Finnish startup Koll wants 2 million euros to end unknown callers, and it's aiming for a billion users

by ROP

If you still refuse to answer numbers you don't recognize, Koll wants to change your mind by making the caller do the hard work.

"The caller takes responsibility that whenever we are making calls the recipient [will] see who is calling and for what reason," co-founder Pekko Mettälä told Entreprenerd during Arctic15.

Instead of scraping third-party databases like Truecaller, Koll requires each business to verify its identity before it dials. Once green-lit, the company’s name and call purpose pop up on the recipient’s screen — or arrive instantly by SMS if the user hasn’t downloaded the optional app.

Traction before cash

Koll soft-launched last September 2024 and has grown to 5,000 consumer installs without a marketing budget. When the team finally opened enterprise sales a month ago, "40 enterprises [signed] up to the service and start[ed] using it. So it’s a good start," Mettälä said in an exclusive interview with Entreprenerd Media.

The model is strictly B2B: companies pay a subscription to have their numbers "Koll-verified," hoping that higher answer rates will juice sales, recruitment, and customer-support KPIs.

The raise

Fresh from a seed round in January that was fully backed by Helsinki’s Superhero Capital, Koll is now preparing a late-seed raise of €1.5-2 million.

"In this round? €1.5 to €2 million," Mettälä confirmed.

The new money will bankroll two priorities:

Go global — Finland is the testbed, but markets in mainland Europe are next, followed by "South America or Asia."
Plug into CRMs — Large corporates want the service baked directly into Salesforce, HubSpot, and other customer-data stacks.

A billion-user moon-shot

Koll is unapologetically ambitious. "We are targeting one billion users because ... why wouldn’t everybody have this sort of a solution?" Mettälä said.

That goal may sound outrageous, but the logic is simple: as phone spam grows, so does the appetite for verified calls. By shifting accountability to the caller — and ensuring end-users don’t even have to install an app — Koll thinks it can scale far beyond Finland’s 5.6 million people.

What’s next

The team will spend the summer locking down lead investors before hitting the road this autumn. If the late-seed comes together, expect Koll logos to pop up on call screens well beyond the Nordics — and expect fewer mystery numbers lighting up your phone.

Key facts

Koll verifies both the identity and the reason behind every phone call, flipping responsibility from receiver to caller.
The company has 5,000 beta users and 40 paying enterprise customers after just one month of sales.
It will open a late-seed round of €1.5-2 million this autumn to enter new markets and plug into global CRM giants.

Co-founder Pekko Mettälä says Koll’s "insane" North Star is one billion users worldwide.