Jori walks into the Helsinki Incubators office with the calm of someone who’s done this before, just not this exactly. Over the past decade, he’s been many things: a freelance photographer, a luxury car shooter in Monaco, a startup founder in Barcelona, and now, a coach and mentor for entrepreneurs.
“I was doing portrait shoots in Finland,” he says, “Then I moved to Barcelona. Weddings, people… and later, luxury cars. I was shooting in Monaco, Palma de Mallorca, Andorra, Hannover. It was beautiful, good clients, good portfolio. But then I realized this whole business depended on me. If something happened to me, it would stop completely.”
That realization led him, unexpectedly, to agriculture. In 2019, Jori launched his first startup in Catalonia: a marketplace for agricultural machinery. He laughs a little when he tells the story. “I had no background in agriculture. I just started asking farmers for their feedback, their opinions. Every conversation was new territory.”
The platform started gaining attention fast. “I had a lot of followers on Instagram, and suddenly requests were coming from all over Spain. That was actually a problem,” he admits. “Instead of focusing on Catalonia, I tried to cover too much too quickly. And then COVID came.”
Spain locked down hard, and the startup collapsed under the weight of timing. Jori returned to Finland, out of funds but not out of drive. Soon, he launched a second startup (this time on home soil) and eventually shifted into mentoring others. These days, he spends his time helping founders navigate the early, often messy stages of building something from scratch.
“As a mentor or coach, I can connect them quickly,” he explains. “If they need early users, help with market research and go-to-market strategy, or they want to talk to government offices, I have those connections. When I tell people these founders are coming from the university, from Pathways, it’s already much higher trust than if they just knock on the door from the street.”
“You Don’t Need Money to Start”
Many of the founders he works with are foreigners, just as he once was in Spain. “I totally understand their fears,” he says. “The language, the feeling of being an outsider. It can make you doubt yourself. So I help them build trust, and also show them they don’t need money to start.”
When founders come to him asking how to find funding, his answer is simple: “You don’t need money to start,” he says. “Early-stage money is expensive and won’t solve your problems. Instead of pitching to investors, go talk to potential customers. Try to get feedback or even pre-orders. You don’t need a product yet. It’s like when you order a new car, you pay 20 percent up front and they only build it after that. They’re basically selling air first.”
It’s this mix of practicality and lived experience that makes Jori such a valued presence in the Pathways programme. He’s not here to give grand speeches about hustle culture. He’s here to make things easier, faster, and more possible for people just starting out, especially those doing it in a new country, as he once did.
His coaching role here at the University of Helsinki started, like many good things, by accident.
“At the time I had my second company, Switchooo,” he recalls. “The Helsinki Incubators were launching the first Biosphere incubator, and there was an open doors event in our co-working office. I was just sitting there listening, and sharing my thoughts from an entrepreneur’s point of view. The programme manager liked that I knew so many things, and he invited me to join as a mentor. And I said, well, sure. I’m more than happy to share my knowledge with future entrepreneurs.”
He smiles at the memory. “Right place, right time.”
Since then, he’s stayed because he sees how much it matters. “I think it’s very important for Finland, for society, that we have new entrepreneurs,” he says. “Nowadays it’s a sad situation because big companies are going bankrupt or leaving Finland. We need more entrepreneurs. And it’s nice to see the government and universities trying to create them, from people like researchers or students.”
Competition is fierce, he points out. “There’s a big fight between countries right now. Spain, Portugal - they’re very attractive to startups. So Finland has to support innovation if we want to stay in the game.”
And support, he insists, is exactly what the Pathways programme offers. “When I had my first startup in Barcelona, there was nothing like this. Some government offices, yes, but mostly in Catalan, and rarely in English. Here, students get all of this for free. They can come talk with coaches, get advice, get real feedback.”
Would he recommend it even to people unsure if entrepreneurship is for them? “Definitely. Because it doesn’t cost anything, and you get very valuable information in a short time. And also you get to talk with people like me,” he adds, grinning. “It’s better to try and regret, than regret not trying.”
Asked what he would tell his younger self at the beginning of his entrepreneurial path, Jori doesn’t hesitate. “Don’t be scared. It doesn’t bite. Nothing bad is going to happen. Just try it.”
The more you talk about your idea, the stronger it becomes
He says no one he’s coached has ever regretted joining an incubator or pre-incubator. “Not one. Even if they forget about entrepreneurship later, they’ve learned something that helps them in everyday work life. Because these programmes change your mindset.”
How?
“To be very open-minded,” he says. “To never say no. To try things. To be bold.”
"Feedback makes it better"
That shift isn’t always easy, especially for shy people, but he’s seen it happen. “They become a new version of themselves,” he says. “At the start, many don’t want to share their ideas. They’re afraid someone will steal it. But the more you talk about your idea, the stronger it becomes. You get different points of view. Feedback makes it better.”
It’s also about unlearning what school teaches. “In school they say: don’t copy, do it by yourself. But entrepreneurship is the opposite. You have to ask for help, from your team, from other entrepreneurs, even from big companies. There’s so much collaboration. You’re working toward a common mission.”
For students coming from fields like social sciences or arts, who might see the startup world as too commercial, Jori offers a reassuring perspective. “Not every project has to be a unicorn,” he says. “It’s fine if it just pays salaries and does something important - maybe for the government, or for sustainability, or for art. That’s valuable too.”
That same understanding - that people enter entrepreneurship with different ambitions and levels of readiness, led him to help reshape the Pathways programme itself. This year, he introduced two new paths: the Explorer track and the Builder track.
The Explorer track keeps Pathways as an open, low-pressure way to try out ideas and build an entrepreneurial mindset, while the Builder track supports those who are ready to start building their companies from day one. It’s a structure designed to meet participants where they are, whether they want to simply explore or are eager to launch.
It’s also something entirely new: no other pre-incubator in Finland has tested a model like this before. By offering two distinct paths, Pathways now gives space to a wider range of future founders and makes the journey feel possible for everyone.
Alongside mentoring and developing programs like Pathways, Jori has also launched a podcast, “
The call for applications to Pathways is