Thoughts on technology and life in general

My name is Tapio. It's a traditional Finnish name, pronounced roughly like "TAH-pyoh". It means bear. Since I train grappling, especially BJJ, it would be nice to be a bear. Unfortunately I'm usually the smallest guy in the class. I don't know if I resemble a bear in any way, but I do like the name regardless.

I'm currently working in a role that could be considered being a founder, and I really enjoy what I'm doing. I actually wanted to be an entrepreneur since high school, but I also don't like sales, which is typically a bad combination for becoming a founder. To pursue my "dreams", I've been the technical founder in a few product startups. While we didn't succeed in the traditional sense of making loads of money, those have been huge learning experiences. I've managed to gather a big list of things that are, in most cases, poor ideas, and hopefully I'll eventually manage to succeed.

What our current business does is mostly consulting. We build software for other organizations, and we're fairly successful at it, but what we actually want is to build products. We're in a fortunate situation where we can spend a lot of time figuring out and building our own things, because we've sold a lot of small, single-customer products that create a nice stream of recurring revenue.

In addition to software development, I've been working in academics. I have a PhD from the Turku School of Economics, where I studied electoral predictions using public online data. I have a few manuscripts I might continue, and the Finnish parliamentary elections are approaching next year, so I'll probably dedicate some time to that as well.

I have a few pet theories about life that I'll likely write about at some point. Luck, empathy, critical thinking, accountability, and introspection are among the concepts I think are important to get right in life. At least for me personally, understanding what each of those actually means has made me a happier person.

Politically, I don't identify with any of the current political groups. I like to pick ideas from left and right and formulate my own. I really dislike identity politics. For example, you can't currently believe that human-driven climate change is a bad thing that will cause real harm in the future, such as worsening droughts in Africa, while also believing that immigration has real issues, without being lumped in with people who hold genuinely awful views on one side or the other. There are plenty of topics like this one, and it's really frustrating: holding one belief gets you grouped with people who hold entirely unrelated, worse ones.

I also really enjoy helping people. So if there's anything you need help with, don't hesitate to send me an email.