Raine Kajastila: It's rewarding to see both kids and adults moving, playing, smiling and laughing

What is Valo Motion, CEO and founder Raine Kajastila?

Valo Motion combines movement with games in exciting and fun ways, such as climbing walls, trampolines or air tracks. We also have mixed reality rooms for social game play.

We provide these games to our customers around the world in different kind of settings, such as activity parks or family entertainment centers in 75 different countries. It is now nine years since we've established the company. And now we employ more than 50 people across the globe.

Why does the world need Valo Motion?

I think we can make a difference with moving people while they play. Now people jump, climb or run while playing our games 270,000 times a day. We aim at having one million plays per day in 2030. It's rewarding to see both kids and adults moving, playing, smiling and laughing.

How did the idea for Valo Motion come about? 

I had the opportunity to start as a postdoctoral researcher in professor Perttu Hämäläinen’s game research group at Aalto University back in 2013. My research topic was to how to motivate people to move through technology and games.

At that time, I had been climbing more than 15 years and knew a lot about the topic. Even as a child I was climbing trees and rocks.

I started applying the technology, building prototypes and writing research papers. The research was well received around the world. That encouraged me to apply for funding to explore the commercial potential of the idea. We were able to set up a team of five people to commercialize the idea.

The transition from researcher to entrepreneur wasn’t a huge change for me. Working towards your own research ideas and PhD has similarities to working on your own company.  At university, there is always some uncertainty about whether research projects will continue or not, so switching to the uncertainty of entrepreneurship was not a huge step.

What was most important for you in the very beginning of the project?

The product concept was already pretty much ready when we were still at Aalto, but a lot needed to be done for scaling the production. And right after setting up the company, we managed to make a viral video that ended up being viewed over 250 million times in different medias. 

Immediately after the video, everyone started contacting us, and for three months we just responded to requests and started building a global distribution network. Of course, there was also a lot of work on the weekends. But we learned a lot at the same time.

Our customers are largely the same than they were at the very beginning. For example, the company that makes our climbing walls also makes climbing walls for the Olympics. They visited our team even when we were still in Aalto.

What has been the most challenging moment so far?

During Covid, almost all sports and climbing arenas and tradeshows were shut down globally. We lost our sales channels and direct connection to customers. The availability of components was also a challenge. We realized we needed to start stocking more components.

On the other hand, during Covid, our customers were able to do renovations and install new games. We were able to ship products all over the world while keeping all our personnel. Just before the Covid started, we had thought that we would hire eleven new employees. But in the end, we didn’t recruit anyone. But we were able to develop a new product ValoArena during that time.

How is the relationship between Valo Motion and academia like at the moment?

Prof. Perttu Hämäläinen visits Valo Motion regularly and brings all his students to Valo Motion to learn about the industry and of course move and play. We have also done research together about our products. Some of his students may end up working at Valo Motion, and quite a few of Valo Motion’s game developers have done their Master’s thesis at Aalto.