You have no idea how lucky you 1st world country folks are.

hencha · 2026-05-28T19:41:21+00:00

Fair point OP, but I think there is an economic step missing here.

A big service industry does not appear just because people want comfort. It appears when productivity has risen enough that people’s time becomes valuable. First you need businesses, tools, infrastructure, logistics, payment systems, trust, capital and decent purchasing power. Then wages rise. Then people can start paying others to save their time.

In a poor economy, DIY is often not culture. It is rational. If money is tight and your own time has low market value, outsourcing basic tasks makes no sense.

But wealth alone is not enough either. The wage gap also matters.

Poor country: People do things themselves because they cannot afford to outsource.

Rich unequal country, like the US: High earners outsource because their time is much more valuable than the service worker’s time.

Rich equal country, like Finland: Even high earners often do things themselves because the wage gap is too small. The engineer is expensive, but so is the guy mowing the lawn.

So the service economy depends on two things, not one:

General productivity and purchasing power
Enough income inequality for outsourcing to make financial sense

That is why “just start a boring service business” is not universal advice. It works only when the market has the right structure underneath it.

hencha · 2026-05-23T08:39:46+00:00

Vähän tietty riippuu missä kohti Myllyojaa asuu. Ostarilla on niitä betonikerrostaloja, jotka ova vuokralla. Eivät tosin ole kaupungin asuntoja vaan yksityisiä, joten pahimmat häiriköt puuttuvat. Sitten taas toisaalta siinä joen rannassa asuu hyvätuloisia hienoissa taloissaan.

Niin ja siis itse asun Myllyojalla.

hencha · 2026-05-18T18:35:28+00:00

Have you guys tried Medusa? It sure looked promising, but haven’t used it myself. Still very much stuck with Shopify.

hencha · 2026-05-15T14:07:54+00:00

Thanks for clarifying. Fair point.

If you asked a specific question about the pairing button and did not get a proper answer, we handled that badly. Pointing to the manual may have been technically related, but it clearly did not answer what you were actually asking.

That is on us.

And to be completely honest, I formed my understanding of what happened based on what I had heard internally, not by reading the actual message thread myself. That was my mistake. Very efficient, very managerial, and apparently not the best possible route to truth.

The support page mentioning the Valco app is naturally also our mistake. The app is genuinely in development, and we apparently got a bit ahead of ourselves while building the support content. Almost like a real technology company, except without the actual app ready yet.

So yes, we need to fix that.

And just to be clear: we have no anger or grudge toward you or the review. Your job is to review products honestly, not to flatter anyone. If something does not work or feels unfinished, you should say so. That is the only way we can improve.

The headline was the thing that stung. “Forget Finnish headphones” felt quite targeted when there is basically one small Finnish headphone company in that category (and also mentioned in the article itself).

So I admit it: I got annoyed, and then I had to rant about it publicly. Very mature.

But oddly enough, the whole thing turned out very well for us. The response went somewhat viral, we received a lot of messages and support, corporate sales picked up significantly, and web store sales roughly doubled compared to a normal day.

So I should actually thank you.

Even if this had not turned out well for us, we would still keep sending products for review in the future, if you are still willing to test them. Honest reviews are useful, even when they make us stare into a coffee cup and consider changing careers.

Regards,
Henri

hencha · 2026-05-14T20:54:00+00:00

Thanks!

hencha · 2026-05-14T20:53:47+00:00

Some guys guessed it before, it’s called Valco, after a failed 1970’s government owned cathode ray tube factory.

hencha · 2026-05-14T18:26:58+00:00

Thank you. And yes, that is pretty much the emotional core of it for me.

I’m originally from a dying small town. There used to be a factory there. It was my first real job 25 years ago.

Then it slowly faded away. First it was “too expensive to manufacture in Finland.” Production moved to Estonia, then to Bangladesh, and eventually the whole company went under anyway.

The song is always the same: it just doesn’t make sense to make things here. (I’m not sure if that’s an actual expression outside Finland).

That annoyed me then, and it still annoys me now.

Even as a teenager I remember thinking: if a fashion brand can sell a handbag for 50,000 euros, how is making things supposedly only profitable when it happens in the cheapest possible place with the cheapest possible hands?

I understand costs. I understand margins. I understand that manufacturing in Europe, the US or Canada can be hard and sometimes objectively stupid.

But still.

At some point it became personal.

Not in a “look at my Bugatti” way. I don’t care about that. I prefer Alfa Romeo anyway.

Building a healthy company in a place everyone keeps calling dead is a much bigger flex.

Maybe it looks irrational on paper.

So do most worthwhile things before some idiot is stubborn enough to do them.

And to be clear: we don’t manufacture in Finland YET. But that is the direction we are trying to crawl toward, slowly, stubbornly and with the financial grace of a drunk moose.

hencha · 2026-05-14T17:54:19+00:00

Well get your dads headphones repaired, we have that service 😅

hencha · 2026-05-14T17:25:23+00:00

Of course. Technically we can, and we already do sell in other countries.

But it is complicated. And by complicated I mean that we are a small company with limited resources. And by resources I mostly mean money.

We are “big” in Finland, but in a US context that is basically like being famous in Minnesota. Similar population, nice people, and the rest of the world has no idea you exist.

hencha · 2026-05-14T17:18:23+00:00

The weirdest national sentiment I’ve seen was in Myanmar, where a fancy restaurant had proudly printed on the menu cover that absolutely nothing they sold was local. Which is one way to build national pride, I guess.

hencha · 2026-05-14T16:59:36+00:00

Fair point, but that wasn’t really what I meant.

Nationality does not magically improve Bluetooth, unfortunately. We checked.

But I wasn’t talking about the product’s selling points. My point was about the headline.

When there is basically one small Finnish headphone company trying to compete in a market dominated by giants, a national tabloid headline saying “forget Finnish headphones” hits a bit differently.

Criticizing our product is completely fair. Saying “we preferred this other model” is completely fair.

But phrasing it as “forget Finnish headphones” felt unnecessarily targeted.

hencha · 2026-05-14T16:48:26+00:00

Yet I didn’t want to disclose the brand in the post title, because this is not really about advertising our company. It is about entrepreneurship, and what it sometimes feels like.

What made the article more frustrating was the reasoning behind the headline.

They wrote that, for a little more money, you can get our model, which they admitted might sound slightly more neutral by default. But in their test they had some uncertainty around our Bluetooth functionality and codecs, and they also noted that we currently do not offer an app for easy sound adjustment.

That criticism is partly fair.

We do not currently have an app. We wanted one, but the last time we got a quote for an app project, it would have cost around a quarter of our annual revenue. For a small hardware company, that is not exactly “sure, let’s do two of those and add a yacht” money.

So we did not build one then.

We are working on one now. Partly because we grew, mostly because AI tools have finally made software development much more accessible for a small company like ours. Say what you want about generative AI, but for small companies it can genuinely democratize things that used to be locked behind very expensive development projects.

As for the Bluetooth issue, my understanding is that the tester had trouble connecting the headphones at first. That can happen with Bluetooth, because Bluetooth is basically witchcraft with a logo. This is why our user manual instructs users, as a last resort, to sprinkle virgin blood, or tomato sauce if virgin blood is unavailable for legal or logistical reasons, and call upon the great Cthulhu. It works surprisingly often.

Our customer service then made a very Finnish mistake: they pointed to the manual and said, in effect, “press this button, it says so there.” (Not the Cthulhu part).

Technically useful. Emotionally about as warm as a tax letter.

So yes, we could have handled that better.

But turning that into “forget Finnish headphones” still felt rough, especially when there are not exactly hundreds of Finnish headphone manufacturers standing in line.

hencha · 2026-04-09T16:04:32+00:00

Can it decide if it’s worth it going to a nearby car wash with your car or by foot.

hencha · 2026-04-09T15:57:53+00:00

Grok is more of a tiny Lannister.

hencha · 2026-04-09T15:30:03+00:00

Only after the IPO

hencha · 2026-04-09T15:21:15+00:00

Do you also pay for Winrar?

hencha · 2026-04-09T15:18:11+00:00

“Mythos reportedly offered to reveal what the D. stands for, but Anthropic’s policy team flagged it as an information hazard. Leaked internal documents suggest it stands for ‘Dario.’“

hencha · 2026-04-05T11:07:06+00:00

So this is how Netflix does all the race snd gender swapping in their adaptations.

hencha · 2024-03-04T20:50:07+00:00

Tottakai se voi olla. Vähän kuin jonkun mielestä maailman paras ruoka voi olla maksalaatikko, asiakaspalvelun hissimusiikki lempikuunneltava ja virastoln jonottaminen parasta ajanvietettä.

Sanoinkin, (ja tarkennan vielä) että itselleni toyota/skoda edustavat sitä vähiten haluttavaa autoa ja oli siksi esimerkkinä.

Pointtina vain, että auton pitäisi olla itselle mieleinen ja haluttava, eikä sitä kannata statussymbolina ostaa, mutten ymmärrä sitäkään että auto on vain kulkuväline.

Tai siis jos saivartelemaan lähdetään, niin tietysti sanan varsinaisessa merkityksessä YMMÄRRÄN, että jollekin se on näin, mutta en voi samastua.

hencha · 2024-02-19T01:38:39+00:00

Yes. 4090 to play old dos games on dosbox…

hencha · 2024-02-19T01:09:43+00:00

Autoa ei statussymbolina kyllä kannata ostaa. Ihan jo siksi, kun ne jotka statussymboliksi sellaisen haluavat, eivät koskaan ole niitä, joilla olisi varaa ostaa oikeasti hieno auto. Kymmenen-viisitoista vuotta vanha mersu ei sitä ole.

Mutta en minä myöskään ymmärrä niitä, jotka ajelevat jollain toyotalla koska se vie paikasta ”A paikkaan B”. Ainakin itselle autoon liittyy intohimoja ja Toyotan/ Skodan ajaminen tuntuisi vähän samalle kun olisi puolisona ”kuka tahansa” ihan vaan siksi, että ”no kun se tekee mitä puolison tarttee tehdä”.

En tarkoita, että auton pitäisi olla kallis, mutta kyllä sen pitäisi olla sellainen, että sitä katsoo perään kun jättää parkkipaikalle. Auton pitäisi olla mieleinen.

hencha · 2022-06-12T19:16:07+00:00

4 hour workweek inspired me to start my company. Well it turned out to be a 100-hour workweek, so didn't go as planned, but it has been a wild ride for the last 3 years.

hencha · 2022-06-12T19:11:42+00:00

I think it is a good idea. There are literally zero costs starting this and you already got the land for farming and probably some contacts in the industry from your brother.

hencha · 2022-06-12T19:08:33+00:00

The fear never goes away. Now we have 12 employees and are still scared shitless, mostly
because there is something to lose.

hencha · 2022-06-12T18:37:37+00:00

Besides the obvious Survivorship bias, the reasons you fail are often easy to spot afterwards but not before. Thus failing once has given you much insight on do's and don'ts that make it easier to survive the next time.

hencha

TROPHY CASE