Plan Like a Scientist, Perform Like an Athlete – The Lady Behind Timegate Instruments
When I was preparing for Slush last week, I realized it was the perfect moment to do something I hadn’t really done before: sit down and write my own story and the story of Timegate Instruments.
Timegate was founded over a decade ago, but the story starts much earlier in the lab, with a simple question: How can we turn powerful research into solutions that actually get used in the real world? For me, the answer eventually led to entrepreneurship.
From Research to Reality
I’ve always been driven by curiosity, wanting to understand how things work and how we can use science to solve real problems. In research, my colleagues and I developed fascinating new technologies. Many were published, some even patented. On paper, they were successes. But too often, the results stayed in articles and on laptops instead of changing how people actually worked.
At some point, that started to bother me more and more. It felt almost necessary to take the next step myself. We had all these ideas and results, but they weren’t making the impact they could. I wanted to turn them into instruments and solutions that people could actually use to make their work easier and more efficient.
Then we had a technology in front of us that I truly believed could be a game changer in its field. That combination, deep scientific understanding, a concrete technology and a clear industrial need, became the starting point for Timegate Instruments.
Impact as a Guiding Principle
For me, the desire to make an impact has been there from the very start.I’ve always believed that what we were building could make a real difference, not just for our customers, but for the world around us. That belief has guided many of the big decisions along the way: which projects we pursue, where we invest our resources, and how we bring technology from the lab into industry.
Deep-tech companies face long development cycles, demanding validation and complex customer environments. In those moments, purpose matters more than any single milestone. When challenges come, and they always do, it’s that sense of purpose that keeps you going. Knowing that our technology helps industries work in a cleaner and smarter way gives meaning to everything we do.
Deep Tech Is a Long Game
Timegate is a deep-tech company, and deep tech is always a long game. The journey does not follow the typical “build fast, pivot fast” software playbook. Timelines are longer, integration environments are more complex, and the path from prototype to standard practice in an industry can take years. Over time, I’ve summed up my approach into one simple philosophy: Plan like a scientist, but perform like an athlete.
“Planning like a scientist” is about how I think and how we design things at Timegate: Treating strategies as hypotheses that can be tested. Using learning loops: experiment, measure, learn, adjust. Accepting that not every idea will survive contact with reality. Refining our roadmap as the company, the technology and the market evolve
A new application area is a hypothesis. A customer pilot is an experiment in the real world. Data from the field becomes feedback to both our product and our strategy.
Building a successful company is not about one big experiment or one big funding round. It’s about the ability to keep improving your hypothesis and your execution over the years.
“Performing like an athlete” is about execution and daily discipline: Showing up every day, not only when things are exciting. Maintaining focus in development, validation and customer projects. Staying resilient through delays, failed experiments and market turbulence. Continuously building and rebuilding the right team for each phase of growth. You can have a brilliant strategy on paper, but without persistence it will never become reality.
As Timegate has moved from research spin-off to industrial partner, each stage has required new capabilities, new processes and also personal growth for me as a leader. Part of being resilient is being willing to evolve, as a company and as a person.Underneath all of this there is ambition: the ambition to become world-class in the field where we are working.
One Piece of Advice to My Younger Self
If I could go back to day one of my startup journey, my advice to myself would be very simple:Celebrate every small win. In the early years, it’s easy to focus only on the big goals: major customers, funding rounds, global launches. But deep tech moves forward in small steps.
A first successful measurement in a real environment. A pilot that finally clicks. A customer who says, “This really helps us.”Those small wins are the fuel for the long road. They keep the team motivated, and they remind you why you started in the first place. And if there is one thing I’ve learned over more than ten years with Timegate, it’s that the long road is worth it.
Mari Tenhunen CEO & Co-founder, Timegate Instruments
