF. I was the first chairman from the beginning until the end of 2003 and then continued on the board one more year. EFFI was a case of managing continuous growth. We got quickly increasing interest and coverage in the Finnish media and started to integrate with international organizations. As EFFI's chairman, I commented frequently information technology public policy in the Finnish TV, radio and newspapers. Hopefully I've also become a bit more educated in the black art of political decision making both in Helsinki and Brussels.
• Venimis Oy (2003-2004). Somehow I ended up founding Venimis Oy with a friend who is the master of digital image processing and general adverticing. We first thought to start selling ads to mobile phones but eventually met success in more general video and image based advertising. The company was basically run by my friend and my role was just some kind of legal and negotiations help until he bought me out.
• Tergat Inc (2000-2002). This is by all accounts my most ambitious firm project to date. A fast and dirty story. We founded the company with my friend (who has been running a software consulting firm) into Hong Kong with a local partner. Tergat developed and sold database software mainly for MySQL based systems. At its peak we had offices in central Hong Kong and Helsinki, employees in South Africa, Germany and Russia -- and even an angel investor! I was involved in mostly everything related to business issues and technical project management. After our chinese partners departured from Tergat in 2002 we had to run down all the operations. The firm of the chinese guys seems to be still going on with our business plan. Want to hear more? - Buy me a beer! :)
• Crystal12 Communications Oy (2000-2002). I was founding Crystal12, a spinoff of a small Internet hosting provider, to develop different kind of web server software for managing mobile phone services. This firm didn't ever lift off. Anyway, it was an experience to meet and get familiar with numerous people coming in and out of the company, to sketch and crap new product ideas, and finally understanding the main reasons why that thing won't ever fly.
• Valdesoftware (1990-1996). This was never a formal company but rather my unofficial trademark to market home-made shareware computer games. I was a quite enthusiastic programmer in the high school years (mainly 1992-1994) and developed around 20 public domain or shareware games to DOS and Windows platforms. The most popular of my games called Kunkku (the idea was to manage a medieval kingdom) sold over 100 pieces. I think the sales were quite impressive taking into account that the game was in Finnish and it was distributed only through bulletin board systems and disk magazines since the Internet wasn't around yet. Valdesoft gave me a huge lesson in sales and marketing. I also found out that entrepreneurship is a lot of fun; I would definitely try again later...

Moreover, I have experimented with risk-taking behavior with different securities in major world markets including the United States, Germany, Hong Kong, Sweden and Finland. You can ask me about any industry sector, world currencies or even raw materials and I might have an "educated opinion" to shoot. Well, what I've really hopefully learned is that Soros is right: reading the mind of the market is more close to alchemy than science.

For those who want to read a more formal Curriculum Vitae (Resume), just click here.

I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end.
I came here to tell how it's going to begin.

That one was from the Matrix, too. In fact, I derive lots of creativity, energy and guidance to my practise from movie quotes. Some people have argued that you cannot base your life on fake quotes, which do not present reality. I don't agree. To me, those quotes present some timeless habits, practises and ideals that just seem to be right and worth pursuing after.