Timo Soininen

Timo Soininen is a Finnish serial entrepreneur, digital-marketing veteran, and active growth-company investor. He holds an M.Sc. in Marketing from the Helsinki School of Economics (now Aalto University). He first became prominent as CEO of Sulake Corporation, the company behind the virtual-world social game Habbo Hotel, a role he held from roughly 2001 to 2010, building one of Finland's earliest global consumer internet hits.

Soininen is best known as the co-founder and CEO of Small Giant Games, the Helsinki studio behind the hit puzzle-RPG Empires & Puzzles. Small Giant was founded in 2013 by former Sulake employees, and Soininen — the former Sulake CEO — stepped in as CEO in 2014. Under his leadership the company grew revenue from zero to roughly €328 million in about three years. In December 2018, Zynga acquired 80% of Small Giant Games at a ~$700 million valuation, one of the largest Finnish gaming exits.

Alongside and after Small Giant, Soininen became a prolific angel investor and board member. He is a founding partner/investor in Spinnova (sustainable textile fibre from wood), served on the board of Aiforia Technologies (AI digital pathology) from 2014 to 2020, has advised Critical Force Entertainment (maker of Critical Ops) since 2015, and joined Nightingale Health (blood-biomarker preventive-health platform) as Chairman of the Board in December 2020. He also operates through his own vehicle, VillageCape Ventures Oy, and Sulake Labs Oy, and is based in Zurich, Switzerland.

• Backs consumer-centric digital businesses — his own operating background is scaling mass-market consumer products (Habbo, Empires & Puzzles) from zero to global.
• Invests primarily at seed and early stage, often pairing capital with a board or advisory seat rather than passive checks (Aiforia board, Critical Force advisor, Nightingale chairman).
• Sector-diverse but thesis-driven: games/mobile entertainment, digital and preventive health, and sustainable materials/biomaterials — he framed his Nightingale bet around "the global megatrend of consumers wanting to manage and improve their health."
• Looks for companies riding large secular trends with the potential to become a "new global standard," and teams that can build engaging, consumer-facing products.