Cleber turned his IT career into a brewing success

The building is hard to overlook, nestled between fields and a university campus in Viikki, a northern suburb of Helsinki. Its distinctive large glass ceiling forms a triangular shape, once designed to bathe a tropical garden in natural light. This vacant nature house was transformed three years ago into a craft brewery and taproom, thanks to Cleber Goncalves’ determination. It is a far cry from the bustling streets of São Paulo, Brazil, where Cleber was born and worked in IT until 2004 when he realised he needed a new direction.

This decision led Cleber on his first trip to Europe – a months-long tour of Spain and other countries. During this time, he visited Finland to reconnect with a childhood friend and unexpectedly met someone special. A few years later, after living in the UK, Cleber followed his heart back to Finland, hoping to see if the relationship could work. Although the relationship eventually ended, Cleber's path was set. By then, he had been accepted into a business information technology programme at Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences, which solidified his choice to stay in the country. 

Cleber secured his first IT job in Finland and eventually launched his own consulting company, landing major clients like Nokia. However, when Microsoft acquired the Finnish mobile giant, Cleber found himself at a crossroads. He trusted his instincts and invested his savings into a small craft beer venture. Now, eight years later, Cleber oversees a 1 500-square-metre brewery in Helsinki and finds his colourful cans lining the shelves of various supermarkets.

I wanted to try something different...  because I was tired of sitting in front of the computer and programming day in and day out, without really talking to anyone. Home brewing was a hobby of mine and I decided to try it as a business. 

It took me a good two years to do all the planning. I had to fill in a lot of forms to apply for alcohol licences and create a business plan. They gave me a bit of leeway and let me write some things in English, but many of the forms were only in Swedish or Finnish, so I had to work it out. It took me six months to get the paperwork done, and then I had to figure out finances, what equipment to buy and so forth. 

I wanted to start the brewery in Helsinki but couldn't find the right place. Eventually, I found a warehouse in Tuusula [half an hour’s drive from Helsinki] at a reasonable price. 

There was just me and one tank at the start… so I was making one type of beer and trying to sell it. I had a little bit of a safety net from working part time, but it was hard because I was working from seven to three and then I would drive from Espoo to Tuusula and work there until midnight or one or two in the morning. 

I made the first beer and then tried to sell it. At the time, I had this problem of being overly confident, so I picked up the phone and started to call people. I would say something like “Olen panija. Panen olut Tuusulassa. Haluatko ostaa sitä?” [ED: Politely translated as: “I am a lothario. I screw beer in Tuusala. Would you like to buy some?”]

I got a lot of people laughing in my face and hanging up the phone. Eventually, someone explained to me [the explicit nature of what I was saying], and I realised it was the time to hire my first employee. That was a sales guy. 

I quickly realised the craft beer market… doesn't work the way I put in my business plan. I thought I was going to sell a lot of beer to supermarkets, right away, but supermarkets didn't even look at my products. They are a hard market to get into. We were selling to bars and realised we couldn’t make just a few beers, but we had to make new beers pretty much all the time. That's when we started to make more beer varieties and came up with new recipes.

I think we’ve made about 370 different beers over the years. At the start, we basically never repeated one recipe. Sour beer allowed us to break into the market because no one else was making it, and that helped us grow.

When COVID-19 hit and all the bars closed, we thought we would go out of business. Every year, we were offering different beers to supermarkets, and they would say, “No, thank you.” But then COVID came, and they turned back and said, "Hey, you know what, we’re gonna help you guys and take your beers in." We had the door open, and we kept our space in the supermarkets even after the pandemic. 

The Finnish craft beer market is much more dynamic… now than when we started. Back then, the Finnish craft beer industry was two or three years behind the rest of Europe. I had this idea of having colourful, happy branding with tropical colours, like in Brazil. I went to the supermarket, and I saw all the cans were black or brown.

We started making sour beer, which was already beginning to explode in other markets in Europe, but no one was making it here. We got a head start but it wasn’t easy for us to break through because no one had drunk them before and didn't know they existed. Eventually, customers started to taste these beers and say, “Wow, this is good.” We developed a whole new niche in the market.

The craft beer industry has changed completely since. There are a lot of breweries competing directly with us, keeping up with the trends and trying to come up with new things all the time. Now Finland is on par with the rest of Europe and the world. 

What I enjoy most about being an entrepreneur… is being able to do what I want and being in charge. When I was an IT guy, I did whatever others asked me to do, even if I thought it was dumb. Now, I can do things my way, right or wrong. At least I’m the only one to blame.  

That is also one of the biggest challenges. I have to decide basically everything, and I’m never off, I never have a vacation. 

Starting the company was… challenging. I chose to produce alcohol in one of the most regulated countries in the world as a foreigner. So, it wasn’t an easy choice, and the start was pretty hard. But I needed to persist and I found a way to do it.  

Back when I started my consulting business, I took a few courses by Business Finland and those were very helpful for me to understand how the laws work and what my obligations are regarding reporting and taxation. What I found hard then was getting finances for a new company, so I had to do a lot of it through self-financing. It would have been nice if [financing] was more accessible and if there were more things in English. That would help to create more new companies. 

I can’t write in Finnish… but I speak it. I’ve been here for 17 years, so I need to be able to speak the language. During the first two years I was in Finland, I thought I would go back to Brazil, so I didn't put much effort into learning the language. 

And I did go back to Brazil, but when I decided to come back here, I said I had to learn [Finnish], otherwise shame on me. That time I put some effort in and the first thing I realised was that the way they taught Finnish in schools didn’t work for me. It’s probably good for some people, but not for me. I don’t have the sort of brain that can work with all the million rules of grammar and still be able to speak something. 

Instead, I settled on just learning a lot of words. I searched on the Internet to see which words were the most useful, and there are apparently 80 words that are the most useful in any language. I learned those and started speaking. I made many mistakes, but I got started and improved from that point on. 

Talking was hard in the beginning because I would say stuff and people wouldn’t understand me, and I wouldn’t understand their answers, but eventually [as you use a language], your ears get tuned in, and it gets easier. 

Also, I have a kid, and he started to speak Finnish well at a young age, like two or three years old, and I’ve learned a lot of Finnish from him. 

My top tip for people considering moving to Finland… and starting a business here is that you should learn Finnish. Even if you can manage here without speaking it, because everyone speaks English, you should learn it. It’s useful in so many situations. 

Also, people have a very good work ethic here. [Be prepared that] people work hard, but they also like having their free time.

I still remember a few surprises from... the very first days I worked in IT here. In São Paulo, I used to leave for work early in the morning and it would take me more than one hour to get there because of traffic, even though it was 10 kilometres away, and I would get home around eight or nine. So, I only had time for work.

When I came here, I realised that people started work at seven or eight and by three they were going home. I was like, what's going on? Work felt much easier here.

The other surprise was how people would just focus on their jobs. We would go for lunch, and I was used to these long lunches in Brazil, because there was no point in trying to rush if you would stay late at work anyway. Here, the guys would get their food and when they were done eating, they would leave. 

People are focused. They do their work and want to go home [early] and live their lives.

I’ve lived in Kallio [in Helsinki]… for at least 12 years. I like living there. It’s the only part of Helsinki, or probably of Finland, that reminds me of the big city where I come from. It’s lively, and when you walk on the streets, there are always people in bars, talking and having fun. There are tonnes of restaurants to choose from. If I’m hungry, I walk 100 metres and can have whatever food I want. There are calmer places in Helsinki, but they're not for me.