Arctic Startup Q&A: Moder reinvents resort management

By Elías Thorsson August 20, 2025
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The Arctic region is home to a growing number of innovative startups, each navigating the unique challenges and opportunities of the Far North. In our spotlight series, Five Quick Questions for an Arctic Startup, we’re inviting startups from the Near Arctic and Arctic regions to share their stories and insights on Arctic Today.​

This Q&A series provides a platform for startups to answer five key questions, offering a glimpse into their groundbreaking ideas, the distinctiveness of their innovations, and the lessons learned from working in this remote yet vital part of the world. Stay tuned as we explore how these trailblazers are shaping the future of the Arctic economy, infrastructure, and culture. In this installment of our series, we hear from Finnish startup Moder.

Fast Facts
Industry: Hospitality technology (resort & hotel management SaaS)
Location: Helsinki, Finland (serving global hospitality markets)
Number of employees: 15
Most recent funding: Pre-seed 5/2024, 285k€
Website: moder.fi
Team members: Multidisciplinary team dedicated to redefining hospitality operations with expertise spanning product, engineering, customer success, and hospitality

What is your elevator pitch?
Moder is The System for experience-driven hospitality—a modern, cloud-native PMS designed for resorts, lodges, and activity-rich hotels. We unify all offerings—from overnight stays to guided tours, F&B, saunas, and more—into one intuitive, mobile-first system. Moder replaces chaotic tool chains with a seamless workflow, empowering operators to deliver exceptional guest experiences while running their business effortlessly.
What makes your idea unique and hard to copy?
Moder is a fully integrated hospitality operating system built from the ground up for experience-driven properties. We handle every service–rooms, rentals, experiences, F&B, events—within a single, unified architecture. This comprehensive integration, coupled with interface simplicity (“if you can read, you can use Moder”) and design-first UX built for real-world hospitality workflows, creates a product that’s uniquely difficult to replicate.
How does being located in the Far North affect your business?
From Helsinki, we benefit from being steeped in one of Europe’s most innovative, seasonally dynamic tourism regions, where hospitality operators demand flexible, resilient technology. The proximity to resource-conscious and experience-oriented hospitality fosters rapid iteration and heightened product-market alignment. While geographic distance from some global hubs creates outreach challenges, the upside is immense: our solutions are forged in one of the most challenging yet forward-thinking environments.
What is the hardest or most surprising lesson you have learned?
 The most surprising lesson has been how critical adoption design is—solution strength alone isn’t enough. Even when you build something meaningfully better, customers often require not just a good tool but also a smooth transition. That insight drove us to create a self-serve onboarding and learning platform, helping operators and staff feel confident and comfortable with Moder from day one. Technology scales best when people embrace it.
Who is your ideal investor?
We envision partnering with investors who see beyond seasonal trends and understand that the future of hospitality is holistic, experience-driven, and tech-powered. Ideal investors are strategic B2B SaaS growth partners who have perspective in the game and push us to scale into new markets. They value both vision and performance—and believe independent and mid-size operators can outpace the giants when armed with the right tools.

 

    Would you like to have your startup featured?

    All startups in the Far North and Arctic region are invited to participate in a new spotlight series on Arctic Today’s Arctic Business Journal page, called “Five questions for an Arctic startup.”

    To participate, submit the following facts and answer the questions in brief elevator-pitch style to [email protected]. You must also submit your name, a photo of you alone or with your team, and photos of your product, business or location, as appropriate.

    Fast facts:

    • Industry:
    • Location:
    • Number of employees:
    • Most recent funding:
    • Website:
    • Team members:

    Questions: (Try to answer each question in one paragraph)

    1. What is your elevator pitch?
    2. What makes your idea unique and hard to copy?
    3. How does being located in the Far North affect your business, both challenges or benefits?
    4. Who is your ideal investor?
    5. What is the hardest or most surprising lesson you have learned?

    Please send your name, phone number, email for our editors to contact you if necessary.

    Feel free to add additional information not covered in the above items. And don’t forget to include pictures/images.

    Submit your completed response to [email protected] and our editors will prepare it for publication.

    (We will write a headline, short intro and, of course, give your text a light copy edit).