Aalto Private Equity Club’s 3+1 Interview: Managing Partner of Saari Partners

In this series we interview Private Equity and Venture Capital industry professionals. Our interviews follow a simple 3+1 format: the first two questions focus on the interviewee's background, career, and work while the third question focuses on company-related activities. In addition, we ask each interviewee what they would like to say to students interested in Private Equity and Venture Capital.

Name: Mia Sirkiä

Current Position: Managing Partner, Saari Partners

Education:

• Master of Science in Econ. Organisation & Management, Economics, Accounting, Quantitive Methods at Aalto University School of Business

Career highlights:

• Managing Partner, Saari Partners

• Board Member, various companies

• Head of B2B Marketing, Hasan & Partners

• Program Manager, Go-To-Market (Global Sales), Nokia

• Business Development, Nokia

• Management Consultant, PwC

What have been the key stages of your career, and how did you end up in the PE industry? 

I’ve made a few career changes during my professional life. I was a consultant for a very short time after graduation, and then I spent 10 years at Nokia, which was a very interesting time. At Nokia, I worked in global business development roles or European sales organizations, building new business operations. Toward the end, I worked on go-to-market programs and was responsible for product commercialization.

After Nokia, I moved to the advertising agency Hasan & Partners, where I worked for seven years doing marketing for B2B companies. After that, I moved to the PE industry, where I’ve been working for six years. I ended up in PE by chance through headhunting. I was drawn to the comprehensiveness of the PE industry, as it allows you to use everything you’ve learned throughout your career and learn much more in the process.

Which skills are important in your daily work?

Interacting with people is extremely important because challenges and solutions are found through conversations. We work a lot with Excel sheets and models, but in the end, people make all the decisions. Therefore, the ability to work with different kinds of people is especially crucial.

Additionally, it’s important to know how to prioritize tasks, and understand what is important and creates long-term value. Of course, hard skills are important in the early stages of a career in the PE industry, but as your career progresses, people skills become increasingly important.

How do you evaluate a potential new investment target?

There are generally three phases when making an investment decision: 

1) Is the company aligned with our investment strategy? We focus on service sector companies headquartered in Finland and fall within a certain size range. 

2) Is the company's overall market growing? Does it align with current trends? Is the market consolidated or unconsolidated, and are there opportunities for international expansion? 

3) What is the company's leadership like, and do they share our values? Is the company’s culture good?

The entire process (phases 1-3) can take anywhere from four months to several years, depending on the company's readiness to accept financing from a private equity investor.

What is your message to students interested in the private equity industry?

The PE field is very interesting and quite diverse. There are VC, buyout, and growth funds, each requiring different types of expertise and interests from the team. Even within, for example, a VC fund, different funds vary in culture and operating styles. If one area doesn't feel like the right fit, it doesn't necessarily mean that the whole industry isn't suitable for you.

For instance, if you join a large buyout fund, financial modeling may be more complex, but in a smaller buyout fund like Saari, the modeling is simpler, and the main focus is on discussions with the company's leadership team to understand how they manage the business and whether they can lead a growing company. In larger buyout funds, modeling plays a bigger role.

If you go into a science-based VC fund, an engineering background may be more beneficial than a business background, as understanding the field is especially important. On the other hand, in buyout funds, where the focus is more on how to grow companies, a business background is more valuable. In the early stages of a career, technical skills are important, and so is the courage to make difficult decisions.

Check out Saari Partners’ website for more information