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Quite a few Tuta graduates have successfully started a company during or after their studies, and some of them have visited Otaniemi during the past year to participate in the "Tuta Founder’s Talk" and share their experiences with current students.

On 9 May 2016 Tatu Koistinen visited TUTA and shared his journey about becoming the founder and president of Bonusway (), which is a rapidly growing company in the e-commerce loyalty business.  With its 1,2 million registered users it is the 2nd strongest loyalty programme in Finland after the S-group.

Tatu graduated from TUTA in 2006 and already during his studies worked for Itella in various roles, later became their consultant for Russian projects. He specialized in CRM and digital marketing and saw the huge potential in e-commerce with its enormous scalability. He is today the founder and leader of Bonusway, who's registered members can shop online and get up to 5 % discounts on hotels, fashion, sports gear etc. offered by 3000 e-commerce shops such as Hotels.com, Zalando, Ellos and Fitnesstukku, just to mention a few. Each deal made by the consumer is business for Bonusway as well.

Bonusway constantly conducts carefully tested marketing campaigns and actions on social media, blogs, tv or ads to bring in more e-shoppers. Through constant market analytics good activities can be tracked and some of the on-line campaigns can be measured within an hour from the launch.  Thus Bonusway can remain sensitive to which actions work in different countries and markets and others don't.

Tatu believes in good leadership, team building and motivated and loyal employees to support the company strategy. Today Bonusway employs 30 people located in Finland, Russia, Sweden and Turkey. Tatu also co-founded and is involved in other companies, e.g. the triathlon service company TriathlonSuomi.

More about Bonusway in .

Read more about Tatu’ background with his own words (in Finnish):

Reko Vaherkoski (on the right), president of Prodeko, thanking Tatu for his inspiring story 

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What is TUTA Founder's Talk?

The Institute of Strategy and Venturing is the leading institute for research and education in strategy and venturing in Finland. Over the course of the past 12 months Prodeko students have heard great stories and insights from TUTA alumnis who have interesting careers as entrepreneurs: Jaakko Ollila (CRF Health), Henrik Dahl (Eniram), Jussi Räisänen (Smartner and HeiaHeia) and Sammeli Sammalkorpi (Sievo).

The series continues in autumn and the event is open to everyone interested, so please join us. We’re also grateful to all speakers and are happy to have an active alumni network where alumni are willing to share their experiences with the next generation.

For more information contact assistant professor in strategic management,  Jens Schmidt at DIEM: jens.schmidt @ aalto.fi