How CEOs Execute Plans Effectively

Before co-founding AI strategy firm In Parallel, Markku Mäkeläinen held leadership roles in Asia, the Middle East, and London, from founding companies to shaping strategic initiatives at Facebook.

Now back in his home country of Finland following five years in California, the confessed “serial founder” has launched In Parallel with a mission to help organisations enhance the alignment and execution of their strategies using its predictive AI platform.

He claims that the “Parallel Twin” is designed to codify strategy for enterprise CEOs using AI to test, implement and monitor strategy models. In November last year, the firm closed a €2.8 million seed funding round to expand its reach further.

How are you adjusting to the early sunsets in Finland?

It’s going well, but I can feel the winter. The darkness and the cold are creeping in. There’s a joke that the first winter is exciting, and the second winter is when it usually hits you. But so far, so good.

Your career has taken you all over the world, from Chinese billionaires to Mark Zuckerberg. Can you give us a whirlwind tour?

I founded my first company in 1994 while still at university, building B2B data and algorithm solutions for quality management in chemical engineering.

After a stint in Indonesia writing optimisation software for a Chinese billionaire, I returned to Finland and helped bring an early AI-driven sales automation system to Europe. We sold it to Nokia Networks, and the company later had one of Helsinki’s first major IPOs.

In 2000, I launched a mobile content company in Hong Kong, expanding Nordic solutions to China, Australia, and Southeast Asia. Years later, I founded Pryte, which created an app-specific data plan that enabled people to buy access to WhatsApp or YouTube without a full data package.

Mark Zuckerberg liked this idea, so I joined Facebook. I led global growth and connectivity partnerships, connecting hundreds of millions to the Internet.

After my wife passed away, I moved back to Europe with our kids, became a VC, and later scaled a fintech company through acquisitions.

In 2023, I co-founded In Parallel. The idea had been forming for years, but AI breakthroughs like GPT-3 finally made it viable.

Now, we’re building a platform to help businesses align and execute strategy with predictive AI.

What was the inspiration for In Parallel?

We’ve been building the company from the outside in. Early on, we saw challenges in large, distributed organisations. One common problem that CEOs and presidents of large companies face is how to execute their strategies.

The larger the organisation, the more complex it becomes to ensure alignment. Communication becomes fragmented, and it’s difficult to track everything.

We realised that codifying strategy and using AI to understand it could make things much easier. People could ask questions like, “What’s my role?” or “What should I do?” Now, we’re building a product that helps organisations align their strategies.

In most large companies, only about 5% of employees understand the corporate strategy, which is tiny. Even leadership teams often don’t fully align on it. This is why so many strategic initiatives fail. Half of them fail, and the remaining 40% don’t meet expectations. There’s a massive inefficiency here, and AI can potentially reduce some of that friction.

It seems like AI can solve big pain points in this area…

Companies spend roughly $1.7 trillion a year on strategy execution. If half of that fails, there’s a huge opportunity for improvement. On a personal level, if your role in a company is unclear, or you don’t understand how your work contributes to the company’s success, your motivation drops.

With our tool, we aim to connect the dots and help employees understand the bigger picture. This should boost their motivation and give their work meaning.

There’s been growing concern about “Shadow AI,” where employees use public AI tools without oversight. How does your platform navigate these issues?

Security, privacy, and ethical AI use are huge concerns for us, especially when it comes to company strategies. We’re not trying to automate decision-making; instead, we aim to provide coordination, synchronisation, and complexity management. Human decision-makers will always be in the loop.

Does being a founder and leader help you relate to the problems you’re solving?

Yes, our team is very senior, and everyone has experience with strategy execution challenges. We’re also excited to learn from our customers and help them improve their operations. We’re not in the business of creating new strategies — that’s for leadership and consultants. We’re here to help execute those strategies with high alignment.

How do you see In Parallel growing over the next five years?

It’s still early, but we’re excited to launch the product soon. Next year, we’ll build broader adoption and further develop our AI capabilities. The vision is to make organisations far more agile and aligned, moving quickly without losing track of the larger vision.

How do you take your coffee?

I prefer the Italian style. My go-to is a double espresso in the morning. I’ll have a few more throughout the day, but I try to stop after lunch. It’s just black, double espresso.

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