Zach Shelby, Edge Impulse: “The best startups are born when you hit the wall”

Few have shaped Finland’s tech scene as quietly – yet as powerfully – as Zach Shelby.

A Michigan-born engineer, he came to Oulu for an exchange, joined VTT, and decided to stay for good. He went on to found Sensinode, a pioneering IoT company before “IoT” was even a thing. He got booed off stage for promoting open architecture, kept building anyway, raised money the hard way, and eventually sold the company to Arm.

Then came Edge Impulse – born from sheer frustration with the clunky tools of early AI. Their first customer? Oura. Their exit? Qualcomm.

In Cofounderi’s first-ever English-language episode, Zach walks us through his entrepreneurial rollercoaster from a “1-700 phone line” job and sauna-based due diligence to burnout, breakthroughs, and exits worth hundreds of millions.

Zach shows what it means to build with passion. Sometimes, being too early is exactly right.