Vilike as on Oy/Ltd. was started at first of June in 2014 by Kirsi Ekberg alone to take forward her thesis software: a digital version of APM-Inventory; motor and perceptual skills assessment method for children at ages 3-6 invented in University of Jyväskylä in 1994. Founder started the company without knowing that shares can be sold. First customer was UKK-Institute with whom we piloted web-based software in events held for families with young children during 2015-2016. 200+ parents and 10+ daycares did the assessment and collected first set of skills data.

Then founder found out in practise the ture importance of testing, testing and testing before launching the product even for the pilot. Kirsi had made an integer mistake once defining the input fields on UI; all results had been saved as whole numbers, so no decimals. This meant that first dataset collected was not valid for further sport scientific research.

Luckily Boost Startup Journey 2016 brought along Jenni! With her illustration and storywriting skills the idea and prototype of Vili´s Playbook was born. The first book with playmarks, The Active adventure was created around the physically activating content of APM-Inventory and turned physical skills assessment into a playful game in real life! Instead of just telling kids to jump and run, we coudl read a story and make moving more was. Concept was tested few daycares and yes, it worked! In Ultrahack we met Tomi who then started developing Rehaboo.com with similar tech set to make rehabilitation more fun and accesible via game.

2018-2019 we developed two pivoted prototypes with additional skill level specific play & game database feature and Oura sensored gadget with Haaga-Helia computer science students which were tested with Vierumäki Sport Faculty of Sports yet never launched. We also conducted market research on UAE markets and collected beta testing group of 500 parents interested in using technology to activate their children and follow skills development.

Thrive for hacking and building new tech for impact lead to Junction 2018 which then brough Sarthak along! In one weekend, we build a working prototype of smart city solution called TrafficAye: providing real-time emission data for data-driven city development. Later we got into talking about the possibitlity to harness computer vision(CV) to enable tracking the physical movements of APM-inventory through a mobile camera along digital play.

Crazy year of 2020 took us into in HYPE Sports Tech accelerator. We developed fourth UI version and were awarded as most promising startup. We also started a great collaboration Rehaboo.com, our beloved #startuptwin at the time. After this, we took a loooooong pause. We could not find a UI developer for Sarthak´s computer vision model to join the team as co-founder. We were like a boat in the doldrums of Atlantic.

Yet then the air of 2024 Christmas, made Kirsi realize that since Rehaboo had done its exit, Tomi might be in for programming another UI with CV. Best christmas present ever was when he replied: “Sure, why not!”. And now, few weeks ago, with help from Omnia Game Lab we found our Junior Game developer Jesse! So, the situation for 2025 is that we have started wotking on the fifth version of APM-Inventory, in a form of a computer vision AI empowered game! It´s time to roll up them sleeves and dream big for the next decade of gamified learning ahead.

As you start to walk on the way, the way appears -Rumi