6.9.2023
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Founder Story

Founder Story: Antti Nivala

Antti Nivala
Founder Story

Founder Story: Antti Nivala

by
Antti Nivala
December 14, 2022
Antti joined Costa Commerce as one of the four co-founders, bringing to the team the grit and experience to drive digital growth development in an enterprise context. He has previously worked at S-Pankki as a product owner of the digital banking solutions, Finnair, and as a consultant, planning and delivering digital services and mobile applications.

Antti, tell us a bit about your ambitions and experience

“I am a seasoned digital commerce expert with a proven track record of leading the development and delivery of high volume digital services. I am skilled at guiding products towards commercial success while balancing technical feasibility and the needs of multiple business stakeholders. I have extensive experience in both enterprise and small business contexts, generating sustainable revenue and business growth through digital services.”

Where did it all start?

“I graduated from university right in time before the financial crisis of 2008, and I was fortunate to start working in IT. The company I worked for had some innovative ideas and elegant solutions, and I got to lead a team in one of the first Azure cloud projects in Finland. We built a custom payment solution to drive our clients' customer loyalty.” 

“For me the best thing has always been how cabilities are built from customer needs upward. It takes some courage to start from that and build something small first. Most of all one needs a dedicated team that can see the bigger picture and align their ways of working. By following this mindset I’ve achieved success across multiple projects, in complex enterprise environments, with the pressure of schedules, tight budgets and oftentimes conflicting stakeholder needs.”

“Antti has deep experience in leading and building custom products with high dedication and focus. He is a great colleague and asset to Costa Commerce, not only because he embraces complexity head-on and has a lot of experience. On top of that, he is a humble guy who can listen to customers with empathy, without jumping too fast to cookie-cutter solutions. He has his feet on the ground, but can also run fast when necessary.” 

Antton

So Antti, why Costa Commerce?

“I’ve seen so many organizations that are not realizing their digital growth potential. Streamlining and aligning ways of working – processes – are an underutilized superpower. Assigning responsibility and ownership correctly to ensure the best possible end result is crucial. Leveraging data and customer insight as a basis for decision-making rather than relying only on specialists’ insights. It is not rocket science, but finding the best ways forward requires someone to lead the process and to bring the voice of reason.”

"Antti is a digital development professional with the ability to understand and drive business outcomes in development projects. He is a good and trustworthy team member with ability to deliver results in digital business and he is a fun guy to work with".

Carl-Edvard Holmberg

Antti’s prior colleague

What should people do, if they want to get in touch with you?

“If you want to have a chat, share ideas or you think we could work together, please send me a message through LinkedIn, I would be happy to listen and share some ideas.