---
type: podcast-episode
slug: 02-mikko-honkanen-vainu
number: 2
title: 'When Your Users Are Agents, Not People'
guestName: Mikko Honkanen
guestTitle: Co-founder
guestLinkedin: 'https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikko-honkanen-195a3920'
guestCompany: Vainu
guestCompanyUrl: 'https://search.vainu.com/'
guestBio: >
  Mikko is the co-founder of Vainu. He started the company in 2014 after running
  sales teams across the Nordics and Silicon Valley, bootstrapped Vainu past 15M
  ARR, and built a proprietary data engine covering 50 million pages of Nordic
  business documents. Today he works closely with the product team, driving
  Vainu's agentic offerings.
hosts:
  - slug: tapio-haaja
  - slug: joni-juup
summary: >-
  Mikko co-founded Vainu in 2014, bootstrapped it past 15M ARR, and built a
  proprietary data engine covering 50 million pages of Nordic business
  documents. Now he's watching the product shift from humans browsing a UI to
  agents pulling data through APIs and MCPs — the interface disappears, and the
  companies that move first with enterprises win.
hook: >-
  Most SaaS companies are still debating where to add AI. Mikko Honkanen already
  shipped three agents and is building the one that runs them all.
youtubeId: uG6gNuilnZE
spotifyUrl: 'https://open.spotify.com/episode/1RrbMtKs1fHfTOcb9vGPGU'
appleUrl: >-
  https://podcasts.apple.com/fi/podcast/2-mikko-honkanen-when-your-users-are-agents-not-people/id1886740996?i=1000761102233
duration: '44:40'
publishedAt: '2026-05-06'
updatedAt: '2026-05-13'
chapters:
  - time: '01:13'
    label: Bootstrapping a data giant
  - time: '07:40'
    label: The AI aha moment
  - time: '13:28'
    label: A warning for founders in 2026
  - time: '18:29'
    label: Vainu's agent family
  - time: '28:00'
    label: Does SaaS survive AI?
  - time: '35:29'
    label: From pull to push
  - time: '38:35'
    label: When agents become the buyers
---

What started as a bootstrapped sales prospecting tool has become a platform that ships AI agents digging through millions of pages of public filings for hidden buying signals. Mikko shares how Vainu got there, why Model Context Protocols changed his thinking on product, and what happens to B2B sales when the customer is an agent, not a person.

## What we cover

- **Bootstrapping a data giant.** The early days of Vainu — selling the first customers on nothing but Keynote slides, six months without a salary.
- **The AI aha moment.** How connecting proprietary databases to LLMs (and the arrival of MCP) shifted Mikko's view of what a product is.
- **A warning for founders.** Why executives, board members, and founders can't outsource AI to a committee — they have to get their hands on it themselves.
- **Vainu's agent family.** A look at the Research, Enrichment, and Discovery agents, and how they process 50M+ pages of public data.
- **Does SaaS survive AI?** Whether traditional SaaS moats hold up, and why proprietary data processing is becoming the durable competitive advantage.
- **From pull to push.** How interfaces are moving away from manual list-building toward systems that analyze behavior and surface the right leads automatically.
- **When agents become the buyers.** The frontier of B2B sales — what happens to trust-building when the initial screening is done by an AI agent on the prospect's side.