Apaja Founder Looking For New Challenges

By Ville Vesterinen, September 24, 2008, 4 Comments

Asmo Halinen, one of the original three Apaja founders, has just announced through Jaiku that he is looking for new challenges. In other words, he has (or will resign soon) from Apaja's services.

Apaja Online Entertainment is focused on creating community gaming websites under the name of Playray. The Finnish service is called Aapeli and is one of the most popular entertainment sites in Finland.

Apaja has recently gone through quite a bit of transition in its managerial positions. Inka Mero was the CEO for some time, before she left for maternity leave. Tiina Zilliacus took over after Inka as Apaja continued to expand its services abroad to Turkey and Hungary, to name a few countries. A year ago, 1.75 million euros were invested into Apaja by Martin Trigon Venture Partners.

We'll see if we can get a word from Asmo on the reasons behind the decision and what those new challenges might be for this online game & community services heavyweight.

TOPICS apaja online entertainment asmo halinen inka mero martin trigon venture partners tiina zilliacus

4 Comments

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Asmo, September 24, 2008

The decision to take this step has been maturing for a long time already (long story indeed). The past 7 years in this company have been great, but I now just have an urge for something completely new!

I have already got numerous interesting contacts - it is great to see that 13 years of experience on internet businesses brings interest as much as one could expect.

I'll take my time now to really go through carefully all possible options and I'm eager & happy to hear about all intriguing challenges...