Sobre Nós
Management
Timo Soininen
Chief Executive Officer
Mr. Soininen was appointed CEO of Sulake in August 2001. Prior to this, he worked for online recruitment company StepStone as Marketing Director for Finland and Sweden. Soininen has over ten years’ experience and a proven track record from senior posts in consumer and B2B marketing functions for international brand companies (StepStone Ltd., United Biscuits Ltd./Fazer Biscuits Ltd., SCA Mölnlycke). Soininen holds a M.Sc. (Econ.) degree in Marketing from Helsinki School of Economics.
Outi Henriksson
Chief Financial Officer
Mrs. Henriksson was appointed CFO of Sulake in September 2006. Prior to her career at Sulake, Mrs. Henriksson worked as CFO at LaNetro Zed, based in Madrid and earlier in Helsinki. Prior to Zed she held the position of Finance Director of Nordic telecoms group Sonera Services business. Henriksson has close to ten years of senior management experience from telecommunications and online services finance and M&A. At LaNetro Zed, Mrs. Henriksson held a key role running through an IPO process and listing preparations, business and financial restructurings, cash management and tax structures. Henriksson holds a M.Sc. (Econ.) degree from Turku School of Economics.
Sampo Karjalainen
Co-founder, Chief Creative Officer
Mr. Karjalainen co-founded Sulake in 2000 with friend and colleague Aapo Kyrolä and to this day he continues to drive the company’s creative strategy. Mr. Karjalainen began his career as a graphic designer and animator, working with pioneering new media companies To the Point (1994-1998) and Satama Interactive (1998 – 1999) before joining Taivas where Sulake was founded.
Tero Raij
Executive Vice President, Habbo Product and User Sales
Mr. Raij joined Sulake in November 2004 and he is responsible for Habbo Online Products and Sulake's development function. Before joining Sulake he was working for Sonera Zed as Senior Business Manager and his responsibility areas among other things were mobile communication services and WAP sales channel. Prior to that, he was building up Sonera’s internet business in the Netherlands and in Finland. Tero holds a M.Sc degree from the Helsinki University of Technology.
Osma Ahvenlampi
Chief Technology Officer
Mr. Ahvenlampi joined Sulake in August 2003 with responsibilities ranging from management of the production infrastructure and support systems to coordinating process improvement and systems architecture across product development, operations and product management. Prior to Sulake, he worked as software architect and technical project manager at a financial software vendor Quartal, and as the technology and software engineering competence lead at internationally recognized internet consultancy Razorfish Finland since 1997.
Teemu Huuhtanen
Executive Vice President, Marketing & Business Development; President, North America
Mr. Huuhtanen was appointed VP, Sales of Sulake in January 2003. Prior to this, he worked for mobile entertainment & application company Small Planet as EVP. Prior to this, he was the CEO of Orchimedia, a mobile & internet entertainment company. Huuhtanen has over eight years’ experience and a proven track record from senior posts in consumer and B2B sales & business development functions for several international digital entertainment start-up companies (Small Planet, Orchimedia and mm2 consultancy company). Huuhtanen has studied at Kuopio Polytechnic and University of Kuopio.
Phil Guest
SVP, Global Ad Sales
Mr. Guest joined Sulake in February 2007 as UK Managing Director. His duties soon extended to include other European markets as Regional Director until in 2009 when he took on the task of building Habbo’s Global Advertising business. Before joining Sulake Mr. Guest worked at AOL as Director of Strategic Alliances and prior to that he was Commercial Director for Europe at Fox Kids children's television network. His early days were spent with Emap’s consumer magazine division before joining the Internet revolution in 1998 with London’s number one commercial radio station, Capital Radio.
História do Projeto
History
The story of Sulake started in 1999, when two young Finnish guys, Sampo Karjalainen and Aapo Kyrölä, made an online application called Mobiles Disco for their friends' band. Mobiles Disco was purely a free-time project, but, once launched on the internet, this multi-user online community became a huge success gathering users around the world. The first Habbo community was born.
Habbo becomes an international brand
With the help from Finnish advertising agency Taivas, Sampo and Aapo started to develop the idea of a multiplayer online game further. Soon the company Sulake was founded and the first virtual community, Hotelli Kultakala (Hotel Goldfish), was launched in Finland in August 2000. After the huge success of the first Habbo launch, Habbo Hotel was opened in the UK as well and Habbo was officially born as a brand. Two new communities were launched in 2001 and four in 2003, while at the same time the technical platform was re-built and the concept further developed.
Millions of teenagers get attracted to Habbo
During 2004, Sulake as a company and Habbo Hotel as a community chain grew dramatically. By the end of 2004 there were 16 online communities on four different continents and Sulake had over 160 employees.
In 2005 and 2006, Habbo further strengthened its presence around the world and currently there are localized Habbo communities in 31 countries on six continents. Teenagers around the world have created over 162 million Habbo characters and 16.5 million unique visitors visit Habbo every month.
Sulake takes a step towards social networking
Sulake aims to broaden the company’s product portfolio with other kinds of game and community concepts for different target audiences. In April 2007 Sulake acquired Dynamoid, a company behind IRC-Galleria, the leading social networking service in Finland.
In December 2009, all 31 of Habbo Hotel’s international communities were launched inside the world’s largest social network site Facebook. Through Facebook Connect, Habbo users around the world can easily find their Facebook friends in Habbo Hotel and share their in-world experiences.
Habbo Hotel will soon be connected also with many other social networks and web services, including MySpace, Yahoo! and Google.
Bobba Bar – a virtual bar on the go
During autumn 2009 Sulake launched Bobba Bar, a completely new type of service aimed for the mobile. The virtual bar – a service first of its kind – is a place for over 17 year-old mobile phone owners to make friends and date people from all over the world. More about Bobba Bar.
Nossos Usuários
Corporate social responsibility
Sulake is a company with strong values and responsibility towards its customers, employees and its environment. Pro and Play are the two words that the “Sulake Way” is built around. To put it simply: Sulake is a professional company with a playful mind. Sulake employees think and act in a proactive and playful way. Pro and Play can be interpreted in innovative ways.
Co-operation with goodwill partners
One of Sulake’s objectives as a company is to be a good citizen and to be socially responsible. The majority of our customers are teenagers between 12 and 16 – an age group that traditionally is considered a hard target for goodwill and charity organizations. Habbo has proven to be an effective tool for this kind of communication and thus Sulake’s aim is to assist organizations in utilizing the opportunity in the best way.
Sulake cooperates with close to 30 different goodwill and youth organizations around the world. We have ongoing partnerships in different regions with organizations such as Unicef, the Red Cross, Powerchild, Childright and FRANK.
InfoBus: reaching teenagers where they are
The most common way of participation for the goodwill organizations in Habbo is via a concept called the InfoBus. In short, the InfoBus is a virtual environment where the partner’s experts and the Habbo users come together to discuss topics in a stimulating and exciting setting. The InfoBus gives different organizations a perfect place to meet teenagers where they naturally are – and in one of the most popular features in the majority of Habbo communities. Usually there are queues of Habbos outside the bus even if there are no sessions taking place. The InfoBus has also won several awards for its innovative concept.
Working at Sulake
"It's all about creativity, innovation, professionalism and FUN!"
Sulake is a global company where professionalism meets playfulness. Currently we are over 330 online entertainment professionals around the world working for the same goals: to make the world a happier place and to run a growing and successful global online business at the same time.Cultural diversity is always present at Sulake. We have offices in 15 countries with headquarters in Helsinki, Finland. Over 35 nationalities contribute to the companies’ success. So no matter where you’re from or what your background is, you might be the perfect candidate for us!
Sulake’s working culture is very open-minded, innovative and collaborative. We endorse creativeness and contribution. Everyone can and should contribute! We have job opportunities for smart and professional people from various fields. If you want to be a part of a world-leader in online entertainment, check out the open positions and apply now or send us an open application!
Check out our recruitment video!
Li Ma, Director, Payment and eCommerce Services, Sulake Corporation
“Sulake is an international, inspiring, professional and meanwhile fun working place.” "In Sulake I have the opportunity to work with people all over the world, and truly experience different business cultures. My job fits my background well, which makes me feel confident and meanwhile challenged as I am encouraged to improve the current practice and generate new ideas.
Sulake is a growing company, which provides you with opportunities to exercise your ideas, expand responsibilities and grow together with the company. Moreover, the working atmosphere in Sulake is very open-minded and international as the personnel consists of multiple nationalities with a variety of cultural backgrounds. For anyone wanting to be a professional in the e-commerce industry, Sulake provides you with the perfect playing field, the instruments, the practice and the whole professional team to work with.”