FA Solutions’ CEO Juha Lehtonen is striving for the title of Finland’s Entrepreneur Of The Year in EY Finland’s competition among 54 other participants. The purpose of the competition is to reward entrepreneurs who inspire others with their vision, leadership, and accomplishments.
The EY Entrepreneur of the Year competition, organised by the company EY (Ernst & Young), is one of the most distinguished entrepreneur competitions in the world. First held in the U.S. in 1986, it is now gathering thousands of participants from over 60 countries all over the world. It is really the ‘world championships’ of entrepreneurship, since the winner of each country also gets to represent their country in the international EY World Entrepreneur of the Year competition.
In addition to rewarding entrepreneurs for inspiring others with their vision, leadership, accomplishments and company growth, EY wants to encourage entrepreneurs to pursue responsibility and innovativeness.
“The participants are Finnish entrepreneurs whose companies set an excellent example of innovative and responsible growth. This year’s participants represent very diverse industries such as well-being, forestry, software development, creative industry and travel industry.”
Our CEO Juha is competing in the main ‘Entrepreneur’ category of the competition, where the revenue of the company has to be over 3,5 million euros, the operation has to be growing and profitable and the company must employ at least 10 people. So FA fits in the category aiming at creating value to our customers and the end individual investors by making the investment value and fee chain open, transparent, and efficient.
“Our core strength is that our growth has been purely driven by us entrepreneurs without any external investors. It is rare that a software company establishes itself into a strong international position purely using its own revenue stream. It has required ambition, courage and genuine enthusiasm as well as an agile approach to develop the company incrementally to meet the demands faced by the daily challenges at a time.”
When describing FA’s company culture, Juha says that the corner stones are offering everyone the opportunity to participate and contribute beyond their current role and maintaining the "startup spirit" even though we have been around for quite some time already.
The finalists of EY Finland’s Entrepreneur of the Year competition will be published on December 1st 2020 and the category winners on January 15th 2021. The winners are chosen by a prestigious jury representing versatile experience and know-how. The jury is led by Piia-Noora Kauppi, the Managing Director of Finance Finland.
The jury evaluates the candidates according to the international criteria. The winning entrepreneur must have a solid value base and lead their company by example. The company’s strategy must set it apart from the competitors and the company must be growing and successful in its market creating added value to its stakeholders. We have seen all these qualities in Juha and more.
