Aarni Hildén and Matti Kaira, best friends and founding partners. This is how our story begins.
Aarni Hildén
Matti Kaira
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16, roommates, and too restless to sit still
We met in high school and became inseparable. Politics, economics, music; we were into all of it. These two 16-year-olds had no idea what was coming.
The International Baccalaureate programme gave us a playground. We found creative ways to skip class, submitting our assignments as videos and animations instead of showing up.
Plan A fell apart. We built Plan B.
We did our military service. For three years, the plan was clear: finish, then move to Britain.
With plane tickets practically in hand for the University of Edinburgh and the London School of Economics, Brexit happened. Tuition tripled. Overnight, the only plan we had known was gone.
March 17, 2021, the day Aarni walked out of the barracks, we founded Kaide Tuotannot Oy. The only skill we could sell was making videos, so we started selling.
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Year one. No playbook.
We moved into our first office in the summer. No clients, no playbook, no revenue. A global pandemic on top.
Most people think you need to understand business before you can start doing business.
Fortunately, we did not have time to think. So, we started doing and learned everything by doing it, mostly for free.
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Then something felt different
For two years we had been selling anything that involved a camera and a microphone. Brand videos, campaign videos, whatever someone was willing to pay for. The work was fine. It paid rent. Just never felt like it reached anyone.
Then we launched the Hildén & Kaira Podcast. Authors, historians, politicians, anyone who had something worth saying. With the 2023 parliamentary elections approaching, politicians came to us. People commented, shared, came back for more. Millions of views on social media. Hundreds of thousands on YouTube and Spotify.
For the first time, our content actually moved people. Something was here. We wanted to explore it further.
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And so we tried to make a president
In spring 2023, we interviewed Pekka Haavisto, a presidential candidate, on our podcast. Finland would choose its next president in February 2024.
Pekka offered us his campaign's social media. We paused everything else, bet the company, and worked for free. The mission: make Pekka president.
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100 million views at 23
We lost the election by the narrowest margin in Finland's history. Didn't make a president.
What we did was run the most viewed social media campaign Finland had ever seen.
That's when it clicked. We had finally understood where our skill belonged. We pivoted into organic social media. Two employees hired. This is it.
Lock in.
+281% revenue. +557% profit.
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From two friends doing business to actual founders
95% client retention. New hires. New office in the heart of Helsinki. Our best year yet by every measure.
For the past four years we had been riding a very simple bicycle: a few parts, forward motion, figuring it out as we went. This year we realised that if we want to go faster and further, we need an actual structured company around it.
We started offloading responsibility from ourselves and prioritising our own roles better. The shift was less about what we do and more about who we are becoming. Two friends doing business grew into something you could call founders and leaders.
Wherever we go now, our help is needed, and more than that, it's appreciated. Almost as soon as a collaboration starts, something strange happens: we get dissolved into the client's team. We become a strategic part of their marketing. Clients very quickly understand this is the highest leverage play in today's marketing. That shows in the respect we get, even though we're young and obviously still extremely incomplete as people, entrepreneurs, and company.
Our high school invited us back to tell our story.
Mission
Stories help us understand the world and leave our own mark on it.
The stories of history's greatest builders and companies are told in biographies and films. They serve as guidance and inspiration for the next generations.
Finland does not have decades to wait for our era's stories to be told in their polished form. They need to be told now, so they can inspire young Finns to build and take risks.
Social media is the perfect tool for this.
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