Infinity’s Executive in Residence programme gives the startups we work with an experienced business leader to consult for guidance on a wide range of topics.
From raising funding, to running board meetings, to recruitment and financial management, our EiR is there to help.
Our current EiR is Kalle Palomäki. We caught up with him to find out more about his background and how he’s been working with Infinity startups.
Who is Kalle Palomäki?
With a background in semiconductor engineering and an MBA in international finance, Kalle has both technical and business credentials.
He’s worked in fields as diverse as academic research and B2B software sales, and he’s a three-time startup founder who has raised a total of €10 million in capital for his businesses.
Originally hailing from Finland, his career took him first to Germany, and then to the Netherlands where he worked for AWS to support early-stage startups in Benelux. Now he serves as VP of New Product Development at medical laser tech company Modulight.
Although relatively new to the quantum world, Kalle brings a wealth of external experience that can really benefit university spinouts as they take their first steps beyond the lab and into the world of business. This valuable experience has led to him chairing the technical advisory committee at QED-C, the Quantum Economic Development Consortium.
And having previously mentored startups on accelerators like Techstars, Rockstart, and Startupbootcamp, Kalle is well versed in helping emerging tech companies along the right path.
We quizzed him on his work as Infinity EiR, and his thoughts on the quantum sector...
You’re quite new to the quantum world. Does this sector need more business expertise from outside?
Kalle: I have been leading the quantum business for three years now at Modulight, and of course, a lot has happened in quantum in those years. I’m still learning a lot about the field, but quantum often makes me think back to my days as a researcher.
A lot of startups come from research, and in research it's really about just getting nice results. But then, when we think about building a company, it's not just reaching these milestones, but you need to think about how to commercialise your work.
You might be creating the world's finest qubits, but then what? What does that truly mean? Is it scalable? Is it something that can have commercial value?
There are many things that might not be that obvious to someone who's coming from a university doing research, because with research, you rarely need to truly think about the commercialisation.
And as quantum technologies are starting to find real-world applications, being able to think commercially about your work is going to be increasingly important in the coming years.
What attracted you to the EiR role at Infinity?
Kalle: I’ve been a startup founder myself, and I started mentoring startups when I worked for Amazon AWS. It’s dear to my heart to be able to give some of the experiences that I have to these founders.
Infinity is almost like a startup accelerator funded by the government. It’s not something that I have seen or heard of from other countries. So I think that the Netherlands here has done something really smart. I think that this is definitely a model that other countries could learn from.
And on a personal level, I can grow from it too. Helping the startups here helps me move towards more advisory and board positions in the future.
What have you been doing with startups on the Infinity programme so far?
Kalle: So far I’ve worked with around 10 Infinity startups, and they ways I’ve helped fall into three different areas:
- How to do commercialisation and B2B sales
- Fundraising, offering feedback on pitch decks and introducing them to VCs in my network
- Leadership advice, such as building a team by hiring the right people and maintaining your company’s culture as it grows beyond the initial founders
What’s missing from the quantum startup ecosystem at the moment?
Kalle: A culture of commercialisation is a big one. Obviously, startups need to find product-market fit, but then there are tactics to consider.
Many university spinouts don’t understand the art of sales, for example. I’ve helped some of them with understanding the value of cold calling. If you don't get the door open, it doesn't matter how well you are able to pitch when you are not in the room with your prospective customer.
This transition from the lab to the real world is one of the bigger challenges in quantum right now. With recent developments in fault tolerance in quantum computers, and the likely trajectory of that progress over the next five years, we’ll be rapidly moving to a place where commercialisation is critical for spinouts to understand quickly.
What do you hope to see happen in the quantum startup world in 2025?
Kalle: 2025 is the UN’s Year of Quantum, and what I’m looking forward to is some of the companies I’ve been advising raising Series A rounds or later, and others getting meaningful first customers.
But diversity of types of companies is also important. Already in the Infinity program, there are hardware manufacturers, software manufacturers, consultancy companies.
And even in the hardware, there are many different types of hardware, there's quantum communications, quantum computing and so forth. I would expect this diversity to grow more this year, especially the software side.