For almost eight years now, Niko Kultalahti has been part of Gapps’ story – from being our first marketing hire to shaping our growth engine as Revenue Operations Lead. Now, in the autumn of 2025 he is stepping into a completely new challenge as our Cloud Specialist.
👉 For Niko, it’s been eight years of exploring what kind of work feels meaningful, and shaping new roles around the things he actually wants to learn and do.
When Niko joined Gapps in 2018, he didn’t step into an existing marketing department, he was the marketing department.
Coming from a large global company with clear processes, Niko suddenly found himself in a completely different world.
“In my previous job everything around marketing was defined. At Gapps, I just got a credit card and was told: ‘Do what you need to do’”, Niko thinks back.
It was both exciting and a bit confusing. For the first six months, Niko admits, he was figuring out how to actually work in a company where there were no fixed processes – where you simply had to decide what made sense and move forward.
Coming from a global corporation where everything had a clear process and a handbook, it took time to adjust. But those months also set the tone for everything that followed: learning by doing, experimenting, and finding his own direction step by step.
As Gapps grew, so did Niko’s role. He built campaigns, analytics, automations, and the foundations of what would later become our marketing and brand function.
Eventually he became Head of Marketing and joined the leadership team, guiding the brand through major changes and helping shape the company’s direction.
“I got to be part of the decision-making – to see how the company evolves and to influence where it’s heading. That was huge learning,” Niko says.
But over time, he started noticing what parts of the job energized him, and what didn’t.
“I realized I don’t enjoy organizing events or being on stage. What interested me was how things work. How we use technology and data to make things smarter, more efficient, more valuable.”
That curiosity would lead to his next chapter.
When Niko was about to take parental leave, Gapps was hiring a new Chief Growth Officer. Instead of returning to the same job, Niko proposed something else. A role that didn’t yet exist.
“I said, what if I come back in a RevOps role? We had marketing, sales, and customer success, but all in silos. Someone needed to connect the dots,” Niko says.
The idea was simple but powerful: combine marketing data, business operations, and technology into one growth engine. That’s how Revenue Operations (RevOps) was born at Gapps.
“It gave me a chance to look at the whole picture. I’ve always liked doing things, not just planning. This was a way to build systems that actually work.”
During his time in RevOps, Niko found himself drawn deeper into the tech side: data, automation, and cloud infrastructure.
After years of working around those topics in marketing, he wanted to get closer to the customer and value creation. The tech side had fascinated him for a long time, and now it felt like the right moment to step in.
Outside of work, he began studying programming, cybersecurity, and cloud technologies through a pilot program with the University of Tampere and Seinäjoki University Centre.
“I’d do my day job, spend time with family, put my kid to bed, and then often study until midnight. I knew I wanted to move towards tech, but without going back to school full-time for several years,” Niko smiles.
It wasn’t a sudden decision, but a slow build of skills, nights of learning, and the quiet belief that it would eventually pay off.
This autumn, it did.
In early November 2025, Niko stepped into a new role as Cloud Specialist. The role focuses on Google Cloud’s managed services – keeping customers’ environments secure, monitored and well-configured – but also reflects a broader shift inside Gapps. Instead of experts constantly switching between different types of work, the aim is to create more focused roles and build a clearer, more consistent service for customers.
For Niko, that means having the space to go deeper into Google Cloud and contribute to a service that works better for both the team and the clients.
Over the past few years, Niko has also worked 80% hours while studying and taking care of his son.
“The four-day week worked perfectly. There was never pressure to do more, just trust that I’d manage my time,” Niko says.
When their son was born, Niko and his family moved from Helsinki to Laihia, near Vaasa. Gapps’ remote-first culture made it not only possible but natural.
“It’s still rare to be able to work fully remotely in a way that really works. For me, that’s been huge,” Niko says.
And despite all the changes – in roles, teams, and cities – one thing, he says, has never changed.
“People are people here. You don’t have to hide your life. If my kid runs into a video call, we just say hi and move on. It’s normal. That means a lot,” Niko smiles.
Looking back, Niko doesn’t see his career as a straight line, and he doesn’t think it should be.
“Most people don’t have one single interest that lasts forever. I think you should try to do work that genuinely interests you. When something new starts to spark your curiosity, find a way to follow it,” Niko thinks.
As a part of our team, he’s been able to do exactly that, turning curiosity into a career path that keeps evolving.
“You don’t always have to know where you’ll end up. If your values are clear and you stay curious, the path tends to show itself.”