McKinsey Partner, University Professor and Designer Team up to Build Skimle: a Powerful Tool to Analyse Documents

Henri Schildt (left), Olli Salo, and Kalle Järvenpää decided to roll up their sleeves instead of just talking about AI, and founded a fast-growing product company.

Skimle logo

Skimle has an intuitive workflow that enables finding and structuring insights from different sources and connecting to various end-to-end workflows

Helsinki-based startup Skimle is building a tool to transform knowledge work. Rapid uptake by market and user researchers, academics, consultants and beyond.

HELSINKI, FINLAND, April 8, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- In November 2025, Olli Salo left his role as a McKinsey partner and Henri Schildt his professorship at Aalto University in Helsinki. Armed with a grant from the Finnish government, they decided to forego their safe monthly salaries and instead pursue their bold idea of transforming knowledge work for millions of people. The third founder, designer and developer Kalle Järvenpää, joined shortly after, and the founding trio was complete.

The idea for Skimle was born from a practical need. While still a professor in late 2024, Henri was working on a project for the Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications aimed at finding better ways to analyse legislative consultation responses. Manually analysing hundreds of responses would take months, while basic AI tools struggled with reliability and transparency. Through decades of academic qualitative research, Henri had a strong methodological view for how the analysis should be done. With AI, it was now possible to automate those steps. Beyond the Ministry, Skimle proved equally well-suited for academic researchers.

Olli had worked as a consultant at McKinsey for over 18 years, collecting and analysing data across hundreds of client projects. He jumped at the chance to co-found Skimle when he realised the same knowledge work, analysis and categorisation, that Skimle could turbocharge is done by millions of professionals across industries. Consultants gather information from clients and experts, market research firms interview consumers, product managers review customer and business requests, and HR teams seek to understand employees. The shared challenge is practically turning raw data into refined themes in a way that is high-quality and transparent.

"Like Excel, but for text"

At Skimle's core is a workflow developed by the founders that systematically processes every input document, identifies key observations, and automatically generates themes and subcategories. The data is stored in a purpose-built data structure that humans and agents can explore and edit. From the refined data, it's easy to generate various reports and presentations directly, and to examine it more closely to identify dependencies. "We aim for a user experience that feels natural to experts, centred on data and analysis rather than chatting," says Kalle.

"Excel made number analysis accessible to everyone, and now has hundreds of millions of users. An equivalent tool for text hasn't existed — but now with AI, qualitative data can also be analysed computationally. Current chatbots are like pocket calculators, while Skimle is a spreadsheet application where data is structured, transparent, and editable," explains Olli.

"Over 90% of the world's data is in text form. Documents, open-ended responses, contracts, interviews, legal texts, books, and other qualitative materials contain important information, but in fragmented form. With Skimle, you can move beyond analysing individual documents to the next level," Henri adds.

The founders are certain that there is a gap in the market, roughly the size of one large European company, and have a vision to grow rapidly. After four months, the pace has been brisk — revenue is growing over 50% every month. Customers have been found not only in Finland but around the world. The IT publication CIO.com recently interviewed Olli and highlighted Skimle's vision of building a new "value-generating layer" on top of existing document-based data. The international attention has been beneficial for growing the business.

Entrepreneurs in their forties

Skimle is based at the newly launched Helsinki Founders House, which brings together ambitious startups and provides facilities. The founders are all in their forties and accustomed to working in larger, established organizations, but have adapted well to their new environment. "Many have wondered why jump into startup entrepreneurship at this stage of your career, but I felt the ongoing transformation of knowledge work is so massive that the safest place to be is at the forefront," says Olli.

The product is competitive and demand is strong. As the market is constantly changing, investing in product development is critical. Next up for Skimle, alongside continuous product improvement, is properly launching marketing and finding investors to support the growth story. "The pace is somewhat different from the university, but I don't regret it for a second," says Henri.

Olli Salo
Skimle
+358 40 7434405
olli@skimle.com
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