Growth companies Women had to listen to penis stuff in Swapie, but the harassment is not hampered by strong growth: The company received a financing pot of more than 100 million euros

In September 2021 HS Vision said On the problems of Swappie’s corporate culture. Employee interviews revealed experiences of harassment and discrimination.

Shortly after that in the same month Emma Lehikoinen, 28, was appointed Chief Operating Officer of Swappie. He is responsible for managing the company’s business. Lehikoinen has also taken part in developing the company’s culture as part of Swappie’s management team. Diversity and diversity issues are important to him.

“We have been ready to learn from mistakes and evolve so that we can be leaders in the themes of diversity and inclusion,” says Lehikoinen.

However, the appointment was not the answer to the problems, they just happened together over time, Swappie’s CEO Sami Marttinen, 31, says. The position of chief operating officer had been in search and the recruitment process had been underway for some time.

Lehikoinen had hard screens inside Swappie. When he started in the spring of 2020 as head of Swappie’s expansion, the company only operated in five countries. There are now 15 countries.

“Of our new countries, Poland and Spain are already significant to us, and there has been good progress. We are starting to be routine in opening new countries, ”says Lehikoinen.

Prior to that, Lehikoinen had served as Slush’s Executive Vice President and Program Director. The board position in the Startup Foundation, which also runs Slushiak, tells more about the appreciation in the Finnish startup field.

Few executives of his peers have business responsibilities in a company of more than one hundred million euros. The closest benchmark is Wolt’s international expansion Marianne Vikkula Who is Slush ‘s former managing director.

Read more: “Men need a lot of sex” – Swappie is a fast-growing Finnish technology company where women have to listen to penis stuff. The CEO apologizes.

Read more: Swappie announced actions the company intends to take to remedy the harmful work culture – Experts say this should be the response to harassment

Swappie is an online store for used smartphones and one of the fastest growing technology companies in Europe. The hustle and bustle and problems that have emerged in the corporate culture do not seem to have slowed Swappie’s growth.

The company has now raised a funding pot of EUR 108 million to support its growth.

Emma Lehikoinen and Sami Marttinen are actually talking about it.

With the round of financing, Swappie will focus primarily on growth in its current operating countries.

The strong pace of expansion into new markets seen in a couple of years is therefore slowing down. Of Swappie’s current 15 countries, the company has expanded during the twelve corona pandemics, the last two years.

“We have just scratched the surface in this market,” says Marttinen.

Swappie’s business model also requires a lot of working capital, as it buys all refurbished phones and their spare parts on its own balance sheet. It therefore needs to strengthen its capital in order to meet consumer demand.

The company also spends a lot of money on marketing and branding.

“We have been the first player in several countries to sell factory-serviced electronics. It is always up to you to tell consumers why you should choose a serviced phone instead of a new one, ”says Lehikoinen.

According to Sami Marttinen, Swappie’s financial figures for 2021 have not yet been completed, and the company does not now share preliminary information about them.

While in 2019 the company’s turnover was EUR 34 million, in 2020 the turnover had increased to EUR 97 million. Now, in any case, Swappie has exceeded its turnover of at least one hundred million euros. Growth has been particularly strong in Germany and Italy, for example.

According to Lehikoinen, the growth rate will continue to be strong this year as well. However, the company does not yet want to comment publicly on the level of turnover it is aiming for this year.

To date, Swappie has sold more than a million refurbished smartphones.

Although Swappie as a whole is still loss-making, and according to Marttinen, the company is already profitable in several countries where it has been operating for a longer period of time. Opening up a new market will initially involve a lot of investment in, for example, team recruitment, marketing and brand awareness.

With Swapie now having around 1,200 employees, the goal is to increase the number of employees to 2,200 by the end of 2022.

The telephone service factory in Estonia, which opened last spring, already employs 400 people. Next, Swappie plans to develop its logistics, especially in Central Europe. According to Marttinen, about half of the recruitments are still in Finland.

“Most jobs are created in maintenance and logistics as well as customer service. Alongside these, product development is a big team that we also develop, ”says Marttinen.

According to Marttinen, if Swappie no longer expanded into new countries, it would no longer need to seek more capital from investors at this growth rate. But in the long run, the goal is to be the global market leader in the industry.

“It is possible that we will raise more money in the future once we have achieved our goal in Europe,” says Marttinen.

HS Vision an article written in the fall of 2021 highlighted two types of problems. Some of the interviewees had experienced or witnessed sexual harassment and inappropriate use. Some, on the other hand, have experienced the company’s culture, recruitment practices and opportunities for promotion as discriminatory and unfair.

Hard growth and rapid expansion have been one of the reasons behind Swappie’s corporate culture problems, Marttinen estimates. According to him, early-stage companies often focus so much on growth and recruitment that building culture and processes is forgotten.

“I recommend everyone to introduce pulse surveys and whistle blowing channels as early as possible. The activities of the teams must not only measure the results, but also the well-being of the people, ”says Marttinen.

According to his assessment, the company has been able to address the problems that talked to employees last fall. For example, the company has trained all its staff and supervisors in inclusive management, brainstorming (unconcious bias) in recruitment and multicultural communication. The number of HR staff has also been increased.

According to Marttinen, many aspects of the company’s internal measurements of job satisfaction and well-being have improved slightly over the past autumn.

“It doesn’t mean we’re ready by any means. But we have evolved. We are now the market leader in our field in Europe. If the goal is to grow globally, we need to compare ourselves to the world’s top companies and how a work culture has been built there, ”says Marttinen.

Raising the gender of a young female leader in the media feels precisely conventional. However, in the very male-dominated field of technology, it is a matter of structural skew with a wider societal significance. Globally, women are under-represented in the technology sector, and in Finland only 22 percent of the experts in the field are women.

“Diversity issues are a big problem across the technology industry. The Finnish growth business field does not have very many role models and examples of how to build a diverse group of employees and an inclusive culture, ”Lehikoinen points out.

Swappie’s employees represent more than 60 nationalities, and the age structure focuses on young employees. 35 percent of the company’s employees are women and 36 percent of the executives are women.

According to Lehikoinen, diversity is not a nice thing separate from business, but part of the business. If the goal is to operate globally in different markets and reach different consumer groups, it is also good for employees and the management team to reflect the wider society.

Financing round shareholder in the lead investor, Verdane Janne Holmia says corporate culture is also an important area for an investor to make when making an investment decision.

According to Holmia, the investor has had an in-depth discussion with the Swappie team before the investment. Venture capitalists usually conduct background checks on portfolio companies, ie due diligenceand now often includes indicators related to corporate responsibility and culture.

“Companies are made up of people who work there, so nothing is more important than culture. Swappie’s management has shown that they take these issues seriously and invest heavily in developing HR processes, culture and diversity, ”Holmia estimates.

From an investor’s perspective, Swappie is Holmia’s exceptional company in the entire growth business field.

“There aren’t many others that have grown at three-digit growth rates every year since its inception.”