From Finnish active gaming innovation to global growth: How Valo Motion built a scalable talent engine with TalentBee

Founded in 2016 in Helsinki, Valo Motion operates at the intersection of gaming and the attractions industry. Their mission is to get people moving with the help of technology around the world. With products like ValoClimb, ValoJump, and ValoArena, they’ve created interactive gaming systems that combine movement, technology, and fun – used in entertainment centers, trampoline parks, and gyms around the world.

At the start of 2023, Valo Motion was already on a clear path to rapid growth. Their gaming platforms were gaining strong traction globally, and demand was accelerating fast. With most of their revenue already coming from international markets, Valo Motion set its sights on scaling globally, especially in the US market, while keeping its trademark mix of creativity, playfulness, and technical excellence intact.

By 2024, that growth had become reality: revenue increased significantly in just two years, with 97% of sales coming from exports to over 80 countries.

To achieve that growth, Valo Motion needed a stronger talent foundation. As CEO Raine Kajastila put it, “So far, we’ve built a growth company without investors, fully from our own revenue. To keep growing, every hire must be the right one.”

But as the company’s global footprint expanded, recruitment capacity didn’t. With no dedicated HR or Talent Acquisition team, and leadership juggling hiring alongside product innovation and business development, there was a need for a solution.

Valo Motion’s growth demanded a strong talent strategy

Valo Motion’s challenge wasn’t just hiring, it was scaling strategically. The company needed to grow its team by 7–12 people each year, often in newly created roles. Many of these hires were niche professionals: product engineers, industrial designers, and operations specialists, who had rarely, if ever, worked in companies quite like Valo Motion.

There was no in-house TA or HR role at that point. TalentBee’s first project together with Valo Motion was to hire Precilia Lievonen, the company’s first People & Office Specialist, to build the foundation for future people operations.

At the same time, Valo Motion faced a visibility challenge. While their products were well known in the entertainment industry, the company itself wasn’t recognized as an employer in the Finnish tech talent market, especially among the mid-level tech and creative professionals it wanted to attract. As Raine put it,

“We weren’t really seen as a growth company in the Finnish tech scene. Our customer audiences loved our products, but our talent audiences didn’t know about our people or the mission behind all this.”

In a competitive talent market dominated by major gaming studios and startups, Valo Motion needed to define and communicate what made them stand out: a mission-led company where technology, fun, innovation, and movement collide.

Exploring a talent solution

After a referral from their network, Valo Motion connected with our team at TalentBee in early 2023. What stood out was TalentBee’s deep understanding of scaling tech companies and our dual expertise in recruitment and employer branding.

Valo Motion wasn’t looking for a transactional vendor, they wanted a partner embedded in the business, capable of adapting to changing needs and helping build recruitment maturity step by step.

The decision to collaborate with TalentBee

From the first discussions, the chemistry was there. Valo Motion’s team appreciated TalentBee’s curiosity and structured yet flexible approach.

“TalentBee’s team really gets us,” Valo Motion's CTO & Co-founder Joni Vähämäki says. “They joined our team’s Slack channels, they know our culture, and they always help define roles from the start together with us.”

The collaboration kicked off with a clear dual focus:

1. Build scalable recruitment processes to support continuous growth with great hires.
2. Grow Valo Motion’s employer brand to attract the right kind of mid-level professionals – those who share the company’s mix of curiosity, playfulness, and purpose.

The project in action

Since 2023, TalentBee has worked as Valo Motion’s extended talent team, managing end-to-end recruitment, developing employer branding strategy, and facilitating communication between hiring managers, marketing, and leadership.

Key elements of collaboration

• Weekly syncs on active recruitments and ongoing campaigns.
• Monthly EB reviews, evolving into strategic sessions with the marketing team and their HR.
• Quarterly retros with the founder team to align hiring priorities with business goals.
• Integrated communication: TalentBee joined Valo Motion’s Slack channels to keep collaboration seamless.

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Employer branding & talent marketing

On the employer branding side, TalentBee’s Employer Branding Strategist, Nea Larmia, took ownership of strategy and content.

“One of the biggest and most rewarding challenges has been clarifying ownership, who drives what on the talent side,” Nea explains. “In a growing company like Valo Motion, things move fast. What worked two years ago might not work now. We’ve focused on building decision clarity and recruitment maturity across the organization.”

Valo Motion’s employer branding strategy has evolved through continuous experimentation and learning. Early efforts focused on highlighting the company’s mission – getting people moving through play – and showcasing the innovation behind its products. Over time, the messaging broadened to emphasize global impact, product development excellence, and the unique intersection between gaming and physical activity that defines Valo Motion’s brand.

“Before, our online presence was very B2B and product-focused,” Raine explains. “Now, people get a real sense of who we are as a workplace.”

The EB work has also played an internal role, keeping the growing team aligned around what Valo Motion stands for as an employer and how its culture evolves alongside business growth.

“Candidates now often mention specific posts or stories they’ve read,” says Joni. “It’s easier for them to understand what Valo Motion does and what kind of company we are, even before the interview.”

This consistency in messaging has not only improved candidate awareness but also supported retention by reinforcing cultural fit and shared purpose inside the team.

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Recruitment & headhunting

Recruitment-wise, TalentBee has supported 7–12 roles per year, helping Valo Motion define new positions, streamline hiring processes, and coach hiring managers. Over time, the focus has shifted toward training team leads to take more ownership in hiring, making recruitment scalable as the company grows.

As TalentBee’s Talent Acquisition Strategist, Linda Nguyen, puts it:

“Our goal was to build Valo Motion’s internal recruitment maturity, not to just fill roles, but to create a system that enables continuous, high-quality hiring as the business evolves.”

At Valo Motion, recruitment is a structured yet flexible process. Each role starts with a deep-dive together with the hiring team to define what success looks like, both in skills and in culture & mission fit. TalentBee then manages the process end-to-end: inbound, outreach, candidate communication, interviews, and coordination between all stakeholders. Weekly syncs ensure full transparency, and feedback loops help improve each round.

Valo Motion’s leadership sees recruitment success not only in the number of hires made, but in the quality and longevity of those hires. 100 % of new hires have stayed beyond their first year, a rare achievement in the tech and gaming industry. This retention rate reflects careful role definition, realistic candidate communication, and a culture that genuinely supports its people once they join.

“When we have TalentBee running the process, candidates always feel informed and engaged,” Joni says. “It saves us time and lets us focus on interviews and the business itself.”

Strategic recruitment has been critical for Valo Motion’s business model. Growth requires adding around 7–12 new team members each year, often for roles that have never existed before. Many hires are highly specialized: game developers, hardware engineers, industrial designers, and the company cannot afford mismatches.

Recruiting these roles as one-off headhunting projects would risk losing alignment with business priorities and culture. Instead, the continuous collaboration with TalentBee allows real-time adaptation: recruitment plans evolve as product roadmaps and market needs shift.

This strategic model also supports culture and leadership development. By building hiring capability among team leads, Valo Motion ensures that recruitment reflects the company’s values at every level, not just in management. The approach has helped move recruitment from a reactive task to a core strategic function that enables innovation, scalability, and employee engagement.

Impact beyond just hiring

Linda from TalentBee highlights how the impact went beyond just hiring:

“We’ve seen a clear shift in how decisions are made and who takes ownership. Hiring teams have become more confident and independent, which has reduced the day-to-day reliance on founders. At the same time, the founders’ thinking, capabilities, and ways of working, especially in recruitment, have scaled across the organization.

This has strengthened Valo Motion’s culture and employee engagement. Team members are now actively involved in hiring and feel they can contribute to the company’s growth beyond their own roles.”

Ultimately, recruitment and employer branding now work hand in hand. Employer branding attracts the right people, and the recruitment process ensures they’re the right fit. Together, they’ve built a system that forms the foundation for sustainable growth.

Linda also shares concrete observations from the collaboration:

“In 2025 alone, Valo Motion made 9 new hires, all through inbound applications. There was very little need for headhunting, even in highly niche roles like IT Systems Engineer, Head of Finance, and Head of Customer Success. What makes Valo Motion unique is that they’re not a typical software company or a traditional gaming studio, they combine both hardware and software. That makes finding the right talent more complex, but also more rewarding when it works.”

She adds:

“Candidate motivation has been exceptionally high. The drop-out rate during recruitment has been extremely low, only around three candidates in 2,5 years, and some candidates have even applied more than once. That tells a lot about how the company and its mission resonate. Time-to-hire has been around 120 days, which is longer than the industry average. But this is a conscious choice. At Valo Motion, cultural fit is just as important as technical skills.”

→ In Valo Motion’s case, it’s not enough that someone has the right expertise, they also need to genuinely connect with the mission: getting people moving through the joy of play. The best candidates are the ones who get excited about the product and would happily play the games themselves.

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Results and outcomes

The collaboration has delivered a measurable impact on both the business and the team culture.

Business results

• Team growth: from ~30 to 50+ employees in Finland between 2023–2025. Globally, in 2026, Valo Motion is a team of 60+ people working full time.
• 100 % retention rate for new hires during their first year.
• Faster, higher-quality recruitment processes with excellent candidate feedback.
• Leadership time freed up, allowing founders to focus on scaling the business and international expansion.

“Retention has been exceptional, clearly above industry standards. Close to 20 hires have been made during the collaboration, and every single one of them has stayed for at least a year. That’s a strong signal that the focus on quality and fit is working,” Linda says.

Employer brand impact

• Candidates now come to recruitment meetings prepared and informed.
• Where attracting senior-level professionals used to be one of the biggest challenges, Valo Motion now regularly receives inbound applications and messages from experienced talent, even for roles that aren’t currently open.
• Unified message across marketing, employer branding, and recruitment.

As Valo Motion continues toward its 2030 vision, 1 million games played daily worldwide, the company has built not just an impressive product portfolio, but a strong internal culture and recruitment engine to match.

“Why would we stop when it’s working so well?” Joni laughs. “We’re still growing, and TalentBee is part of that journey.”

What’s next?

In early 2026, the collaboration changed from Talent Acquisition as a Service into a more focused Employer Branding as a Service model, reflecting Valo Motion’s next stage of growth.

After several years of building a strong team of key experts, the company is now shifting its focus this year strongly toward product development, upcoming product and game launches, and preparing the business for its next phase.

Rather than scaling headcount rapidly, Valo Motion is taking a sustainable and intentional approach to growth. From a talent acquisition perspective, this means continuing to invest in employer branding now, even when hiring needs are less immediate, to ensure that when the next wave of recruitment begins, the company is already known and attractive to the right kind of talent.

With Melike Karakaya from the TalentBee team, stepping into this partnership as Employer Branding Specialist in spring 2026, the focus for the year is to build long-term visibility and strengthen the foundation that will support Valo Motion’s future growth.

This work supports the business as they prepare for major product launches, key industry events like IAAPA, and their long-term goal of reaching 1 million daily players.

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