Co-founding story: Solidice

Every company starts with an idea. But the ones that actually get built usually start with something simpler: people who recognise the same problem and can’t stop talking about it.

Solidice’s story starts with two people on opposite sides of the same industry.

Same industry, different paths

Before Solidice, Jarkko Lainio and Tuomas Pakkanen led business units at competing Microsoft consultancies in Finland. Different companies, different teams — but a shared passion for making technology serve the people who use it.

Jarkko helped grow a team around modern work from scratch to over 55 consultants. Meeting customers, co-creating offering and recruitment — often all at once. What he learned had less to do with technology than he expected. The best results always came down to people: supporting them, understanding them, coaching them, showing direction. Along the way, a question kept growing: can AI, employee experience, and productivity actually fit the same goal? How we communicate, collaborate, and streamline processes with Microsoft’s tools — can it all come together to make work better, not just faster?

Tuomas looked at it also from the human-centric vision. Years of helping large Finnish organisations with Microsoft 365 had taught him that the moments of real impact almost never came along with only a technology roadmap. They started with listening — genuine curiosity about how people actually spend their days, what slows them down, what energizes them. When that understanding was there, adoption happened naturally. People didn’t need to be convinced. They could feel the difference.

They didn’t know each other at first. But the market is small, the conviction is shared, and eventually the same question forms on both sides: what if someone built this differently?

“We chose to build Solidice as part of the Reaktor Ecosystem because we believe in what it stands for: independent, focused companies creating more value together than apart. Our deep Microsoft and AI specialisation complements the ecosystem’s broader capabilities. We’re here to collaborate, not just coexist.”

The question that became a company

Work has changed. There are more tools than ever, but time keeps going to everything except what actually matters. Post-pandemic working life has become fragmented, and AI promises to fix it. But promise alone doesn’t get anyone there.
Jarkko and Tuomas started comparing notes. The pattern was clear: organisations don’t lack technology. They lack the right people — senior enough to see the full picture, empathetic enough to understand how work actually feels, and pragmatic enough to make it work. Not a consultancy that bolts AI onto existing services, but one that starts from it. And one that takes a fundamentally human approach: technology should make work lighter, not heavier.

That question turned into Solidice.

“Microsoft 365 is the backbone of roughly 95% of Finland’s Top 1000 organisations. As AI becomes embedded in this platform, the need for senior-level, pragmatic guidance is only growing.”

The team behind it

Our founding team brings roughly a decade of experience per person from various roles across the Microsoft partner ecosystem in Finland. We’ve deployed Copilot, built governance frameworks, designed modern workplaces, and helped organisations navigate the shift from traditional IT to AI-powered work — at scale, across industries.

The team is growing. More founders are joining soon, each bringing deep Microsoft expertise and a shared belief that this market needs a new kind of voice. We’re building a company where everyone has a seat at the table — not just in client work, but in shaping what Solidice becomes.

What unites us is straightforward: we’ve all seen what separates the projects that deliver real change from the ones that end up as expensive experiments. And we’d rather build something new than keep working around the limitations of something old.

What does Solidice do?

Solidice helps organisations make Microsoft 365 and AI work — in practice. Copilot and AI Agents, security and governance, modern collaboration and employee experience. The details matter, but the principle is simple: senior people, working directly with clients, connecting technology to the way the organisations operate.

“We think the Finnish market is ready for a new challenger — one that’s direct, experienced, and genuinely focused on making AI work for people.”

Solid moves. Sharp results.

→ solidice.fi → [email protected]

→ Jarkko Lainio, CEO — [email protected], +358 500 838337

→ Tuomas Pakkanen, COO — [email protected], +358 50 3304294