When you think about joining a startup, you might imagine the leaders calling shots in a chaotic, high-pressure environment, maybe even pulling all-nighters with an empty energy drink can pyramid on their desk. At Metroc? That’s not quite the case.

Valtteri, our Head of Customer Success, and Jaakko, our Head of Engineering, are going to chat about their time and how they've developed their careers here at Metroc. Both started as solo players in their own corners — Jaakko coding up the early product as the very first developer that was hired to Metroc, and Valtteri closing deals as one of our first sales hires. Fast forward a few years, and they’re both leading teams, steering the ship while still getting their hands dirty in the work.

We sat down to discuss what leadership means when you’re building the plane and flying it at the same time.

👨‍💻 Jaakko: “There’s often someone in the team who knows more than me, and that’s a good thing.”

Jaakko was Metroc’s first developer hire. “In the beginning, it was about getting things out the door as fast as possible,” he laughs. As Metroc grew, so did the product and the expectations. “At some point, you realize you can’t just keep building the way you did at the start,” Jaakko reflects. “We needed structure, we needed processes… and we needed more people.”

Suddenly, Jaakko wasn’t just building the product, he was building the team. Today he leads a team of seven developers. “The biggest shift was going from just doing my own thing and getting stuff done to leading a team and helping everyone else succeed. It wasn’t planned, I was just asked one day, ‘Do you want to lead the team?’ and I said yes.”

Stepping into leadership wasn’t exactly a natural fit, or so Jaakko thought. “I didn’t see myself as a ‘natural leader.’ I’m not the loudest person in the room.” he says. But instead of commanding the room, Jaakko focused on leading by building trust, ownership and autonomy. “What I’ve learned is: leadership doesn’t mean you have to know everything. Actually, it means you need to know when someone else knows better, and trust them.”

🎯 Valtteri: “You won’t get it right every time, and that’s okay.”

Over in customer success, Valtteri’s path followed a similar arc. “I started in sales when we were a much smaller company,” he says. “But as we got more customers, I realized I loved working with them after the deal was closed. So I shifted into managing accounts and eventually, managing the people managing those accounts.”

His first team hire was a turning point. “Suddenly it wasn’t just about juggling customers — it was about creating ways of working that would scale,” he says. “And it clicked for me: leading isn’t just about your own work, it’s about helping others succeed.”

Like Jaakko, he sees leadership as a mix of trust and accountability. “When you lead a team, you have to make a lot of decisions, sometimes fast. Sometimes you don’t have perfect information. If you’re making 10 decisions a day, maybe 9 are right and 1’s wrong. That’s fine. You learn, you adjust, and you keep moving.”

Leadership with People at the Center

And how can you keep up the good spirits and motivation within the team when things are moving fast?

Both Valtteri and Jaakko share a people-first approach in leadership, that shows up in how they coach, delegate, and build trust. “I want to make myself unnecessary, in a good way.” Jaakko says, “I trust my team, they are smart and know what they are doing. My focus is more on the big picture and removing roadblocks, but it’s a balancing act - staying close to the work but being able to step back enough to guide the bigger picture.”

For Valtteri, it’s also about small moments of connection. “I often start meetings by asking, ‘How did you sleep?’ It sounds silly, but it tells me a lot. Are they stressed? Tired? Relaxed? It opens the door to talk about life, not just work, and helps me to support and lead them the way they need to today.”

While startups are often synonymous with hustle culture, Metroc’s leadership has been intentional about creating a sustainable pace.

💡 Leading the Metroc way

At Metroc, leadership isn’t just about titles. It’s about:

Want to join a team that leads with trust, not ego? Check out our open roles.