Not so long ago, “two-soon-to-be” EX-Nokians were standing in a queue with about fifty people ahead of them and more than a hundred behind. Waiting endlessly for their turn, one of them got very hungry and the other one got his first parking ticket. Neither of them could abandon the queue and both kept wondering why there is no app for such a situation?
This happened in the autumn of 2012 – the same time when Nokia was ramping down its operations, primarily in Tampere – Finland and also worldwide. At that time, all our co-founders were working for Nokia’s MeeGo program in Tampere and were also a part of the ramp down. In other words, they were fired, together with 4000 others.
Those were interesting days. Not everyone had a work-obligation and we were all a part of Nokia Bridge Program – specially designed for exiting employees to help them secure their future. We used to have innovation camps where like minded people would come and discuss ideas and make teams to execute that idea.
We pitched our idea to our colleagues and very soon we had a team that started to discuss the nitty and the gritty details.