From Management Consulting to Startup Thinking: Julia Seppä on Finding an Entrepreneurial Path

Julia Seppä spent 15 years at Deloitte, starting out in audit before eventually moving into cybersecurity. Her last six years there combined cyber strategy and transformation work with practice leadership roles for the firm's global and regional technology practices. Today, she's completing a Master's in Sustainable Entrepreneurship at Aalto University, exploring how sustainable innovation can scale and how new ventures build impactful business models. 

Three years ago, becoming a mother led her to ask a different question about what her career could look like next. That question brought her to Aalto, where she's now completing a Master's in Sustainable Entrepreneurship, exploring how sustainable innovation can scale and how new ventures build impactful business models. Through courses in the Founder Minor, she's spent the past months testing whether the skills she built in the corporate world actually translate into the startup and scale-up world, while also shaping the idea for her master's thesis.  

We spoke with Julia about what she discovered when moving from the corporate world into entrepreneurship, how the Founder Minor influenced her master’s thesis, and why understanding your competitors is essential when building something new.

Can you tell us a little about yourself, your professional background, and what motivated you to pursue the Founder Minor alongside your master’s degree?

I came to Aalto after a long and fulfilling career in consulting, most recently in cybersecurity. I had my child about three years ago, and I started thinking about how I could combine my professional life with spending more time with my child.

Cybersecurity is an amazing field. It is in high demand, with brilliant clients and international work. But I struggled to understand how I could combine that kind of demanding career with having a small child and a husband who also has a demanding job.

At the same time, I knew I wouldn't be fulfilled just staying at home. I really needed intellectual stimulation. I knew the corporate world very well: how big organizations work, how decisions are made, how strategy is developed and executed. What I didn't know was the startup and scale-up ecosystem, and I had almost zero network in those companies.

That's what attracted me to Aalto's Sustainable Entrepreneurship program. I saw it as an opportunity to broaden my world  and dive into the entrepreneurship, startup and scale-up ecosystem.

You came to Aalto with significant experience in consulting. What did you discover about entrepreneurship that was different from what you had experienced in the corporate world?

One of the things I wanted to understand was whether the skills I had developed in large organisations would translate into startups and scale-ups.

For example, I had developed go-to-market strategies multiple times during my career at Deloitte. I felt quite confident in that area, but I had mostly learned by doing. I didn't have much theoretical background behind it.

Then I took Go to Market for Founders, and I quickly realized that although there were similarities, the way you approach the market and understand customer needs can be quite different in a startup or scale-up.

We worked on a project for NoCFO, a Finnish company that wanted to enter the German market. We started with a deep analysis of the competition and the market. We didn't just want to know that competition existed. We wanted to understand the competitors really well and figure out how NoCFO could differentiate itself.

That struck me. In large organizations, knowing your own organization can already be so demanding that you don't always get the opportunity to understand competitors in that level of detail.

What was the biggest insight you took away from the Go to Market for Founders course?

You need to know your closest competitors in the most intimate way, and then build in the gaps they're leaving for you. People naturally get excited about their own ideas. We know our own company really well, and we know that competition exists, but we don't necessarily know our competitors well enough.

With the NoCFO project, we spent a lot of time really understanding two competitors that were very similar to NoCFO. We wanted to understand how they operated, what they offered and where the gaps were. Only then could we think about how NoCFO could enter the German market and give customers a real reason to choose them.

I think this also translates to the corporate world. Many industries and big companies are being disrupted not only by existing competitors, but by new entrants. These new companies understand their market, find the gaps and target specific niches. Then they start to expand and suddenly become real competitors to much bigger companies.

After this project, I realized that you can't really talk about your own company or product without knowing what the competitors in the market are doing. Once you know them, you can talk about your own company in a way that makes people think, "Ah, they are special. We haven't heard anything like that."

How did the Founder Minor influence your master’s thesis?

Two courses really inspired the topic of my master's thesis: Entrepreneurship Lab and Go to Market for Founders.

In Entrepreneurship Lab, which is a simulation of a startup experience, our team worked on a product to support children with ADHD. We had to define the problem properly, brainstorm on solutions, take it all the way to a prototype, and pitch to investors.  Then Go to Market for Founders asks: How do you actually attract customers? How do you learn from your first customers? How do you build a successful business and sell and market your product?

The courses are very practical. Of course, there is theory and there are frameworks, but there is also a lot of practice. So I thought: writing a master's thesis doesn’t have to be a purely academic exercise, why not treat it more like a founder would? My idea is to find a real problem, understand it deeply, and then suggest a solution. Who knows, maybe one day this could turn into something entrepreneurial. It's an option I like keeping open.  

What would you say to someone who isn't sure whether entrepreneurship is relevant to them?

I think the first thing is to get through the noise. Aalto has so much to offer, and there is always something meaningful happening, whether it's an event or a course. Students might be interested in software development, design thinking, entrepreneurship and ten other things at the same time.

So maybe start with just one course. Go to Market for Founders is a great course to get a taste of entrepreneurship because you work with a startup and build something that will actually be used. You get real exposure and see for yourself how entrepreneurs work and what you need to think about when growing a company.

Then you can decide: Do I want to know more? Do I want to take another Founder Minor course? Or do I want to complete the whole minor?

And I think having this founder mindset is valuable regardless of where you end up. Industries are being disrupted so much, whether you work in the corporate world, become an entrepreneur or work for a nonprofit. The Founder Minor demonstrates that you have the ability to build something and bring it to the market.