Get Known. S5 E5 - Veera Honkanen from Kauppalehti

Veera Honkanen is the lone California-based correspondent for Finland’s largest business publication Kauppalehti. She is situated right in the heart of Silicon Valley where so many European companies try to break their way into the U.S. market. But Veera actually covers much more than just tech and in our conversation, we get into her wide range of topics from business to politics. 

We started by talking about how she got the California assignment and how working outside the country is different than being a reporter inside Finland.  She shares about her daily work, some of the tools she uses in her reporting, and the editorial process for a foreign correspondent.  We talk a bit about AI, AI tools, and their impact on journalism. She also gives some advice on what it takes to be a story worth writing and this led to a discussion about differences in attitudes towards “failure” in the U.S. vs. Finland.

Living in America is still a work in progress for Veera. There is a lot of trial and error to understand the culture but she has learned to adopt some American ways of working including the need for “just going for it”. She still gets approval for big stuff she wants to cover but she has learned to move fast and she says that has been an interesting personal adaptation. 

Veera gave lots of real-life examples from her reporting which made this interview full of insightful nuggets. We ended up talking about how doing business and getting covered in such a big place as the U.S. requires more than just a good product but an excellent story to compete with all the many excellent stories that are out there coming from the market.  The successful companies are well prepared beyond just having a product that does a job better than others. As Veera says, you need to be able to tell what emotionally drives a company forward and very often an interesting person who is willing to tell a bigger story. All this led to the general question of whether we are too comfortable with our lives in Finland and that maybe we need to find ways of getting more companies outside their comfort zone to reach more success.