Was I sad to leave 19 years of university life? I honestly felt there was nothing left for me there and a new life experience was right in front of me. So no, not really.
Building a startup is not easy, everybody told me so and I have surely felt it already.
But building a company while you suddenly see yourself in the middle of a food competition turned into a reality TV show, is even harder!
When I applied to Suomalainen Menestysresepti, I honestly did not know what it was all about. I almost withdraw the application actually! I was not even a company yet then!! And I thought it was too early for my case. But because of my endless need to try new things, I didn’t … although I was not expecting a reality TV show!
Suomalainen Menestysresepti was a food competition where S-ryhmä (one of the biggest supermarket chains in Finland) was looking for the most innovative food product of the year. During the competition, the 6 finalists were given tasks to develop, tasks that would help us get the products ready to be sold in the supermarkets. The winner would get a shelf space in all their supermarkets!! Nice, right? Well, the tricky part was that they were filming us and that we had a really tight schedule.
The beginning of 2019 was one of the most stressful times of my life. I kept pitching my company business plan, meeting investors, visiting food companies, making samples of my products, going to Helsinki for the studio shooting days of the competition, taking care of the tasks they asked me, … and trying to be a good mother… Tough time!
