Teemu Saarenpää: the entrepreneur behind “Tourism from Hell” and Dark Tours

uh and it was a travel app that takes you to these dark sites in Finland right so we call it the Google Maps from [Music] hell hey Rob here from enterpreneur media we are starting a new podcast in English this time time that is called seats this is our first chapter our first episode we have with us teu s which is an entrepreneur by by himself he's a business consultant he's the co-founder of sario OI which they have created a forensic app and uh we're going to talk with him about what is like to be an entrepreneur in Finland uh and also about his story T thank thank you for having us thank you very much gracias um like I said before you are a business consultant and you are also a an entrepreneur sure yeah um how did you start in the entrepreneurship ecosystem s said because I believe from what we read in your uh link page you are a major in comparative religion that's correct so how did you get into the ecosystem uh basically the reason I got into it was because uh back when I was in college I did my thesis work my Master's thesis through the uh fieldwork method known as ethnography so I collected uh stories and then wrote a Theses about them and this kind of tied into my it it basically made me a sort of ethnographer by philosophy that it's become a kind of Life philosophy if you will and uh I've always love stories especially from the Dark Side of lives uh so I um initially just I've always read about crimes and disappearances and ghosts and so on I don't believe in really in UFOs or ghosts but they're an interesting aspect of life how this mythology lives with us no matter how rational we become as a society so uh I it became an idea with me and my brother to turn this interest into a business idea aidea of some sort okay so initially uh our company sario started as a kind of developing PL platform for an app okay called forensi it's a play on the word forensic and seek so kind of seeking forensic okay uh stories and so on um and we started developing the app we got a uh a couple of Investments on it even we got some help from the government business Finland okay uh and it was travel app that takes you to these dark sites in Finland right so we call it the Google Maps from hell so like it takes you to this this dark places like if you want to see where the lake Buddha murder happened in Finland that's there or if you're in the United States and you want to find the exact location of uh John F Kennedy's assassination in 63 you can use the app to take you there and then tell you the story of what happened there the problem is that then Corona hit so nobody was traveling and everybody had to stay in their houses so so so I'm sorry so you created forensic like around 2018 2019 2018 19 early 2020 oh and we basically uh we kind of pul pushed it out of the gate like uh November 2019 and then something like 3 months later our prime minister went on television and said uh for the foreseeable future everybody's going to stay indoors so so that was basically um it was difficult to find any any more investors or really that kind of momentum died for creating the app and the idea was to to start here in Finland like with these like uh locations you have to visit and then escalate to to the whole all world yes and uh we even negotiated some mild kind of cooperation with the university I know the professor or the the adjunct professor of folkloristics and the idea was to kind of collect modern folklore students would collect it and get paid for that work and then enter it into to the app so we were going to kind of collaborate with them but started off in Europe and then start building it towards the United States that was the attack plan initially and besides you are liking and also your brother about dark things yeah uh you you you make like a like like um like a study about how many people around the world maybe are interested in in this or or taking L like this dark tourism yes there's uh it's it's a kind of smallish but intense group of people back then now True Crime is everywhere if you go on Netflix every other show is about a serial killer and and so on but back then it was a kind of growing business a growing marketing sector but we did Research into it there's even a a person I think he was in a university in Scotland who has specialized in studying this dark tourism and I ordered some studies from him and there's some material even in the library over here so I did the background research we researched the market potential uh with a company that existed back then they don't exist anymore but they were interested in kind of collaborating with us on this so they did a pro bono did this market analysis um back then it was a growing sector but it's now it's it's a pretty big Market sector and we try to find out as much as we can about it because now the the focus is for tourism at least to try to offer like things that are quite different from from from the normal ones yes you have Cruisers you have like I don't know the typical places I don't know go go to outside of the capital go to the AEL Tower I don't know but but now they are trying to like make things a little difference that why like this dark tourism is more app right it is and of course also media entertainment these things have an effect on what people want to see so for example uh there was a television show that came out in I think 2019 called Chernobyl which was about the Chernobyl nuclear accident in ' 86 and after that uh we also went to chern Noble in Ukraine and we talked to the tour guys over there and they said that after the Netflix show it's going up like crazy everybody wants to go to to Chernobyl uh so yeah that's uh people want to see different things and and uh but of course this is not really a new phenomenon if you think about like Jack the Ripper in London uh already back then it was like the upper classes Who Loved reading about Jack the Ripper and so people have always had this interest in the darker side of our species it's just now it's part of the media the entertainment landscape but it's quite an old Fascination and what's going on right now with forensic still running are you looking for like a re rebirth so to say we are working on a rebirth put it that way we have a new person uh because I now have a day job so we needed a different Primus motor to kind of take it over and run it so we're and we have somebody new involved in it who already has a certain cloud in that dark history world so we're kind of rebuild building it through her but uh uh yeah back then it was just just the the app but now it's my day job and the app so it's going to take a little bit longer but we're we're hoping to to um rebuild it and uh possibly we'll see at some point maybe sell it forward to a larger company when you started with forensic um you were like 100% focus on on the app development that's right yeah I I designed it I met with coders I even met with a a person who has written books about the psychology of video games and the reason I met with this person was because we needed to gamify it and make it kind of frankly make it addictive to the user so that they would want to use it again and again so my job was to kind of research markets read about dark tourism and basically draw with my poor drawing skills the idea of what it would look like and how it would function how it would connect you to the the um to to using it over a longer period of time that's what I did okay and in in what moment did you say Okay um I need to find another job I need an occupation I need an income yes uh it was during the corona okay uh that's it started already building pretty nicely one kind of key moment was when my brother called me he was my partner in this still is uh he called me up and he said there was a woman standing at a park called downtown looking at her phone and kind of looking around and my brother had just stopped and said listen I'm sorry to bother you but are you using forensic to find the murder location where a man was killed in that Park some years and she was like yes how did you know and that was the moment when I thought there's there's some growth potential here but uh yeah I had to after covid we basically the investors got freaked out as I would have as well uh and then after a while I thought well I can still keep this going but I have we have to bring it down and not I need an income so I took a job and now I'm doing it as a side hustle basically okay and so then we can say that you as a business advisor that kind that came after being an entrepreneur yes uh I've always also like consulted uh my job is with immigrants So and I've been working with immigrants and refugees since 2010 and I have that advised associations I've advised some companies as well but the kind of personal knowledge of the ups and downs and that sort of a thing it came through through that experience of Zario and forensic basically okay do you have another or anothers side hustle anothers like entrepreneurs projects yes uh my most let's say steady and and kind of solid um side hustle cuz the startup World digital development of apps it's up it's up and down and the income can be quite um unpredictable so my most predictable side hustle income is through walking tours oh I give walking tours to tourists locals um people who work in a company they have like a day off for the staff so they might order it from me to take them on on walking tours around the city it can be a w or a dry walking tour so we can stop at bars or we can just keep going however you want W walking that's a nice form of say yeah yeah where or dry you mean yeah because it's like it sounds very serious it's not like okay we we are working on we are going into bars no this is a wet walking right and and usually that's for like uh Bachelor groups bachel party groups okay um but we also do like um uh let's say tourist who come to Finland they often just they they want to go to the bar or go for dinner afterwards so it can be a dry walking tour as well but I take them to uh haunted houses disappearances urban legends from turu uh famous homicides famous uh unsolved cases and mysteries from the city that's basically what I do like a dark Mystery Tour dark Mystery Tour or again you can say the walking tour from hell that's I like that term more so kind of takes you on the page right away and what's the name of that endeavor that endeavor I just handle it through my own name okay or the for and seek name so officially you could say that if you Google for and seek walking tour you it'll take you to the right place okay so for is like the umbrella of like everything you are doing yes that was the original title of the app but now it's also the title of my blog and my Instagram and and so on uh and the walking tours as well uh I forgot to ask at the best moment before Corona maybe yeah how many I don't know users did you have in foreign uh we had just basically launched it off the gate so we had some hundreds of users basically um but it was a free app so you didn't have to pay for anything was ads and the idea for the the earning logic was that you could pay away the ads the same way that you can pay away the ads like a premium right correct okay um so some hundreds yeah we were on the radio to promote it uh one pretty big show called corpor on Radio Rock okay and uh we were interviewed for some newspapers and magazines and so on so off the gate some some hundreds and now do you have like a like um like a projection like a timetable uh in this like rebirth Road um we're trying to concentrate on it more next spring okay 2025 25 uh this is really it's quite slow cuz we have to kind of essentially use magic to bring it back from the dead and and to do do it a little bit differently as well um but I'd say hopefully it'll be back on the air the app will be usable uh 25 summerish okay and maybe you're thinking on making like alliances with like these to tourist agencies or sort of thing yes and that was also another thing that before Corona we got that going we started a negotiation with the city of Helsinki about having our like banners and our our our what we have to offer our services on their website and to um promote their promote our app directly to tourists going to hinki okay but unfortunately the the tsunami of Corona kind of wipe that off the map as well fun fact which is like maybe well I don't know if Helsinki because it's the biggest but which is which is the Zone the area of Finland that has like the most Milestones about these uh tourist from hell um that's a good question probably I would say that it's Helsinki that's probably where most of them go certainly you have the the most famous Unsolved Mystery in Finland without question it's known all over the world is the lake Buddha murders where three teenagers were murdered in espo outside of H uh so I'd say that's probably the kind of f grimmage site for for most dark tourists but I think they're making a mistake in the sense that turu is the oldest city and and this has probably the most stories it's just that they haven't kind of been storied or or advertised enough yet frankly which I'm hoping that we'll be able to do more of through the app do turu right in that way has any hun Mansion or sort of uh yes uh we have Pro for example the probably the most famous Poltergeist house let's say Urban Poltergeist house there are some on the countryside that are more famous but Urban polter guys sites it's in in tur wow say and there are of course the turu castle which is the old old castle uh that has like a 100,000 Ghost Stories the theater has 100 coost stories really yeah yeah and uh so there are quite a few of these these kinds of places here I've been here in turo since November 2020 right three why when you see like every information for instance about the Lena the castle right why doesn't say that because it's it's it's obviously there are people that must be scared but also at the same time it's like attract the yeah yeah why uh there are special ghost night tours of the of the L of the castle but those are done I'd say maybe once or twice a year usually I think it's around Halloween I might be wrong oh but I think it's also a kind of um we're still kind of coming to terms with the idea of using ghosts and dark history as a marketing and kind of to boost tourism it's quite A New Concept um so I I think it's maybe getting a little bit more popular uh but uh yeah I don't know what the reason is for the the the kind of lack of advertisement of that aspect of the castle or the city's history but certainly they're like doing more and more of these kinds of ghost uh tours so I think they're we're slowly kind of embracing the fact that history is also made up of of the of the nights not just the days and they very much also make us who we are as a nation and there's nothing wrong about it I think it's part of our our our species like if you think of some Neanderthal races or or species before us uh like our ancestors as as Homo sapiens species I think they already had a Fascination if somebody fell down from a cliff and and was burst into pieces I I'm 100% sure they already went to see this because it's like that's what's inside of us and this is how we can be destroyed and so on so it's a very kind of Frey and basic need in human beings to also understand our dark side or Union rather that we should understand it um so it's little by little I think these con of ss are becoming more acceptable uhhuh do you have a a dream about what would you like to happen to forensic um we wrote again we wrote a television show with a TV producer from too and he was supposed to be this um cuz I've always been involved in like anti-ra ISM and and not necessarily feminism so much but I ascribe to a lot of the feminist ideals so the idea was that we would show the female characters in the kind of darker side of finland's history and it would have been about five episodes where the host talks to living and living uh people and talks to experts and historians about U historical figures from the Past who have been women and and who have kind of lived on the dark side of of society so but but that never came to be for the same reasons um that that the app was wiped off the map but I'm hoping maybe maybe we'll get back to that television show with because the producer is still alive and still interested so let's see let's see what happens with that but it would it would probably be the TV show and certainly the Resurgence of the app yeah maybe okay um we are talking with demo s uh which is the co-founder of forensic like the the start of what we can call now the uh tourism from Hell he's also an business advisor here in turu so we are talking about what it's like to be an entrepreneur here in Finland let's talk about a little bit about your uh advisoring absolutely um is it is it difficult or not to be an entrepreneur here in Finland starting here in tur um it depends on what you do frankly um if you have an idea that's uh yours and it's Unique and it's different from everybody else then I would say that it's not and I actually talked about this cuz I knew this interview was coming so I I kind of talked to some people who have started businesses here old clients stakeholders in our organization and uh one definite positive is that the government is quite willing to support support you uh with your idea for a business if you have a good idea you have a good plan the math checks out so you have realistic calculations the government has all kinds of Grants and helps that it can it can give you to get started so there's that there are also advising organizations that will help you with the paperwork and how do I set it up what do the taxes mean and so on um so definitely um it's easy let's say easier than it was already 10 years ago from that perspective but of course um uh you you also have to especially in this financial situation because Finland is in a bit of a a hole financially um so you you really have to kind of you have to have a good plan the math needs to check out it needs to be realistic M um and you have to have uh an idea of growth and clients already ready before you start the business so now is not really frankly the time to just see if maybe your wings will fly but now is the time to really plan and make sure that that um that you know what you're getting into but if you do know what you're getting into you're passionate about it you're good at doing it um it's not you know I like I always always tell my clients that it's not Nuclear Physics I mean there are literally thousands and thousands of people uh supporting themselves as entrepreneurs in Finland and many of them are immigrants so they've already done it but in that sense because yeah there is this uh organization that is called U business fing right that is like this um organization that tries to help to develop new businesses and hoping that they are going to growth outside inside and outside F yeah uh the goal is to create like uh Endeavors and companies that are innovating or doesn't matter if they are innovating and you can I don't know start like a restaurant or start like a I don't know like a neat post I don't know uh what's the best road to think of um the best road of course you always have to build on customers that you're going to generate income you're going to generate uh profit and so on so of course you absolutely can't build your company on kind of endless stream of help and grants and that kind of a thing but again it depends on what you're doing so if you're starting let's say a restaurant uh you're more than welcome to come to us uh we have business advisers who will help you make calculations who will help you do some basic level market research and we can take a look at your case individually so I I I generally have this policy of kind of avoiding rules of thumb you know that that because it's so different for so different people meet with a business adviser if you're in turu come to us will help you and uh and have an an individual estimate made okay but in that sense like Society in Finland yeah is like more traditional oriented or is very open to Innovation and to new things what do you think about that um if you had asked me this question let's say 20 years ago I would have given you a different answer because then we had Nokia and Nokia was the kind of Flagship and everybody else just worked Nokia took care of finland's financial affairs basically and generated the tax income and so on but now that Nokia has has gone well not gone under but it's not as anywhere near as big as it was back then so now the I think it's because of that partly that people are more open to the idea of supporting yourself and building your own mini noia rather than trusting the the behem and the the Giants of the industry so now people are much more open uh young people especially they're much more uh Innovative in terms of you know not just when you graduate well where who's going to give me a job but rather nowadays they tend to also think about should I give myself a job and employ myself so oh they are thinking that maybe I My Own Boss that like going and having a salary like yeah certainly it's not like 5050 yet I think but it's it's definitely changed I was born in 84 and in my generation uh an entrepreneur was somebody who couldn't get a job so they had to like start their own company cuz nobody would gracefully give them a job like come to me and I'll I'll pay you but now it's like it's it's it's a much more realistic option that I'm going to do my own thing and Finland is also more connected with the world now than it than it was back then so your clientship can be like your your job can be on the internet so it's not in corio or hink or Thum you just live somewhere but you work in in the internet you work online and that's also added to this concept of doing your own thing and and and U yeah so it's it's the Paradigm is Shifting slowly but I think it's shifting nevertheless do you recall like a milestone about maybe that have started the change in the perception of being an entrepreneur for being like somebody that cannot get a job to being very appealing and attractive especially for the for the younger ones to say I'm going to have my own thing I think it's it's well this is just my kind of feeling I don't have any any data on this the the the school of Economics will give you a better estimate but my feeling is that it had something to do with the destruction or the let's say the down scaling of Nokia okay because somehow the Nokia was like the the business in Finland and then the rest of us were kind of employees but then I I worked at Nokia too for a while yeah for one summer I assembled the phones over there so nice but back then uh I I think it has to do with Nokia and people kind of realizing that that the next noia is still awaiting its its turn so I think that had it and of course it also has to do with teachers and and the media environment like young people see YouTubers for example who make like 100,000 a year talking to a camera about their lives or interviewing other people about their lives so um that's probably changing things as well and um of course Finland is also part of global Trends I think this is maybe also a kind of paneuropean phenomenon that that you're more kind of open to the idea of taking control of your own destiny okay you said that filal more connected than before um internet travels Etc um is Finland like a test Market that you can use I don't know for try to spread something some service some product and then like go big and start like spreading all over Europe than Latin America or maybe I think Finland would be if you think of Finland as a test Market I think the Digital Services would be a pretty good idea because we're we were small as we are and though we're kind of on the periphery of Europe we are used to the phones and the and that kind of a thing we were like everybody had a 6110 Nokia when I was a kid and so on so Finland is quite ditchy native we're quite good at handling our Affairs through computers like you need to reserve a time for the hospital so you reserve it maybe even I communicate with my doctor I have diabetes and I communicate with my doctor through this online platform um and my mom who is like 77 or 78 she's like really good with Instagram and so on so some kind of like Digital Services I think fins are used to using them we have a long history of using them so a digital Services if you can make it in Finland and Finns think it's really good I think that's something that will work another thing would be like healthc care services which in Finland are on a quite a high level so if you want to test uh I don't know some new treatment or some new way of organizing work in a health care facility finet would be a pretty good laboratory for something like that what about the these industries that are not like more traditional but they are always innovating like like under the hood uh I'm talking about uh companies that are related to Forest that are related to uh mining that are related to energy sure what about that sure are are options maybe for entrepreneurs from F and from the whole world to come to see what's going on yeah our forests are are quite famous and what we make from the forest how the forests are tended to um these are things that I think Finland does consult the EU on for example so for sure nature uh I don't know how far we are in in terms of green energy but at least there are quite a few like government incentives to to be green in the way you operate in the business sector and so on so yeah and of course we also have like we manufacture the pors the forest machines that could be used to harvest and tend to Forest and create wood and and for for houses and whatnot so yeah those are definitely also in Industries um in my experience being here in Finland uh you Finland I don't know any organism ask for a lot of paperish yeah yeah uh paper for declaring yourself paper that you are a professional paper for uh is that a very difficult thing to understand from for people especially coming from abroad uh it can be but that's part of the reason why we have organizations like our organization the International House to is so that the potential that's in these people and the immigrants because we need them for jobs and Innovation and and so on Finnish population is getting quite old so we're having demographic problems so we need people people here and part of the reason why organizations like ARS exist is so that nobody's potential is kind of blocked by paper work or you didn't feel the right form or something like that so we help you with that and also there's been some serious lightening of that bureaucracy over the years I don't know if it's still on the level that it should be on but it's like the threshold to the let's say the pile of paper is coming down a little bit year after year so it's it's not that difficult again it's not Nuclear Physics uh and will help you do whatever you need to do and there are these International houses all over Finland it's not just tooru so somebody will help you with this if it if it feels overwhelming to you okay last thing I want to ask you and in this time like uh like seeing the camera sure uh maybe your website maybe uh somewhere digital where people can find you they have some questions or they want to talk more about far or for business advisory uh the camera is yours um let's say you can if you if we go in the order that we went in the interview my blog is at www. for and seek. apppp that's f o r e n s e e k.a uhhuh so that has hyperlinks to my Instagram and and and so on uh if you want to talk to me as a as an adviser if you need that kind of help uh business-wise for your own your own dreams and Endeavors uh you can go to www.t fi or is it do or if you just Google international house tole it's available in English and you just click like Services business advisor and you can make a reservation for a time or give us a call our numbers are there we have a really low threshold for receiving people just give us a call or reserve a Time yourself and we'll take it from there thank you so much for your thank you so much for the invitation this is a really cool concept yeah this is our first interview of this numer Uno numer Uno yeah that's correct fantastic so if you like this content please press on like and follow us then we're going to have like this new content in English from entrepreneurs from here from Finland whole Europe hopefully the whole world see you on the next time this was entrepreneur seats bye-bye or mo mo thank you fantastic [Music]

2024-10-01 20:17

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