Meet Mengyang, our CTO and co-founder.
Before he built Elva, Mengyang lived the problem himself. When he moved from China to Finland as a student, he had no roadmap, figuring out permits, housing, and everything in between on his own. Later, working at some of Finland's top tech companies including Unity, he watched the same broken process play out again and again, for hundreds of international hires. That’s when he knew this needed to change. Here's his story in his own words.
What brought you from China to Finland, and what did the actual relocation process look like from start to finish?
"I moved from China to Finland to pursue my studies at Tampere University. At the time, I had no roadmap. I was figuring everything out on my own, from permits to housing to just understanding how things work here. Looking back, it was a lot to navigate for someone starting a completely new life in a country they'd never lived in. No roadmap. No system. Just figuring everything out step by step."
Where did the process break down?
"Honestly, the friction didn't just happen once, it followed me throughout my time in Finland. When I first arrived for my studies, I had no idea about permit requirements or timelines, so I had to piece everything together myself. Then when I transitioned to work, I kept running into the same wall: figuring out how to switch permits, calculating time toward permanent residency, understanding what I was entitled to, all without any real support.
It was only when I joined bigger tech companies that I finally got access to immigration consultants. But even then, the experience felt highly fragmented: paperwork scattered across email chains, multiple points of contact, no single source of truth. Everything lived in different places, and nothing felt connected. Even back then, as someone with a technical background, I remember thinking: this should not be this hard. Someone needs to fix this."
You've worked at some of Finland's top tech companies, including Unity. How big a role did international hiring and relocation play there?
"At the most ambitious companies I've been part of, nearly half the people in the office came from international backgrounds. That's not an accident: when you're competing for the best talent in the world, you can't limit yourself to a local pool. And if you want someone to actually pack up their life and move to a new country for you, the relocation experience becomes a real part of your employer brand.
I should also mention that our founding engineer Elias has lived this too; he's worked at YC and Sequoia-backed companies across the US, Estonia, and Malta, so this problem is personal for our whole founding team, not just me."
What were the biggest pain points, and does the quality of that experience affect whether someone stays or leaves?
"The biggest thing for me was that the experience just wasn't on the level that people today, especially tech-savvy professionals deserve. The software, the interfaces, the way you interact with the whole process: it felt stuck in another era. You’re stressed and used to real-time tools and clear UX, and suddenly you’re handed PDF guides and email threads.
And watching the consultants work, booking calls, drafting long instruction documents, manually filling in applications it was clear that their side of the equation was just as painful. I kept thinking: the tools exist to make this so much better. Someone just needs to build them."
If you had to describe the current relocation process in three words...
Painful. Fragmented. Outdated.
How do you see Elva's AI-native approach changing the experience in practice?
"I know firsthand how stressful and high-stakes a relocation is. You're making one of the biggest decisions of your life, and you need full confidence in what's going to happen and when.
What we're building at Elva is a full-stack, AI-native system AI agents and automations handling the most manual and time-consuming parts of the admin work, combined with a human-in-the-loop layer where our own in-house experts step in to provide real assurance and support. Instead of outsourcing to consultants, we do this ourselves. So the employee gets a seamless, modern experience, and nothing falls through the cracks."
How does Elva differ from a traditional relocation consultant not just better, but different?
"I think the previous answer captures a lot of it, but the core difference is this: by combining technology and in-house expertise, we're able to run the entire end-to-end experience through one platform. Traditionally, relocation has meant stitching together different vendors, experts, and tools for each piece: permits, housing, banking, registration which is slow, inconsistent, and hard to scale. We've collapsed all of that into a single, coherent experience. That's not just an efficiency gain, it's a fundamentally different product."
Elva is building the relocation experience that Mengyang wished had existed when he first landed in Finland. If you're a company hiring internationally, or a professional navigating a move, we'd love to talk.