Last year we shared our first-ever highlight blog; a window into the passing year and an opportunity to reflect on all the challenges, highlights, and hard work that has contributed to where we are today as a company.
16 years after our humble beginnings in Joensuu, Finland — Valamis continues to push the boundaries of technology and innovation in learning. Without further ado, here are a few of our favourite highlights from 2019 and goals for 2020.
Valamis won awards and received recognition from top analysts:
Acquired companies, new offices, new clients and new employees:
Released new features & new partnerships:
101 Custom Slack Emojis created, including:
Valbo, an Arctic fox, our chatbot avatar and company mascot
Salamis, referring to our April Fool’s name change prank
A Black hole, to commemorate the first photo ever taken of a black hole in April
Finnish Matti, referring to the “Finnish Nightmares” cartoon character
Party parrots in many forms
Nationalities + spoken languages
15 nationalities + 18 spoken languages in the company
Valamisians come from:
🇫🇮Finland | 🇷🇺Russia | 🇳🇱Netherlands |
🇬🇧United Kingdom | 🇺🇸United States | 🇩🇪Germany |
🇸🇪Sweden | 🇷🇸Serbia | 🇭🇺Hungary |
🇮🇳India | 🇳🇵Nepal | 🇮🇷Iran |
🇹🇭Thailand | 🇨🇴Colombia | 🇭🇰Hong Kong/China |
Sauna time
11,024 hours spent in the sauna
Instagram takeovers
11 #ValamisTakeovers
3 New offices
Valbo Travels
Our company mascot has been to 9 countries
“When I joined the company almost 10 years ago, we had 20 employees. In June 2019, we hired our 200th employee. Growth and internationalization have been the most common factors in my function during the ongoing year. From my point of view, the best highlight of the year 2019 was our first international merger. Instead of growth, our HR goal for 2020 is to make the organization excel in its line of business by finding the best roles for every employee, caring for all employees and achieving operational efficiency.”
– Maria Vihtkari, Chief Human Resources Officer
“I have been responsible for Valamis product management, design, and development since January 2019. Over the past year at Valamis, I have enjoyed getting to meet other Valamisians all around the world, and work with some of the biggest companies in the world to discuss their future needs regarding employee skill development. I am passionate about improving Valamis’ customer-focused service design and we will continue to re-organize our organization and processes to support our customers. Our vision for 2020 is to focus on developing Valamis to support the productivity and measurement of learning.”
– Pauliina Kulla, Chief Product Officer
“In 2019 we received many positive outcomes as a result of our data-oriented strategy. The new architecture in the major product release of Valamis 4 received interest from all around the globe. In 2020, we will continue to grow by establishing our first office in Asia.”
– Jussi Hurskainen, CEO, Valamis