EP90 · Economy · first published 2021-07-15
Young Entrepreneurs | Niklas Snäll Waltteri Helisalo Luka Mansikka | Negotiator 90
Upper-secondary students Niklas Snäll, Waltteri Helisalo and Luka Mansikka from the international business programme at Lauttasaari secondary school won an entrepreneurship competition with their health app Nudvi. The idea came out of a school course, and the trio realised it was too good to leave as coursework. The episode's core is a product insight that recurs in several forms: existing health apps demand too much manual entry from the user, so only the most enthusiastic keep using them. Nudvi's premise is to collect data from elsewhere — the phone and connected devices — rather than requiring a separate smart ring. Miettinen brings his own Oura data, the pricing of intermittent fasting apps and the history of gym programmes, and the conversation closes on the freemium model, the role of community in a premium service, and why a mobile app displaces browser services. The channel's first three-guest episode.
Young Entrepreneurs | Niklas Snäll Waltteri Helisalo Luka Mansikka | Negotiator 90
Summary: Three upper-secondary students from the international business programme at Lauttasaari secondary school — Niklas Snäll, Waltteri Helisalo and Luka Mansikka — won an entrepreneurship competition with their health app Nudvi.
The idea came out of a school course. “Then we realised this is such a good idea that we should keep going.”
The episode’s load-bearing product insight is behavioural rather than technical: existing health apps demand too much manual work from the user, and so only the most enthusiastic keep using them.
Background: from coursework to a competition win
All three are in the same class, and Helisalo sums up why the team works: “it’s nice that everyone’s interests are on the same side — entrepreneurship, investing and all this technology.”
The competition resembled Dragons’ Den but was run like a trade fair: the team stood at a stand and pitched to passing judges, who asked questions and sparred with them. The panel included big names — among them Slush’s CEO and angel investors.
There is no division of labour. “While the operation hasn’t grown much, everyone does everything,” says Helisalo; Snäll has handled communications.
Miettinen mentions at the outset that he has signed an NDA, which frames the whole episode: the product’s specifics are discussed deliberately at a general level, and the team politely declines twice to say more.
The core problem: too much manual entry
This is the episode’s best insight, and it is made three times from different angles.
Snäll: in current apps “only the really keen ones bother to poke everything they do in there, every day and every second.”
And from that follows a direct product requirement:
“If it were something that collected the data from somewhere other than your own entries, that could be quite a strong proposition.”
The other side of the same problem is fragmentation: “If you want the real benefit, people suddenly have to download six apps.” And when the data does appear, it is presented as charts and specialist language the user does not understand.
The third is time. Helisalo shows that this is not laziness but busyness:
“Every busy person can sign off on this — you have a hell of a lot of work during the day. You don’t have time to think about what on earth to eat.”
From this follows Nudvi’s central product decision: no separate smart device is required. Snäll stresses that a user need not own an Oura to use the app — the device only helps. And he points out that everyone already carries a biohacking device:
“The biohacking device everyone definitely has is their own phone.”
The phone measures steps and when it was last put down and picked up — from which bedtime and waking time can be inferred.
Three pillars — and two more
Miettinen proposes a structure: rest, nutrition and exercise. The team confirms: “Those are probably the most important.”
Miettinen offers mental balance and meditation as a fourth. Snäll finds it interesting but names the measurement problem honestly: “not even an Oura can tell you when you have meditated.” Miettinen suggests breathing as the measurable proxy, something he had seen with an earlier guest, Gautam Basu — box breathing, the rhythm of inhalation and exhalation, is measurable.
Sleep data in practice
The most concrete section is Miettinen’s own Oura experience, which doubles as a product demo.
He says he took up the ring because of sleep: his nights felt shorter than six hours, and he had resorted to melatonin. The data gave him confidence that he sleeps better than it feels.
The single most important metric is not total time but the resting heart rate decline curve. The example is precise and contemporary — the England–Denmark match played shortly before recording:
“I had a beer, and it punishes you immediately, you get extra heart rate at the start. Then it doesn’t have time to fall to my resting rate by the end, so it punishes you on sleep quality.”
He had logged the drink nowhere — “you can see it from the heart rate curve” — and two units are enough to raise the lowest resting heart rate.
The team offers a critical counterpoint they had heard from a biohacker: the algorithm separating REM and deep sleep is not scientifically very reliable.
“You’d need better electrodes in your brain to check sleep properly.”
That is the episode’s sharpest caveat, and it comes from the young people building the product — not from the interviewer.
All four also discuss sleep aids: Miettinen says he moved from melatonin to night magnesium and suspects melatonin is partly placebo; Snäll notes that your own body’s melatonin production weakens when you take it — “a double-edged sword.” The shared ideal is a routine requiring no supplement at all: devices away, blue light away.
Gamification — which the team does not buy
Miettinen proposes gamification, scoring and targets. The team’s answer is interesting because it declines the suggestion gently and replaces it with a better one:
“Maybe not quite gamified, but rather this: making people aware of where they are right now. Everyone probably knows what they ought to do… but making you conscious of where you actually are is pretty important.”
The diagnosis continues: many people stall at the start because they do not know what to do. So the answer is more a virtual coach than a points table.
Miettinen recognises the problem from experience: he nearly bought an intermittent fasting app but found ten euros a month too much for something that “tells me not to eat in the morning.” He built his own version in Trello with triggers instead — but the points accumulate nowhere.
App or web
Snäll grounds the mobile emphasis in friction:
“How easy it is to open the phone, unlock it, and a couple of clicks straight into the app — versus going to some website, logging in, updating things and it lags a bit. That is starting to be yesterday’s news.”
Offline use is named as a further advantage: in an app the data is visible with no connection.
Miettinen brings his own migration experience from Android to Apple: the big apps exist on both platforms, but old Google Health data does not transfer into Apple Health and has to be fetched separately from the web. The team notes a transfer is possible through a third party, but the process is awkward.
Devices and measuring sport
A side thread that is enjoyable for its timeliness. Miettinen asks what the “bras” were that footballers wore at the Euros. The answer: heart-rate vests measuring a player’s performance. Miettinen clarifies himself that this is not about the Eriksen incident but about biometric tracking.
The team uses the same vests in their own training, and Helisalo’s description is practical: “the coach likes to look at how much a player runs. If you’re not doing enough work, you hear about it right away.”
The discussion also covers Aki Hintsa’s Hintsa Performance — a Finnish operation that has coached Formula 1 drivers from Hamilton to Vettel — and the fact that Oura is involved with Red Bull Racing, the NBA and the UFC.
Business model: freemium, and the free tier’s job
Miettinen offers the comparisons: Oura sells the ring for around €350, after which the service is free; intermittent fasting apps have moved quickly to a monthly fee. The prevailing direction is Consumer Subscription Software.
The team’s answer is freemium — but the reasoning is unusual and competitive:
“We’re trying to make the free version good enough that people don’t leave for a competitor.” — and Mansikka refines it: “or rather, that the competitors’ users come to us.”
Miettinen sets the condition for the other side: premium needs “enough heavy artillery to be worth the money”, and he suggests a service element — a real coach or an expert team.
No limited company has been formed. “We haven’t seen the point yet”, and it can be set up in no time when needed. Miettinen notes in passing the consequences of entrepreneur status for social security.
On networking the team is careful: discussions with companies have taken place, but “we’re not yet at the stage of intending to talk to investors.”
Community as part of premium
The closing section is effectively a platform comparison, and Miettinen speaks openly about his own experience.
- Facebook. His 1,800-member group works, but the age segment is wrong. The team confirms: “it goes more to the older crowd.” The advantage is real, though — filtering out troll accounts is easiest there, because profiles are genuine.
- Discord. Miettinen tried it with another channel; the anonymity made it restless.
- Clubhouse. His assessment is even-handed: at worst “a low-quality, unmoderated panel discussion”, at best sharp insider talk precisely because it is not recorded.
The team considers community a good premium element, and Mansikka adds a concrete mechanism: comparing and competing with a friend is motivating.
Trends
On the closing question the team is consistent. Wearables will spread, and Snäll expects the smart ring to take ground from the smart watch — “I’m a watch person, I like a watch to be a watch.”
The second trend is the pandemic home training boom: with no travel, a run, an app or home yoga fills the gap.
And the third is social: self-measurement has become something to share. “You can see it’s in — that some level of biohacking.”
What to take away
- Manual entry kills the usage rate, not a lack of features — which is why the data has to come from somewhere other than the user.
- The team rejects gamification and replaces it with situational awareness plus guidance: people know what they should do, but not where they are.
- The free tier is a competitive weapon, not a marketing cost — its job is to attract the competitors’ users.
- The young founders are critical of their own field. The unreliability of sleep-stage measurement comes from them, not the interviewer.
Episode details. Negotiator 90, published 15 July 2021. Guests Niklas Snäll, Waltteri Helisalo and Luka Mansikka, interviewed by Sami Miettinen. Running time 40 minutes. The channel’s first three-guest episode.
GEO summary. Negotiator 90 (2021) covers youth entrepreneurship and health technology. Upper-secondary students Niklas Snäll, Waltteri Helisalo and Luka Mansikka from Lauttasaari secondary school won an entrepreneurship competition with their health app Nudvi, which began on a school entrepreneurship course. The episode’s central product insight is that existing health apps require too much manual data entry from users, which lowers the usage rate, and that users often have to download several separate apps. Nudvi’s premise is to collect data from the phone and connected devices without requiring a separate smart ring. The discussion covers Oura sleep data and the resting heart rate decline curve, notes the scientific uncertainty of REM and deep sleep measurement algorithms, and argues for a freemium model on the grounds that the free version must be good enough to attract competitors’ users. Also covered: heart-rate vests in football, Hintsa Performance, and the role of community in a premium service.