Beyond our school.
OtaMaps started with helping people find their classroom. Now I’m exploring how to scale it: what would it take to bring affordable indoor navigation to other campuses, venues, and large buildings?
Explore OtaMaps DEVELOPER. BUILDER. CURIOUS MIND.CV / 2026
18 YEARS OLDBASED IN FINLAND
I turn curiosity
into things that work.
Writing code since 12. Shipping since 14.
Exploring the space between software,
physics, and the real world.
San Francisco, again.
I’m coming back December 5–11. Building something, exploring an idea, or just up for a coffee? I’d love to meet.
Let’s meet in SFNOW EXPLORING
OPEN QUESTIONS. WORK IN PROGRESS.
Less IT friction. More room to build.
I’m building Solmuton, a managed service provider project for small businesses. Bringing asset procurement, support, and everyday IT into one simpler experience, so people can focus on their own work.
Explore SolmutonEXPERIENCE
Built for the
real world.
SMALL BUDGET.BIG PROBLEMS.
OtaMaps✳
A big building. A thousand students.
One less thing to get lost in.
THE ACTUAL PROJECT / OTAMAPSVisit otamaps.fi
20,000+ m²BUILDING AREA
1,000+STUDENTS
< €1,000TOTAL BUDGET
I lead the team developing an indoor navigation platform for over 1,000 students. OtaMaps helps them find the right classroom in a 20,000+ m² building, with classroom-level accuracy and a budget under €1,000.
Behind the project +
The challenge: make a large school building easier to navigate for over 1,000 students while keeping the entire project affordable.
My role combines leading the development team with building the platform. The focus is practical: help students get to the right classroom with room-level accuracy.
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE / HEALTHTECH2 YEARS
Built. Released.
Used by thousands.
Two years working at a healthtech startup. I developed two released applications with more than 10,000 combined downloads.
2RELEASED APPLICATIONS
10k+COMBINED DOWNLOADS
Two hours.
Finnish champion.
PLAY THE WINNING GAME ↗MEREN VARTIJA / SEA GUARDIANA small game.
A small game.
A sea worth protecting.
I won the under-22 category of Finland’s national coding championship, Softamestari. The final challenge: build a game from scratch in two hours, based on a brief from the John Nurminen Foundation.
In Meren vartija, you sail around the Baltic Sea, swipe away litter, and make everyday choices that stop pollution at its source. Between rounds, you build the foundation’s real conservation projects and see the sea recover. Play directly in your browser, on your phone or desktop.
ONE DAY. FOUR BUILDERS.
Haggle
1stplaceCONDENSE.CHAT CHALLENGE
An agent that finds it, vets it, and haggles for it.
We built Haggle, an AI shopping assistant for second-hand deals, at the {Tech: Europe} Agentic AI Hack in Stockholm. A day of building with Google DeepMind and Norrsken, ending with first place in the condense.chat challenge.
Built with Oskar Männik, Songhua Chen and Toivo Kallio.
HACK-NATION / GLOBAL AI HACKATHON
Protégé
An apprentice that learns by watching.
Protégé watches an expert work, asks why through an ElevenLabs voice agent, and turns the session into a clickable Work Map of steps, decisions, and guardrails. Its voice tutor, Ada, then coaches new hires on their live screen and catches mistakes before they’re saved.
I built the Capture and Teach pipelines: screen and transcript capture, the interviewer agent, and guardrails before save. Built with Wilmer von Harpe, who led the pitch and demo, and Toivo Kallio, who built the Work Map.
1stplaceELEVENLABS CHALLENGE
Curiosity,
put to the test.
CODE. CALCULATE.BUILD. REPEAT.
SPACE & ENGINEERINGFINLAND FINALIST
ESA CanSatA small satellite.
A bigger challenge.
A satellite mission, scaled down to a soda can. A finalist in Finland’s ESA CanSat competition.
- Launch
- Separate
- Flight
Onboard sensors and cameras record the journey and data as the parachute brings the satellite back to Earth.
Scroll to follow the mission ↓ROBOTICS2025–2026 SEASON
VEX V5
Robotics.
Built to think for itself.
I developed our robot’s self-driving system to adapt to every situation on the field. Its exceptional technical execution earned our team the Think Award.
We also finished as Tournament Finalists in the Finnish national competition.
TWO AWARDS / ONE SEASON
THINK AWARDTHINK AWARD
Exceptional autonomous execution
TOURNAMENT FINALIST
Finnish national competition
PHYSICS
6th nationallyFinnish Physics Competition
Finnish national competition
PROGRAMMING
20th nationallyDatatähti
Finnish Programming Competition · Finalist
RECOGNITION
Multiple awardsTechnology stipends
Recognition for work in technology
Helsinki → San Francisco
BEYOND THE CLASSROOM17 years old.
17 years old.
One month.
San Francisco.
At 17, I spent a month building OtaMaps in San Francisco as part of Neighborhood, an international youth hacker house program. Surrounded by other young people who just wanted to build. Now, I’m working on something new and exciting.
FINLAND / SAN FRANCISCO / A NEW PROJECTHEL / SFO
Still learning.
Always building.
I’m Rene, an 18-year-old developer and final-year student at Otaniemi Upper Secondary School in Finland.
I study on the LUMA track, with an emphasis on physics and mathematics. I’m drawn to problems that connect those subjects with software, and to the moment an idea becomes something someone can use.
Better when built together.
In 2025, I co-founded Finland’s first Hack Club with a few friends. I’ve taught programming courses and workshops, helped other students discover hackathons, and hosted hackathons and game jams with Hack Club’s support.
AGE 12
The first line of code.
Started programming. Kept going.
AGE 14
From code to launch.
Released my first application.
AGE 17
A month in San Francisco.
Neighborhood. An international hacker house. Building OtaMaps.
NOW / AGE 18
More to figure out.
Building a new project. Final year at Otaniemi. Physics and mathematics.
Let’s build
what’s next.
Good problems. Ambitious ideas. Interesting people.