Some of you may have heard the story of Jolla, a small company from Finland with a bit more than 100 people. Some may have not.
Jolla started 3 years ago after a big change in the history of Nokia and Finland. First we made a smartphone (aptly named Jolla smartphone) and an operating system called Sailfish OS, which launched in beta in November 2013, also the date when the smartphone started selling across Europe.
After 12 months, 9 software updates, 3 hotfixes, a huge amount of coffee and a lot of sweat poured over, we announced a couple of weeks ago at Slush 2014 a crowdsourcing and crowdfunding campaign for our next product, a tablet – called, guess what, Jolla Tablet.
The three-week crowdfunding part of the campaign just ended last week, and we are very happy to say that the campaign was a huge success! BIG thank you to everyone who contributed! Already during the campaign a lot of people were asking: why? Don’t we have enough tablets in the world? Don’t we have enough operating systems? Do we really need yet another App Store?
“Oh gosh, don’t tell me I really need to download a new SDK and start learning a new coding language…,” some developers might think.
Sure we do have enough tablets, operating systems, App Stores and SDK… so why exactly was The Jolla Tablet Indiegogo campaign such a success?
Not just words
Let’s go back to a point in time when we at Jolla sat down and asked everyone in the company what were the things that were important to us. We answered: Transparency, Love, Passion, Respect. Those were and are our values. Those are the things that are important to us, as individuals but also as a company.
And that is also the reason why the Jolla Tablet campaign has been a huge success. We just stuck to those values and we communicated them out loud, not just with words but with our actions. And all with a nice tagline: #PeoplePowered.
While you were not watching (which was very probably until now) Jolla was slowly, steadily and silently nurturing a core bunch of people that have been our ambassadors, testers, key journalists, harshest critics and most hardcore fans. All at once.
With the limited forces of a tiny startup we went out in the world and said what we believe in. We believe that people can change the world with Passion and Love. Respecting each other and being Transparent we went out with our beta software back in November 2013 and when people started saying that it was buggy (thanks to our community for reporting each and every single bug!) we said:“Yes we do have bugs and we will fix them”. And of course we really fixed them later (and still more fixes coming!).
Connect at a deeper level
When preparing the Jolla Tablet campaign we looked each other in the eyes and went back to the same whiteboard where we wrote down our values and asked:“What is this tablet really going to be?”
Sure the Jolla tablet has specs: a screen, a processor, connectivity and whatnot. But would people have pledged for it if we were only going to say that? I don’t think so.
We put our beliefs, our values in the center. Our why. By doing that we managed to connect at a deeper level with the audience, we touched that tiny little thing in the center of your brain called the amygdala, which is the center of your emotions. It is not just a tablet, it is not just Sailfish OS. People that pledged for our Indiegogo campaign pledged because they believe what we believe in. The tablet is a demonstration of our values, it is not simply a product. It is what that product stands for that ignited the campaign.
Whether you are a startup, a big. corp. inc. or anything in the middle, think at why you do the things you do and start with that. Start with your why and then go from it. Finding your why will be difficult at first, but once you have it, and you have the right guys around, everything else will come natural.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Simon Sinek and his book “Start with Why” for the gigantic inspiration.
Thanks to the Jolla marcomms crew for putting together a fantastic campaign.
Thanks to co-founder Marc for being the showman he is.
Thanks to the other co-founders Sami and Antti for pushing this project to our limits.
Thanks to the whole Jolla crew (the list is too long) for being such a bunch of professional, dedicated, passionate guys and girls. This company would be nothing without the great People (with the capital P) we have.
And last but not least:
HUGE thanks to our community (the list is even longer) for pushing us to be better and supporting us so far. You guys rock!
Great writing! I like your style from the beginning, looking forward for the posts by You and all the other Sailors in this new site. Doing It Together!
Yours In Sails
Simo, Review Jolla blog
would be nice to see each Jolla members make their posts here 😉
btw , lovin this new blog ( more things about Jolla for me to read ) and the post 🙂
Hi there,
Great to read this worlds and hope that Jolla will be even more successful in the coming months and years.
A happy Jolla Phone “The First One” owner from Nov 27, 2013 and “The First One” Jolla Tablet future owner.
With love from France.
Chris
Excellent article and really was a unique way of writing. Unlike 🙂 I’m really glad to see this blog for Jolla now. Will only help the company more and the people to learn more straight from the source.
Without any doubt it’s a nice post.
I am very happy to see this blog website, because I was always thinking that Jolla is bit low on communication and they should do better. I hope with this new website that issue will be resolved and we will get to know more about Jolla. Thanks
Regards from Pakistan (@JollaPK)
Wonderful summary, especially the part about the emotional link you established between yourself and me as a customer and community member is so true.
May I just add one more thing in this context: You’re right when you assume I share your values. You’re right when you assume I supported the Indiegogo campaign because I believe in what you believe in. But there’s another key aspect: I believe in *you*. #PeoplePowered works both ways, you know. When I hold my Jolla phone in my hands to type this, I know it’s powered by passionate people I feel I know because they expose themselves to the community in a quite unusual way.
It was only this experience of trust on a personal level that made me pay on Indiegogo. Any company can write down words like transparency, respect etc. on a sheet of paper and claim that those are their values. That wouldn’t make me use my credit card. A company is a virtual thing, I don’t trust companies that much. It’s the people that matter. And each and every sailor I met online so far was a friendly, helpful, trustworthy person (as far as one can tell online). Sailors, it seems, don’t just live a corporate culture. It’s the other way round: Jolla’s values comes from what sailors are. They couldn’t be anything else. 😉
Jolla is #PeoplePowered by people I trust… and *they* made me pay yet again. I trust them deeply. I trust you, Stefano. Thx for the cool phone, it served me well in 2014.
Looking forward to more articles on this blog… and to the tablet. 😉
Thanks a lot Ossi (and everyone else). It’s an honor to have your trust and also a great responsibility 🙂
You will see more sailors writing here and doing their best (as usual) to live the values of Jolla.
Have a nice day 😉
I wish I could contribute more than love to this project :/
I really believe this company is one I can trust.
I look forward to read more from you! Long needed a blog like this.
Best Regards
Oh and Love
Kai
Nice, really I appreciate. Thank you, as I feel myself a community member – I feel appreciated. Thank you.
And now what next?
Without any irony nor hidden intention I’d like to pay attention to essence of the following article: http://mobilemarketingsolution.ca/what-seo-taught-us-about-marketing-in-2014/ – as what is there reflects significant part of my hopes with the OJB.
I wish you all happy sailing!!
Nice reading!
I heartly thank all the Jolla crew who did not let the smartphone concept die. Hats off for the gut to leave everything and show the world what you believe. I’m a big fan of your everything. Just please make an app that directly shows the community and blog and merge it with the notification centre. Anyway, cheers for your decisions, promises and awsome work 🙂
Its very nice to see Official Jolla Blog. Great job.
that’s wonderful writing !! i wish that Jolla become the next Nokia..i still could not understand as why Nokia went the way it chose..but that’s a different story now… i really like the mission an values of Jolla, the wonderful team which you have.. it takes a great deal of effort to earn people’s trust..which you got.. I hope you would respect that trust and build onto a system we have been waiting.. i don’t know how many Nokia fans subscribed to this blog..but i’m one of that..
my best wishes ! and waiting for more Jolla products in India 🙂
by the way i just ordered “Start with Why” too 🙂 thanks
Hey Jolla, What is your Why?
Hi gronerth! The post you’re commenting on should answer that question 🙂
Truly inspiring. Really exciting. And above all, this “statement of faith” exudes trustworthy, legit, straightworfard thoughts and feelings. So many companies out there are just pure & simple scams and scums, coining deft and clever brand descriptions, claiming so ethereal and mystical values their manager’s brains seem to have fled their skulls a long time agot out of sheer disgust.
From my point of view, the main reason why you’ve been able to achieve such an amazing crowdfunding campaign, as well as continuously improving and enhancing a *really* SMART smartphone – which is unlike, intuitive and versatile – is by successfully blending pramagtic and demanding stands of a privately-owned company with openness, humility and commitment one can usually experience solely in non-profit, community-led software projects.
Please do not let us down. Please do not deceit this new hope.
You’ve set – and claiming – such high expectations, that living up to those will certainly make the whole lot of you tap into unknown yet real qualities & resources – as well as, unfortunately, exhaust you to death.