By spring 2026, Tsemp had been running as a beta for a few months. We had committed users, but more questions than answers: how do we grow, where does the funding come from, and is Finland big enough? We went all the way to San Francisco to find out.
In the previous post I wrote about how Tsemp started. This is what happened next.
TRES and the accelerator
In the spring, Stefan applied to the accelerator run by Tampere Entrepreneurship Society (TRES), and we were accepted to the Summer Founders Program 2026. There we met other Finnish teams, including the learning platform OrigoLearn and the health tech company Cobra Medical. Working through the same problems alongside other founders was one of the best parts of the program.
We kept building the app and marketing it at the same time. The program ran during the day, and the evenings went to code, design and content.
June 2026 in San Francisco
In June we spent about four weeks in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. The days were packed with events, pitches and conversations with other founders.
Nordic Innovation House. We pitched Tsemp at Nordic Innovation House in Palo Alto together with other teams from the program, including OrigoLearn and Cobra Medical, to an audience from the Silicon Valley ecosystem. A short pitch in a foreign language to an unfamiliar crowd forced us to figure out what really matters about Tsemp.
RevenueCat and other app founders. Tsemp's subscriptions run on RevenueCat, so their WWDC week events were a natural place to meet other people building apps: the Pre-WWDC Bashcade on June 8 and the App Money Lunch Club on June 9. Stefan also made it to a RevenueCat party where the company's CEO was among the guests.
Tsemp founders pitching at Nordic Innovation House in Palo Alto, with the app on screen
The most important advice: Finland is too small
The most valuable moments weren't on stage but in conversations. We talked a lot with other app founders, who wanted to know our user numbers and churn – how many people cancel their subscription. Almost everyone gave us the same advice: Finland alone is too small a market.
We had been thinking about expanding before the trip, but Silicon Valley made the decision clear. The natural direction was close to home: Sweden, Denmark and Norway. They're right next to Finland, and the Nordic countries are among the European leaders in the share of people who go to the gym.
Expanding costs money, and without outside funding every euro has to be counted. We modelled the budget – including how much we could put into marketing – in Tangently. Around the same time, our name was shortened to Tsemp internationally, as I explained in the story of Tsemp. Today the app is available in Swedish, Danish and Norwegian at tsemp.app.
Back home, and on to FiBAN
The program ended with a Demo Day at Platform6 in Tampere on August 7, 2026. Afterwards, FiBAN, the Finnish Business Angels Network, heard about us through TRES. We've since been to FiBAN events in Tampere: the Startup Clinic on September 3 and Pitch Finland Tampere Edition on October 8, where we pitched.
Through FiBAN our network has grown, and we've met our first potential angel investors. The funding climate is still tough, but we're heading in the right direction.
Tsemp pitching at the TRES Demo Day in Tampere, with the app's AI coach, muscle map and community on screen
What we learned
- Pitch as often as you can. Every pitch made our story clearer.
- Share your numbers openly. Other founders helped the most when we were honest about our user numbers and churn.
- Think beyond your home market from day one. Had we built language support and country-specific pricing from the start, expanding would have been easier.
- Networks are built by people. TRES led to FiBAN, and the other teams in the program became friends we still swap notes with.
Thank you to TRES, the other teams in the program, Nordic Innovation House and FiBAN. Next, we'll write about how we built Tsemp in Swedish, Danish and Norwegian.
Pietari Risku is a co-founder and CPO of Tsemp, responsible for the app's design, user experience and training content.
Author
Pietari Risku
Co-founder and CPO
Pietari Risku is a co-founder and CPO of Tsemp. He is responsible for the app's design, user experience and training content, and writes the Tsemp blog.
