Especially in Finland, which is known for its dismal idioms, someone might advise me not to count my chickens until they’ve hatched. I am of course referring to the Bilot-Louhia merger that was signed this summer. Post-merger integration is still its early stages and seasoned M&A professionals would say it is way too early to gauge if this one will prove to be successful.
But I can’t help myself. We held a customer event a few weeks ago where our joint capabilities took the shape of several live examples of customer cases in proofing AI and Machine Learning. Witnessing these cases and also seeing first-hand the genuine excitement in the attentive audience was very emotional. It took me back a couple of months to the early days of this merging process.
Love and marriage
When we initially agreed with Louhia that the BilotGo.ai reverse hackathon sounds like a brilliant idea, I had the first flash vision of where this cooperation might take us. It was an electric feeling to notice that there is indeed a very complimentary portfolio fit. Also culturally, both parties had a very no-bullshit, getting things done attitude, certain juvenile courage to leap into the unknown based on intuition. There was the same tickling sensation as when you hold hands for the first time on your first date.
We first started secretly going steady, getting secretly engaged and then walked up the aisle and both said ’I do’. This is of course a clumsy analogy of a love story, because there was no ceremony, there were no wedding guests and nobody heard about the marriage until just afterwards. Still, the immediate primitive reaction from all the relatives was unanimously positive and the entire parish was excited about the newly-formed bond.
The family grows
Very close to nine months after the first date, the newly-weds gave birth to nothing less than quadruplets: the four embedded AI hacks from BilotGo.ai – Kone, Raisioagro, Reima and Altia. Although they are still infants, you can easily recognize where the cases inherited their features from. With such great parents, all four will eventually mature and become model citizens in their respective environments.
Now the honeymoon is over and life has settled in its tracks and things are largely, as we say, ‘business as usual’. Except that it is not quite usual at all. The newly-formed couple is much more than the sum of its halves and the future has massive potential. It is a foundation of a great legacy with many offspring to be expected.
But as said, let’s not count the chickens quite yet. We still have quite a lot to do and we will firmly and steadily get everything organized. From where I stand and as an eternal optimist, the outlook is very positive and there are so many things to be looking forward to. It feels like a match made in heaven.
