Dear founder,
Have you ever felt like the person you actually need for a role just isn't available anywhere around you?
We have. For a long time, we were helping our portfolio companies source talent. Almost every week, we get the same questions. Who are the best engineers? The best designers? Can you send profiles?
From working closely with startups through venture capital over the past years, one pattern kept showing up. The outcome of your company is defined by the people you manage to bring in. Today, so much can be automated.Tools, systems, even parts of execution. But that only raises the bar for people.
You need individuals who learn fast, think independently, and grow with where the world is going. People who raise the level of everything around them. And ideally, you want them close. In the room. Building with you. But you don't need to limit yourself to who happens to be nearby. The right person might be somewhere else entirely.
We saw this firsthand. Our team spanned multiple Nordic and Baltic countries, so we sourced across all of our networks. That was the only way to be useful. The companies we worked with had already exhausted their local options.
From working with ambitious early-stage teams across the Nordics, from Helsinki to Stockholm,, we've seen a similar shift happen again and again. At first, the search stays local. But as the bar gets higher, the question changes. Not "who can we find here" but "who do we actually need?" And somewhere in that shift, geography starts to matter less.
Talent is not evenly distributed. Ambition is not tied to a location. And the person who can change your company is often not already in your city. You're not looking for ten solid candidates. You're looking for one person who sees what others don't. Who builds faster. Thinks sharper. Raises the bar for everyone around them.
And when you find them, you don't want to wait. You don't want friction. You don't want to compromise. But this is often exactly where things get complicated.
Because hiring globally doesn't just mean finding the person. It means dealing with everything that comes after: relocation, onboarding, compliance, visas, getting them settled in a new city, contracts, admin. All the stuff that sits outside your core focus, but still creates real hesitation at the worst possible moment. So you end up in a situation that doesn't feel right. Settle for someone local, or lose time figuring everything out.
We don’t think you should have to choose.
That’s why we built Elva. We focus on that exact moment, after you’ve found the right person. We take care of the operational side, from paperwork and relocation to helping someone get set up in a new city, from banking to taxes. From the hiring decision to their first day, the goal is simple. They arrive ready, settled, and able to contribute from day one.
Because hiring the right person should be the hard part. Relocating them shouldn’t be.
We’re rooting for you
Antonia & Zechen