Taito.ai

It’s not often I get to do these kinds of discussions like the one I had with Ewa Priestley, Laura Modiano and Niilo Säämänen last week at Slush. We had a chat about how performance management is done at Wolt and Miro, the role of continuous feedback, and the importance of great leadership. And finally, how AI and software fit into that picture. I was really impressed to hear how boldly companies like Miro and Wolt are going about this, and to hear about AI’s potential from the experts like Laura / OpenAI. Find the full discussion on video in comments. Would love to hear comments and discuss the topics. 4 key takeaways: 360 reviews and performance rounds suck. The tooling built around the traditional perf processes serve employee evaluation, budgeting, and the organization’s point of view on performance, but don’t help individuals to develop their abilities. Great leadership cannot be automated. I think Ewa put it well: leadership can only be learned through a lot of practice, and by honing your judgement. Great performance is not only improved by process, but by maintaining a culture that makes your organization great. 1-1 meetings are a key to coaching people, but leaders lack the time to prepare for them. Like Niilo said: no leader has the luxury to spend most of their time thinking about people's performance. You have to be smart with the time you have for it, and performance management has to be integrated into your existing workflow. AI can help here 🤖 Feedback is most effective when served fresh. I feel I heard it from all the speakers: to change someone’s behavior, feedback needs to be constant, immediate, and constructive. All kinds of defenses come up when feedback comes late, is out of context, or lacks examples.

Close to 200 people and tech leaders joined us for the “Performance Management in the Era of AI” Summit during Slush last week. While we’re still digesting all the insights & learnings from the discussions, we wanted to share the recordings from stage discussions with all of you. Couldn’t make it? Want to re-cap the discussions? The panel discussions are now available in full on our Youtube channel. Link in comments. A big hand 👏 to all of our speakers: Nathalie Parent, Cal Henderson, Ewa Priestley, Laura Modiano, and Niilo Säämänen Thank you for co-hosting the event, Accel & OpenAI! 🙏

What an incredible week at Slush! 🔥 We had an amazing time, and it wouldn’t have been the same without all of you who joined us at our events. Thank you for making it such a memorable experience! 1️⃣ We kicked off the week with a dinner for People and Technology leaders from European growth companies, co-hosted with Wolt’s Marianne Vikkula and Illusian Founder Office. It was truly inspiring to exchange insights on the future of people management and discuss the need for better practices. 2️⃣ On Wednesday, we were thrilled to host our very first Taito.ai Summit in collaboration with Accel and OpenAI. We were honored to welcome an incredible lineup of speakers, and close to 200 attendees. The discussions in the room about optimizing people performance processes and the impact of AI left us with a lot of inspiration and food for thought. 3️⃣ A special moment was our CEO & Co-founder Kristo’s interview on the Slush stage with Aino, the CEO of Slush, about the first 365 days as a startup founder. 4️⃣ The absolute highlight of the week was meeting so many of you at our booth! Hearing your enthusiasm for people growth and development, as well as your interest in Taito.ai’s platform, means the world to us. 🙏 A huge thank you to everyone who joined us, engaged in conversations, and shared your insights. We can’t wait to continue this journey with all of you. Stay tuned for more learnings and key takeaways from the discussions we had at Slush! Photo credits: Taito.ai team Jessica North Janna Rantanen

We super excited to partner with Sonali De Rycker from Accel and Eléonore Crespo, Robert Gentz, Miki Kuusi, Ilkka Paananen, Niilo Säämänen and Oskari Saarenmaa - the best possible partners to build Taito.ai. I’m also extremly grateful for the opportunity to work with forward-looking Beta customer teams led by Duleepa "Dups" Wijayawardhana from Supermetrics, Vicki Marchington from Faculty, and several others on our journey to save the world from bad performance management processes and tools. We would not be here without you❤️ There's a clear and growing realization how traditional performance practices struggle to match the pace of modern work environments. Annual reviews, 360 feedback and 1-on-1s lack automation, leading to cumbersome, manual processes which drain time and energy from business delivery. When no solution existed, we considered building our own, laying the foundation for Taito.ai. Our funding announcement: https://lnkd.in/d5jwDJjr

🚀 Big announcement 🚀  We’re excited to share that we’ve raised $2.7M in seed funding and proud to partner with Accel and Illusian Founder Office to bring our vision of AI-powered employee performance enablement to support even more teams. We’re happy to welcome Accel’s Sonali De Rycker, and Illusian’s Eléonore Crespo (Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Pigment), Robert Gentz (Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Zalando), Miki Kuusi (Founder and CEO of Wolt) and Ilkka Paananen (Co-Founder and CEO of Supercell) to join our journey, which is only getting started. With this new investment we are ready to gear up for wider availability in 2025, and help growing tech companies build better people performance with less management. Our promise is to automate performance enablement using AI, letting your people drive their growth & development, instead of just analyzing it. Taito.ai is currently in closed Beta and trialed by leading European tech companies. If you’d like to see the benefits of Taito.ai in your team, make sure to sign up on our Beta waitlist: https://taito.ai/

The story behind our name - why “Taito.ai”? In Finnish, “Taito” means “skill”. In Japanese, “Tai” refers to “talent” or “ability”, while “To” can mean a “City” or “Metropolis”. Coincidence or not, “Taito” feels like a great fit for what we’re building. Taito.ai is about helping people grow by building new skills using feedback. In order to develop new skills, you need ongoing feedback about your previous work and performance. A well timed, personal, and thoughtful feedback note makes a big difference for an individual, while regular feedback habits help build great teams. The “.ai” in our name? AI is at the very core of Taito. For us, AI is about simplifying and automating the processes, helping you spend less time managing the process, and more time doing what drives real growth: learning, discussing and implementing change. Our promise: 1️⃣ Taito teaches every employee to give better feedback, at the right time, with more thought. In return, they also receive the same from their peers. 2️⃣ For managers, it turns feedback conversations into opportunities to grow as leaders by learning how to approach feedback and one-to-one conversations. The result? Stronger teams, better leadership and a culture where everyone has the tools to develop their skills & talent. P.S. Also, part of the story is that we’ve designed our product & brand with Nordic clarity and Japanese minimalism in mind: to focus on what truly matters. https://taito.ai/

Traditional performance reviews? Outdated. Once-a-year feedback cycles don’t fit a world that moves this fast. Performance management has gone through a major shift in recent years. Companies are moving away from rigid annual reviews toward forward-focused, continuous feedback. Why? Because traditional reviews often fail to improve current performance and do little to develop future potential. Instead, today’s leading businesses are prioritizing regular check-ins, real-time feedback and continuous development. As Harvard Business Review put it, the focus is shifting from accountability to learning. Something that I’ve realized is that with AI, this shift has become a reality. Imagine AI stepping in—not to replace human insight, but to enhance it. AI can, for example, automatically request feedback from the right people at the right time, ensuring insights are relevant and timely. AI can detect growth patterns, highlight development opportunities and offer timely nudges to keep managers and their teams aligned on goals. AI even helps managers navigate tough conversations and tailor coaching approaches to fit different personalities, improving the overall quality of feedback. At Taito.ai, we’re redefining performance management to focus on growth, not scores. AI is freeing us up to do what matters most—supporting real, meaningful conversations and ongoing development. The future isn’t about grading past performance; it’s about enabling people to thrive, here and now. We call it Performance Enablement. I think this article by HBR is a valuable read for anyone interested in how Performance Management is changing: https://lnkd.in/dZ4ZpWTP

🚀 Speaker Announcement: Ewa Priestley, VP of Talent and Culture at Miro! Join us in welcoming our speaker Ewa Priestley, VP of Talent and Culture at Miro! Ewa will join us at the Performance Management in the Era of AI Summit at Slush, hosted by Taito.ai, Accel and OpenAI. At Miro, Ewa has been instrumental in shaping the company’s first culture framework, establishing a cohesive, values-driven foundation. Recently, she led a transformative overhaul of the talent function. Throughout her time at Miro, Ewa has led teams to implement impactful HR initiatives focused on employee listening, engagement, diversity and inclusion. With over 20 years of experience in talent, leadership, and organizational transformation, Ewa's career spans senior roles at OLX Group, Amazon Web Services and McCann Worldgroup. Join Ewa and other top industry leaders from OpenAI, Slack, Wolt and Shift Technology on November 20th from 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM for an in-depth discussion on AI’s role in empowering teams with smarter, data-driven performance management. Attendance is by application only—link in the comments 👇

🚀 Speaker Announcement: Ewa Priestley, VP of Talent and Culture at Miro! Join us in welcoming our speaker Ewa Priestley, VP of Talent and Culture at Miro! Ewa will join us at the Performance Management in the Era of AI Summit at Slush, hosted by Taito.ai, Accel and OpenAI. At Miro, Ewa has been instrumental in shaping the company’s first culture framework, establishing a cohesive, values-driven foundation. Recently, she led a transformative overhaul of the talent function. Throughout her time at Miro, Ewa has led teams to implement impactful HR initiatives focused on employee listening, engagement, diversity and inclusion. With over 20 years of experience in talent, leadership, and organizational transformation, Ewa's career spans senior roles at OLX Group, Amazon Web Services and McCann Worldgroup. Join Ewa and other top industry leaders from OpenAI, Slack, Wolt and Shift Technology on November 20th from 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM for an in-depth discussion on AI’s role in empowering teams with smarter, data-driven performance management. Attendance is by application only—link in the comments 👇

🚀 Speaker Announcement: Nathalie Parent, Chief People Officer at Shift Technology! Excited to introduce our speaker Nathalie Parent, Chief People Officer at Shift Technology! Nathalie will join us at the Performance Management in the Era of AI Summit at Slush, hosted by Taito.ai, Accel and OpenAI. With over 30 years of experience in high-growth software companies, Nathalie has led transformative HR strategies across organisations of all sizes and stages, including SAP, Selligent and Corel to name a few. Now Chief People Officer at Shift Technology, she brings expertise in global HR strategy, talent development and cultural transformation within complex, rapidly scaling environments—a perspective shaped by her experience living and working in five different countries. Join Nathalie and other top industry leaders from OpenAI, Slack, Wolt and Miro on November 20th from 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM for an in-depth discussion on AI’s role in empowering HR teams with smarter, data-driven performance management. Attendance is by application only—link in the thread 👇