Yucca's Stories (1)

Hello Sweet Puhekupla Readers,

So, I introduced myself yesterday and now I have a story to write. You all know who the 2 persons were who made Sulake, right? If not, then you’ll better be ashamed! Well, it all started with Aapo Kyrölä (Aapo) and Sampo Karjalainen (Apparatus) the 2 Co-Founders of Sulake. Habbo (Former: Hotelli Kultakala) was pre-born in 1999, as a hobby project by Sampo and Aapo. This was called Mobiles Disco, a virtual chat room designed for a Finnish band. After having been contracted to design a virtual game for Elisa (Finnish ISP), they were contracted for another project. So, Sulake Labs was born on 1 May 2000. And this is, where my story starts. (Ouch I can feel the excitement of you all!)

(1) Aapo
Aapo, or Kyrpov/Pasimaailma/JormaOllila is known as "Aapo Kyrölä", 1 of the Co-Founders of Sulake. He is official the first Sulake Staff. Aapo was since the beginning Chief Executive Officer. He managed everybody inside Sulake. In september 2001 Aapo changed position and became Chief Science Officer. By this, he is the Head of "Reasearch & Technology Developments". Nowadays Aapo also is a Board Member. Together with Sampo, Aapo made Habbo as we know it now. So, when he started Sulake Labs with Sampo, soon other employees popped in.
- Question from an old interview; What is your biggest dream considering Habbo?
- Habbo has become much more popular and bigger than I ever expected. My dream is that Habbo would be longlife and that it would spread into users own pages, and we could create some new ways for the users to express themselves and develop their own stuff. At some point the users could really participate in creating the content, for example design their own furniture and maybe even sell them to other users.

(2) Apparatus
Apparatus, known as "Sampo Karjalainen" is the second part of the co-founders. He is official the second Sulake Staff. Right from the beginning, Apparatus is “Chief Creative Officer”, he is the Head of all “Visual Concept Designing”. Together with Aapo and HeadFuse (which I will mention later) they are still the Heads of Sulake. You can see Apparatus on lots of screens from the beginning of Habbo, where you do not see Aapo somewhere. Some say he also acted as the UK Hotel Manager in the very, very beginning of Habbo UK (January 2001).
- Question from an old interview; Reveal something about the designing of Habbo.
- In the early days everything was different: you could swear, hack and steal in Habbo. Hacking was considered great at start - a phenomenom, which was started by the users: we found it interesting to see how the users would modify the stuff we created into something completely different. Then the hacking started to take away the credibility of the service and also disturb other users so it had to be forbidden.

So here ends my first story. Sulake was born, created by Aapo and Apparatus. How thrilling was that?! In the next story I will talk about ArmasK and Drken, the first 2 Graphic Designers who were hired by Apparatus & Aapo. Hope this was interesting. If you have any corrections, additions of idea's - please mention!

Your (2 days now!) Puhekupla Staff,

Yucca