About Taito.ai
We're building the people operations system you wish you'd had
A people ops product that does the work, so your team stays lean while the company grows.
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A top-down editorial photograph of a busy urban scramble crossing with diagonal white crosswalks and dozens of pedestrians captured mid-stride with motion blur — a visual metaphor for the flow of people through a growing organization.
Our story
Built from personal experience
Our founding team scaled startups such as Smartly.io and Swarmia from first hire to more than a thousand people. We saw the same pattern happen every time. People ops got distributed across founders and managers, the recurring work grew, and the people eventually hired to own it burned out before getting to the strategic half of the job.
Taito.ai is the product we wished we'd had. Taito means "skill" in Finnish. The name is a reference to what people ops is actually for: building a company where skill builds steadily, instead of one that overloads its managers with process.
Mission, values + goals
Mission, values + goals
At Taito.ai, we believe in the power of continuous growth, both for people and for organizations. Our mission is to enable teams and individuals to make real progress with minimal friction. We make people ops simple for companies of all sizes, so they can reach their full potential and thrive.
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Automate all manual work
We aim to automate all manual work, both for our customers and within our own team.
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Build products users love
We put users first—building products that deliver daily value, are intuitive, and genuinely enjoyable to use.
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Get the right stuff done
We focus on execution, prioritization, and getting things done, rather than over-planning or over-analyzing.
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You are trusted. Be bold.
We trust our team to make the right decisions and work to remove any bottlenecks that slow down fast execution and decision-making.
The team
Meet the team
building Taito.ai
A small team of founders, engineers, and people-ops practitioners who have had the problem themselves. We're hiring carefully and building deliberately. Say hello any time.
Kristo Ovaska
Founder, CEO
Founder and ex-CEO of Smartly.io; led it to $100M+ revenue and $5B in ad spend.
Mikko Kivelä
Founder, CPO
Early Smartly.io employee; scaled tech, design, and automation as the company emerged as a global online marketing leader.
Juho Eräste
Founder, CTO
Early Smartly.io employee and first Swarmia hire; led teams, culture, and products.
Reeta Kari
Customers
Built and scaled customer success function from early stage to a multinational team, driving long-term customer value; ex-HiBob.
Antti Pitkänen
Senior Software Engineer
Experienced senior engineer with stints at Smartly.io, Flowdock, and Elevate Labs.
Miikka Kataja
Go-To-Market
Helped 15 B2B startups build GTM & sales as an independent consultant; Ex-Slush.
Niko Kosonen
Senior Software Engineer
15+ years of software development experience, both domestically and internationally, across real-time collaboration, eCommerce, and logistics.
You?
Opportunities
We're hiring deliberately. If building the recurring half of people ops sounds like the thing you'd want to work on, get in touch.
careers@taito.ai