About Us
75 years of experience in International Business.
At Your Service.
Our Story
The story of Market Entry Partner begins at Arab Health 2018, where a couple of likeminded exporters found the power collaboration and paying it forward.
In 2020, COVID19 postponed The Dubai World Fair. Suddenly we had little business and lots of time in our hands. Then, a regional centre for economic development (ELY-Keskus) granted a COVID19 development subsidy for this project: Market Entry Partner. Soon, Rauno and Jan had two more likeminded talents with different talents in the team: Jukka and Juha. The idea in the making became a project and a product: A Scalable SaasService for SME companies, willing to expand their wings.
Our aim is to help companies to better prepared, succeed in entering new markets – and avoid doing at least some of our team’s own mistakes. The general idea is to bring a new value network thinking into all of our active countries, starting with Finland. We want to introduce new learning processes and best practices.
Rauno Saarnio
CMO. Rauno is an entrepreneur with 40 years of experience of international business – and still learning new things.
During the past 3 years time he has visited 30+ countries and collected tons of information for his own company’s benefit. And now, he is sharing all that knowledge with the Market Entry Partner service.
Rauno has also played professional ice hockey in Canada, Germany and Finland.
Jukka Viitanen
CDO. Dr. Viitanen is a serial entrepreneur, an acknowledged expert in innovation and business eco-system development and a keen digi-visionary for the platform age. He has extensive international experience in planning and managing innovation platforms and developing regional startup ecosystems, innovation hubs and industrial platforms. His representative references include Maria 0-1 startup platform and Campus Maria Scale-up Town in Helsinki, Energy Spin accelerator program in Vaasa, Urban business lab concept for the city of Turku as well as numerous projects in Asia, Middle-East and Europe.
Jan Erola
CIO. Jan has strong background in journalism (daily newspapers, business weekly, online, TV, radio) and publishing (former book publisher), movie & TV production, events ( e.g. former program director of Helsinki Book Fair with 80.000+ visitors and 1000 program slots) and communications, in Helsinki and London. As a consultant, he has participated in the communications of various successful main market listing IPOs on Nasdaq Helsinki. He has worked closely with the sport and health tech startup event SMASH, both in Helsinki and London.
Jan has been a weekly news commentator on TV1 morning show since 2000. He sings in parody rock band.
Juha Savimäki
CTO. Juha is an IT-professional and MSc with background in large scale international projects. This former entrepreneur is also experienced in being a faculty of courses and trainings held all over the world, giving extra competence for Market Entry Partner in international and multicultural trainings.