Celebrating 15 years in Finland
21.03.2023
Fifteen years ago today we came to Finland to bring my experience in a technology that wasn’t present here before.
I know what you are thinking. Ainoa makes wines that are different than has been done previously here, and it has put Finland on the world’s wine map. But that is not what I’m writing about. Before coming to Finland we made wines in the US using grapes. It wasn’t until we had a few years of attempts after we arrived that we figured out our methods for making world-class wines from berries.
The technology I brought with me was how to design instruments to perform the PCR reaction. PCR is a core technology used in molecular biology research, it enabled the human genome project, is used in DNA fingerprinting and eventually became the gold standard for how to detect and diagnose infections like HIV/AIDS, influenza, COVID-19, Chlamydia trachomatis, viral hepatitis, most forms of food poisoning and any other disease caused by bacteria, viruses or parasites. It was the focus of my career and I had been working on it since the late 1980s. Finnzymes, the company that recruited me to come here was small but was a technological leader in the production of enzymes that are used in the PCR reaction. In 2005 they decided to create their own instrument to provide a more complete offering for their customers (mostly researchers in molecular biology research labs). By hiring me as Director of Engineering and technology lead for the project, they would be able to have their mostly Finnish team of engineers avoid many of the mistakes that seemed to pop up again and again when inexperienced companies attempted to design PCR systems.
For three years, I managed the project and commuted to Espoo from my home outside Boston almost every month. But in late 2007 the project reached a critical stage and I was asked to bring the family and relocate to Finland for a year. At the time, our children were small (aged 3 & 1) and Paola was ready to move on from her job. So we found an apartment to rent in Espoo, packed our bags and arrived on Good Friday 2008.
Over the next year, we adapted and learned about our new home. Paola enjoyed the opportunity to spend her days with the children with activities in the public parks or libraries, something she had missed when they were born as she only had very short maternity leaves in the US (12 weeks for the first, just six weeks for the second) before needing to return to work. I enjoyed being with my coworkers every day, and then being able to step away from work at a reasonably hour to enjoy life at home. On weekends we explored nearby destinations, appreciated nature and ate healthier food than we grew up with. By the time the year was up, Paola and I looked at each other and decided we didn’t want to move back; so we stayed.
In 2010 Finnzymes was sold to an American company, but we were assured that I had work moving forward. Not long after we had our third child. Over the next year as she enjoyed her maternity time, Paola began to think how to go back to work and restart her career. But there was a problem. Finland was still suffering the aftereffects of Nokia’s collapse, and there were no jobs. She eventually decided that if she was to work, she would need to create her own company. But what to do? It was around this time that we realized just how unique and special the wines we had been making as a hobby were. No one in Finland was doing anything like them; could this be the opportunity for her to start own company? Paola dove into study, planning and putting together everything she needed to create an alcohol business in Finland. By 2013, everything was in place to register the company and begin making marketing test batches to see if the products had commercial potential.
Then it all fell apart. The American company that purchased Finnzymes had been laying off people as they restructured, and most of my old coworkers were let go over a period of a couple years. In June 2013, just as Paola was finalizing plans for the winery my turn came. Unemployed, not speaking Finnish and an expert in a technology for which there was no apparent need in Finland, we realized we had no choice, it was time to move back to the US.
But as we planned our move, something unexpected happened. I got a call from Tuomas Tenkanen, one of the Finnzymes founders. “David, I have a new company. Let’s talk”. By the end of that year, I found myself Lead Mechanical Engineer and PCR instrumentation expert at Mobidiag, part of a team creating an infectious disease system that took diagnostics to a new level. It was something I had been anticipating would happen for almost 15 years at that point, but the complexity and risk of getting such a system to work at the reliability level needed had always scared away the big companies around the world that I’d expected to do it. Yet the small Mobidiag team recruited in Finland and France had all the key pieces to make it work.
We were able to stay in Finland, but the long-term problem remained. The Mobidiag venture was risky, and there was a very good chance it would fold and put us back in the same situation. If on the other hand it was successful, the most likely outcome was that it would be purchased by a big foreign company. We had already gone through that and had no desire to repeat the experience.
Paola’s instincts were right; if we wanted to have control of our lives we needed to have control over our work as well. We decided I would work as an engineer while simultaneously the two of us would establish and grow the winery to the point where it could support us. We figured this would take about three years, but it turned into six years of working two full time jobs for me before in the summer 2020 I left Mobidiag. By then the development work on the diagnostics system was finished, and I was only handling small tasks as the company focus shifted to sales and marketing; my presence was not as needed there. Ainoa on the other hand was starting to take off. Working only evenings and weekends at the winery was no longer enough.
These days, we can devote all our focus on our passion; using the world’s best berries to create some of the world’s best wines. Ainoa continues to grow, and our future is up to us.
As for Mobidiag, I am happy to say the diagnostics system my coworkers and I designed was a success. In summer 2021, Mobidiag was sold to Hologic Corp of California for US $795 million – the largest sum ever paid for a private Finnish company. Better yet, Hologic has continued to invest and expand the Mobidiag operations in both Finland and France, more than doubling the workforce in both locations. It is a beating the odds Finnish success story worthy of a toast – using Ainoa wines of course.