Monika Liikamaa likes to swear.
She’s the co-founder and co-CEO at Enfuce, the leading European card issuer processor.
As we sat down for our interview at Lisbon’s Web Summit the first clue about her love of swearing was the ‘Get shit done’ message on her T-shirt.
Liikamaa is a seriously talented and likeable entrepreneur.
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Her aim is to build Europe’s number one issuer processor in Europe by 2035, with a bold goal of hitting €10bn in ARR.
An issuer processor is a company or technology platform that connects banks (the issuers) to the payment networks like Visa or Mastercard.
Enfuce was founded in Finland in 2016 and its ARR is currently €30m and growing at a rate of 60 per cent.
The company’s last investment round was in 2022 and brought the total funds raised to date to €73.5m.
“I’m going into the next phase now and, of course, I’m seeking a unicorn valuation,” she said.
Liikamaa has strong views on pretty much everything and she isn’t shy about sharing them.
From the lack of VC funding going to female founders to why her own children can’t expect to inherit any future fortune, no topic is off limits.
‘I’m too old to give a sh*t’
“I’m too old to actually give a sh*t as long but I don’t want to be an asshole,” she said. “I do think it’s important to be authentic, but I’m not trying to play a game.”
I’ve been a journalist for 35 years and I have never interviewed someone more direct than Monika Liikamaa – and I’ve interviewed c.5,000 entrepreneurs!
Around 30 of Enfuce’s total staff of 156 are based in London and the company has bold growth plans for the UK.
Explaining the idea behind the business Liikamaa said: “I was a banker with shitty processors which meant that to launch new payment products to my customers, Apple Pay, Google Pay was f**king horrible, expensive and took sh*tloads of time.
“I was like, ‘hey guys, this isn’t rocket science, I can do it better’. I decided to build a company that does that better, faster and globally scalable.
“Because we chose to be globally scalable, we actually became cloud native.”
English is her third language behind Finnish and Swedish – and although she can swear in all three she prefers Finnish.
Finnish is best language to swear in
“The best language to swear in is Finnish,” she explained. “Even a non-Finn would understand when a Finn swears.
“Finns, by default, we don’t talk a lot, so what we say, we try to make it useful, and that’s why we have a very low threshold of tolerance for fluff, fluff.
“There’s also this study that intelligent people curse a lot.”
Monika Liikamaa, co-CEO of Finnish FinTech Enfuce
Liikamaa was born in Sweden to Finnish parents and has dual citizenship.
“You know my father, he was a taxi driver and had his own business. When I was younger, I used to, during my studies, work as a taxi driver and then a jail guard in a male prison.
“I was 19 and prisoners could be in for murder or drunken driving, so anything and everything.
‘Sweden became pussies’
“After my school, I wanted to go into the military (intelligence) service, but that’s when Swedes decided to become pussies and to take down the defence, which they regret heavily now.
“Thanks for the Finns we have, you know, the border under control. And that’s when I thought like, ‘oh sh*t, I need to do something else’.
“That’s when I started my tech studies. I’m a system architect, a developer by trade. In the last millennium, I was a developer.”
She moved to the south of Finland and became a developer in the telco industry.
“Then I saw the dotcom boom and the crash,” she recalled. “Then I became a first-time founder in 2006. It was a consultancy for tech.
“I was very direct, and I have this thing called ‘getting sh*t done’.”
It’s at this point that she pulls apart her denim shirt to reveal the words on her T-shirt.
She co-founded Enfuce in 2016 with her fellow co-CEO Denise Johansson.
“We haven’t grown revenue wise as much as maybe our competitors, but we have this thing called ‘not stinking’,” explained Liikamaa.
“We’ve been very, let’s say, selective with customers, which means that now we’re finally getting up to a 60 per cent year-on-year growth path.
“It wouldn’t work with players who do porn, adult entertainment, or sh*t like that.”
UK customers include respected names like London Mutual, Funding Circle and allpay.
Kids need tough love
Liikamaa is a no-nonsense mother-of-four and said young people need a dose of tough love.
“I don’t know whose quote it is but ‘good times make weak people, weak people create hard times, hard times create strong people’,” she said.
“I’m thinking that we’re hopefully now in the hard times, and we’re going to start creating strong people.
“But I feel that a part of the younger generation, let’s say 35 and younger, they are a bit lost, because they have been part of the good times.
“When good times come, it is human (nature) to want the best for your kids, which means that you do sh*t on behalf of them, and only through pain and suffering comes through growth and courage.
‘We f*cked it up’
“We kind of f*cked it up, and then we added on social media, TikTok.
“If you look at China, I don’t think the Chinese government even allows TiktTok to f*ck up the brains of the Chinese youth but here we are.
“We have outsourced parenthood and when I say parenthood, I don’t mean biological parenting as such, but safe grown-ups who will inflict certain amount of, let’s say, structured pain, meaning you need to work, you need to put in an effort.
“When you don’t require that and you don’t support it, people very easily go into this self-pity martyr narrative, and that really kills innovation and progress. I think that’s sad.”
The outspoken entrepreneur has four children– two boys and two girls – aged between 16-25.
“The two younger ones still live at home, but they know what it means to work,” she said.
“We put them to work, even though they don’t want to when they are young, and also they have had to choose a sport.
“I believe a lot in sports, especially when you’re young, because it teaches you to win and lose, and it teaches you to do an effort.
“Life isn’t about being motivated or being passionate to succeed, it’s about discipline. You get your sh*t done, even though when you don’t want to, because you have to, because giving up isn’t an option.”
She revealed she was a keen swimmer when she was younger so I volunteered the fact that I like cricket
‘Cricket is not a f*cking sport’
“That’s not a f*cking sport,” she replied. “That’s some weirdos with a stick in their hand.”
As a significant shareholder in the business I asked her if she was multi-millionaire.
“Maybe one day,” she said before admitting her children can’t assume they’ll inherit any future fortune.
“Everyone needs to make their own money,” she said. “We live in Finland. It’s a very secure and safe place. We pay sh*tloads of taxes to make it so.
“It’s pure with good schools and everything. I think the problem is that they don’t even understand how good it is.
“That’s why I think it’s always good to send them out and look at the world and see other stuff to get perspective.
Fruity language: Monika Liikamaa, co-CEO of Enfuce, doesn’t like ‘fluff’
“One day when I maybe, hopefully get the bucket of money, that money will be reinvested into tens of end users.”
Another subject Liikamaa is passionate about is the lack of investment in female founders, comparing the problem to the feeling someone gets when they drive a new car and sees an identical make and model.
“If you would be a car person, and whatever person you are, when you have this vision of something, and then you’re like, ‘oh my god, this is exactly what I want’,” she explained.
“Then you buy that car, and you’re so happy, and because you have never seen exactly that model with that colour, like anywhere.
Back female founders
“Then you drive it out, and you see f*cking three cars, exactly the same because you have never seen it, because you haven’t been trained to look at it.
“I think that’s one of the key problems with female founders and the VC finding each other. The VCs don’t know how to look and what to look for.
“I think also us women, and now maybe not me included in that thing, but we have this thing called fear.
“We are afraid of a lot of things. I think one is biology. Probably, you know, God created man and said: ‘I can do better’.
“With that we’ve got this gift of being concerned about stuff. What that means is that we don’t pitch.
“I think there’s a lot more female-founded companies that actually are solving real problems but for whatever reason, the females don’t have the courage to go and pitch for money.
“The fun fact is this, no one will come home to you and say, ‘hey, b*tch, I looked at your shit, I’m gonna fund it’. Happened never, unless you have already had a success track, and then some weirdo will come and put money into whatever you’re doing just because you’re doing it.
“That’s why I work a lot with young founders, female founders, to instil them with the courage that the worst thing that can happen is you get a no, and nobody died of a no.
“I think that in combination of VCs starting to open their eyes and actually actively looking for companies.”
30 per cent of the startup ecosystem in Finland are run by females, and 32 per cent are scaleups.
“Female-founded startups and scaleups succeed better on average than male,” she said.
“But I think that’s one of the problems. It’s a combination problem. You can’t invest in something that you don’t find or see, and in order to get funded, you need to not be afraid of failing.”
- Chris Maguire is the executive editor of BusinessCloud. He can be emailed at Chris.Maguire@BusinessCloud.co.uk