About Us
Kuutti ry is a registered non-profit association in Espoo, Finland. Its purpose, in the words of its bylaws, is to promote safe, free and equal opportunities for everyone to meet other people and form relationships in Finland; to reduce loneliness; to support research into relationships and loneliness; and to keep an open community in which volunteers develop the service.
It was founded on 1 October 2026 and entered in the Register of Associations on 6 October 2026. This site, kuutti.app, is its official website. Its bylaws, in Finnish, are public.
What it does
Kuutti ry develops Kuutti, a free app for meeting people in Finland, and will run it itself: the bylaws forbid handing the service to anybody else. The work is done by volunteers and in public: the code, the decisions behind it and the work in progress are at github.com/kuutti-ry/kuutti-app.
The board runs the association: its members, its meetings and its books. Anybody who shares its purpose can apply to become a member.
Beyond the app
What the association builds for Kuutti, it shares. tunnistus-oidc is a free toolkit that lets other Finnish online services sign people in with strong identification, a bank or mobile ID, through Telia’s identification service. It is published under the MIT licence, so a public body, a non-profit or a company may use it without paying and without having to publish its own code. The association wrote it for Kuutti; it is not an official Telia product.
In the register
- Name: Kuutti ry
- Business ID: 3659478-7
- Form: registered non-profit association (aatteellinen yhdistys)
- Domicile: Espoo
- Postal address: Tontunmäentie 22 E, 02200 Espoo, Finland
- Postal address: Tontunmäentie 22E, 02200 Espoo, Finland
The association’s entry in the Finnish Business Information System (YTJ) shows the same.
Why
Services for meeting people are mostly sold in a way that pays the provider for the time you spend in the service, and not for the relationships that come of it. The longer you look, the better for the seller.
Kuutti ry is founded to offer such a service without that conflict of interest. It measures its success by how many people find what they were looking for and no longer need the service.
What the association may not do
The bylaws say what the association does, and also what it never does:
- It does not sell advertising space or show anybody’s advertisements.
- It does not hand over personal data of the people who use the service, or anything else gathered from its use, for commercial purposes.
- It makes no agreements with companies whose business is dating services, and takes no money from them.
- It pays no dividend and shares no surplus with its members.
- It does not sell or pledge its name, its trademarks or its domains, and it does not hand the service or its accounts to anybody else.
- It keeps the source code open under a licence that obliges others to do the same.
- If the association is ever dissolved, the personal data of the people who used the service is destroyed, not passed on.
Changing these needs a unanimous decision in two meetings, at least thirty days apart.
Who we are
The board was elected at the founding meeting on 1 October 2026 and has three members. Its chair is Nikolai Denissov.
Volunteers: mostly alumni of Aalto University, and some who study there now.
To reach any of us, write to hello@kuutti.app, or see Contact.
Questions
Is it really free?
Yes. There is nothing to pay for in the app, now or later: that is in the bylaws, not in a price list.
Who pays for it, then?
The association may receive membership fees, grants, donations and bequests. Its funding may not depend on how much time people spend in the service.
Why do I sign in with my bank?
So that every account is one real adult, and so that somebody who was banned stays banned. The bank confirms who you are and nothing else: Kuutti sees nothing of your account or your money.
Can I join the association?
Yes. A private person who accepts its purpose can apply to be a voting member, and a person or an organisation to be a supporting member; the board decides. How to join.
What does the name mean?
A kuutti is a seal pup, in Finnish. The logo is its face.