2018
THE NORDIC 100
6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
Introduction Alan Mamedi Alexander Ljung Andreas Cleve Lohmann Andreas Saari Andreas Thorsheim Anette Nordvall Anne Worsøe Anniken Fjelberg Ari Helgason Aurore Belfrage Benjamin Ratz Caroline Walerud Charlotta Tönsgård Christian Jantzen Christian Lanng Christoffer H. Malling Claes Mikko Nilsen Daniel Ek David Helgason Dora Palfi and Beatrice Ionascu Ekaterina Gianelli Elin Hammarberg Elina Berglund Elsa Bernadotte Erik Byrenius Erik Engellau-Nilsson Gulnaz Khusainova Hampus Jakobsson Heidi Lindvall Helga Valfells, Hekla Arnardóttir and Jenny Ruth Hrafnsdottir Hjalmar Winbladh Ida Tin Ilkka Kivimäki Ilkka Paananen 3
THE NORDIC 100
41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75
Jacob De Geer Jakob Jønck Jan Erik Solem Jane Walerud Jason Dainter Jenny Gyllander Jeppe Rindom Jessica Blechingberg Jessica Schultz Joel Hellermark Joel Larsson Johan Attby Johan Brand Johan Brenner Johannes Schildt Jonas Almeling Jonas Nordlander and Filip Engelbert Jørn Lyseggen Karen Dolva Karl Munthe-Kaas Katja Toropainen Klaus Nyengaard Laila Pawlak Lasse Chor Linda Liukas Lisa Kennelly Lisa Marie Nyvoll Lucas H. Weldeghebriel and Per-Ivar Nikolaisen Maral Kalajian Margrethe Vestager Marianne Vikkula Marta Sjögren Martin von Haller Grønbæk Mette Lykke Miki Kuusi 4
THE NORDIC 100
76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106
Mikkel Svane Natalia Brzezinski Neil S W Murray Niklas Adalberth Niklas Zennström and Mattias Ljungman Nikolaj Nyholm Pär Hedberg Pär-Jörgen Pärson Peter Carlsson Peter Vesterbacka Pia Ella Elmegård Riccardo Zacconi Risto Siilasmaa Ritu Jain Rudi Skogman Sandy Errestad Sebastian Siemiakowski Sigrun Syverud Sissel Hansen Sophia Bendz Tatiana Shalalvand Tharald Nustad Thomas Madsen-Mygdal Thomas Walle and Kjartan Slette Timo Ahopelto Tommy Ahlers Tommy Anderson and Eric Lagier Trond Riiber Knudsen Tyler Crowley Vedrana Högkvist Tabor Voitto Kangas
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THE NORDIC 100
INTRODUCTION The Nordic 100 is an annual list recognising the 100 most impactful and influential figures in the Nordic tech scene each year. Individuals at the forefront of shaping and positioning the region as one of the world’s most important innovation hubs. We recognise investors, entrepreneurs and community builders that are playing important roles in the region and are influencing what tomorrow looks like in the Nordics, and indeed the world. 2018 is the third edition and The Nordic 100 is now firmly established as the main resource for engaging with who’s who in the Nordic ecosystem all year round. This year we are very happy that we have secured like-minded collaborators and take The Nordic 100 to new heights, with Slush, StartupGuide, +Impact and The Hub all onboard as partners. A big thank you to Anne Worsøe, Sophia Bendz, Andreas Saari and Robin Wauters who joined me on the judging panel this year and of course, a big thank you to you for reading. Neil S W Murray (Founder of The Nordic Web)
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THE NORDIC 100
ALAN MAMEDI Alan is the CEO of Truecaller, a company forever flirting with a $1 billion valuation. Under Alan’s leadership Truecaller has experienced dramatic growth with over 100 million daily active users and its popularity in India regularly competing with Facebook as the most used app. With close to $100 million raised, from investors including Atomico, KPCB and Sequoia, Alan certainly has the capital to match his global ambitions. Alan focuses on product development and innovation, and charting the strategic roadmap for the company’s success.
SWEDEN
ENTREPRENEUR
7
MOBILE
THE NORDIC 100
ALEXANDER LJUNG Although based in Berlin and Soundcloud technically classified as a German company, there is no doubting that Swedish Alexander has been an impactful player not just in the Nordics but also in Europe. Soundcloud is yet another music-based company that originated in Stockholm, and yet another that has grown on a global scale. 2017 saw Alexander step aside as CEO, in a rough year for the company. There’s no denying though that Alexander through founding and building Soundcloud is one of the most influential entrepreneurs the Nordics has produced in recent years.
SWEDEN
ENTREPRENEUR
MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT
8
THE NORDIC 100
ANDREAS CLEVE LOHMANN Andreas is a serial entrepreneur who co-founded and sold the conversational startup Ovivo in 2013 and created several tech communities in the Nordics around Lean Startup and AI. He is founder and CEO of Corti, AI-based medical augmentation software that provide decision-assistance to medical practitioners. Corti has received significant attention in 2018 and Andreas has not gone unnoticed either, recently being named one of MIT’s Innovators Under 35.
DENMARK
ENTREPRENEUR
9
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
THE NORDIC 100
ANDREAS SAARI Andreas Saari is the CEO of Slush, one of Europe’s biggest and best tech events where 20,000 techheads gather in Helsinki every year. He’s also the co-founder and former CEO of Wave Ventures, the first student-run venture capital fund in the Nordics. Wave Ventures aims to back the boldest founders and their ideas that arise from the university communities across the Nordics. Previously, Andreas ran the startup and investor operations at Slush. Andreas studied industrial engineering and management at Aalto University and loves complex systems, biotech and material tech, languages, downhill biking and learning furiously about everything.
FINLAND
COMMUNITY BUILDER
10
ECOSYSTEM
THE NORDIC 100
ANDREAS THORSHEIM Andreas is the founder and CEO of Otovo. Otovo’s aim is to build a leading distributed energy company providing Europeans with clean, abundant and inexpensive energy made nearby. Otovo is both a virtual microgrid neighborhood power provider and a company that makes solar power easy for households. Otovo has a proprietary technology to algorithmically plan and price solar projects and an online sales platform to show customers the results. They recently raised $10 million to help them achieve their lofty ambitions. With Andreas in charge, we certainly wouldn’t bet against them.
NORWAY
ENTREPRENEUR
11
ENERGY
IMPACT
THE NORDIC 100
ANETTE NORDVALL After 17 years on the US East coast Anette returned to Sweden to continue investing in telecom and local deep tech companies with Stockholm Business Angels. In 2013 she started advising Cap A to set up their first Nordic fund. Anette’s investment portfolio holds over 40 companies. In 2016 Anette received the Vinnova-Wallenberg fellowship to Stanford, CA, at Nordic Innovation House, Palo Alto, CA, researching early-stage and Angel investing in Silicon Valley. Anette is also the co-founder of Nordic Business Angels.
SWEDEN
INVESTOR
12
ANGEL
THE NORDIC 100
ANNE WORSØE Anne is a Partner and Portfolio Manager at Bakken & Bæck, a digital studio that design, develop and fund digital products and new ventures, focusing on machine learning and blockchain technology. She is one of the co-founders of Oslo.AI, the local partner of Nordic.AI, and co-organized and hosted the first Nordic AI Summit in Oslo this year. Anne is also a tech columnist in Dagens Næringsliv, the leading Norwegian industry newspaper. As a side-project, Anne is an angel investor, especially passionate about mobilizing more female funders and empowering female founders. She’s working with a group of angel investor networks in Norway and abroad, investing in early-stage tech startups with international ambitions and (preferably) a female co-founder. While holding a 4 years assignment as the Director of Innovation Norway in San Francisco, Anne initiated and co-founded the co-working space Nordic Innovation House in Palo Alto, as well as TINC, a 4 week incubation program for Nordic tech startups in the U.S. More than 100 Nordic startups have participated in TINC Silicon Valley. NORWAY
INVESTOR
ANGEL
13
ECOSYSTEM
THE NORDIC 100
ANNIKEN FJELBERG In 2011 Anniken Fjelberg founded 657 OSLO, what is today Norway’s largest co-working space for the creative industries with more than 200 members from various industries. In 2018, 657 Oslo won the Nordic Startup Award for “Best Co-Working Space in the Nordics”. Previously Anniken founded Dinamo Design in 2001, as part of the Norwegian communication house Dinamo. Today Dinamo Design counts over 25 people and is one of the leading design/branding agencies in Norway. In 2013 she founded her new communications agency with 20 employees delivering branding and marketing services.
NORWAY
COMMUNITY BUILDER
14
ECOSYSTEM
THE NORDIC 100
ARI HELGASON Ari is a Principal at Index Ventures in London where he invests across the Nordics with a particular focus on software and deep tech. Born in Reykjavik and growing up in Copenhagen, Ari is a former entrepreneur with both an operating and investing background. He’s excited about the way software fundamentally reshapes industries and especially enjoys working hands-on with founders as they navigate the early stages of scaling a business. Before joining Index, Ari was at Dawn Capital in London where he invested in and worked with SaaS and open source companies in both Europe and the US. Prior to that, Ari co-founded the SaaS workflow management company WOAH Sales and ecommerce startup Fabricly — the former right out of university.
ICELAND
INVESTOR
15
VC
SAAS
THE NORDIC 100
AURORE BELFRAGE Tech entrepreneur and investor Aurore is an early stage investor with a specific focus on Artificial Intelligence and foreign affairs. She’s an Industrial Advisor to Europe’s leading PE house EQT, she’s a syndicated columnist with leading Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) and a contributor to Politico, where she writes on issues at the intersection of geopolitics, ethics, governance and labor/future of work. Born in London, raised partly there as well as in Saudi and Sweden, with previous lives in venture capital with EQT Ventures, scrap dealing at Stena Metall, speechwriting and attempts at stand up comedy, Belfrage is a prized keynote at the leading tech conferences across Europe and the Middle East.
SWEDEN
INVESTOR
ENTREPRENEUR
16
COMMUNITY BUILDER
THE NORDIC 100
BENJAMIN RATZ As the Operating Partner, Benjamin Ratz is the full-time force behind Nordic Makers – a hands-on seed investor created by the founders of huge Nordic companies like Sitecore, Unity, Justeat, Zendesk and many more – He joined Nordic Makers in Stockholm having spent the last few years in Tel Aviv with an early-stage VC. Benjamin started his career in public policy and later practised law. He’s also one of the co-organizers of Techbikers – a charity bike ride bringing together 50+ investors and founders to bike from Copenhagen to Berlin and raising over €100,000 for charity in the process.
SWEDEN
INVESTOR
17
VC
THE NORDIC 100
CAROLINE WALERUD Caroline Walerud is a Swedish entrepreneur and one of the co-founders of Volumental, a company which developed a cloud-based, 3D-scanning technology to create models to customise products and services. She was named No. 1 Swedish Supertalent of the Year in December 2013. In 2016, she became a member of the first Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe list in the Leaderboard and Retail Section In January 2016, Walerud stepped down as Volumental’s CEO and took the role of Executive Chairman. Walerud is also a partner at Walerud Ventures, a deep-tech investment company which focuses on early stage green tech startups, together with her parents, Jane and Bengt.
SWEDEN
ENTREPRENEUR
18
INVESTOR
IMPACT
THE NORDIC 100
CHARLOTTA TÖNSGÅRD Charlotta Tönsgård is the CEO and co-founder of Engaging Care, on a mission to provide everybody with easy access to great healthcare. Previously she was the CEO of Min Doktor, Sweden’s first digital caregiver. Prior to that she spent almost 10 years with different companies in telecom, including as CEO of a Swedish startup and as Director in Blackberry’s team for M&A. Charlotta also spent 4 years located in South Korea, managing sales and business development in APAC for The Astonishing Tribe, a Swedish tech and design company.
SWEDEN
ENTREPRENEUR
HEALTH AND WELLNESS
19
IMPACT
THE NORDIC 100
CHRISTIAN JANTZEN In the summer of 2016, Christian Jantzen started an esports company which sponsored a team of players. They quickly attracted investors and things started moving, however, this didn’t last for long. As the wheels started to fall off Christian didn’t receive much help from their investors and was left feeling there was room in the Nordic investor market for investors that could truly understand and help entrepreneurs. It appears Christian’s hypothesis was correct... This led to Christian Jantzen launching Futuristic.vc in early 2017, becoming one of the youngest VCs in Europe in the process. Focusing on first money into Nordic startups, Futuristic.vc has quickly become one of the leading pre-seed funds in the region and has invested in 10+ companies already, with a rapidly growing reputation as a smart money investor who can help early-stage founders.
DENMARK
VC
20
ANGEL
THE NORDIC 100
CHRISTIAN LANNG Christian Lanng is the co-founder and CEO of Tradeshift, Denmark’s latest unicorn, after they raised $250 million in 2018 at a valuation north of $1 billion led by Goldman Sachs. Tradeshift is active within supply chain payments and marketplaces and has recently enabled blockchain-based finance. The aim of their cloud-based platform is to connect all companies that do business together, putting their entire supply chain in one place. Previously Christian was Head of the Center for Service oriented Infrastructure in the Danish National IT and Telecom Agency. Christian has 10 years of experience working with mobile-services, e-business, SOA and large scale payment systems. Talk about founder-market fit.
DENMARK
ENTREPRENEUR
21
FINTECH
THE NORDIC 100
CHRISTOFFER H. MALLING Christoffer Malling is a Programme Director at The Danish Design Centre and the Head of Programme at Innofounder, a design-driven incubator and accelerator. With a background as manager and CEO of the tech startup organization #CPHFTW, Christoffer has a unique insight into Danish tech startups as well as local and international investor environments and entrepreneurial organizations and ecosystems. He specialises in building communities and value-creating events and meetings, and in finding the right matches between professionals, companies and organizations that bring everyone together fast. Christoffer has a background in the digital advisory world and before #CPHFTW worked in the strategic social media agency Untold, in the strategic design firm Hello Group and in the digital management consultancy firm Wemind.
DENMARK
INVESTOR
22
COMMUNITY BUILDER
THE NORDIC 100
CLAES MIKKO NILSEN Claes Mikko Nilsen is a Finnish-Norwegian, quick-witted character, wellknown for his pitch moderator skills. Claes Mikko is the co-founder and first director of Finnish Business Angels Network (FiBAN), which is one of the largest and most active angel networks in Europe with over 600 approved angels, actively inspiring private startup investing. FiBAN received the Finnish Internationalization Award of the President of the Republic in November 2017. Currently, Claes Mikko is the Managing Director of Nordic Business Angel Network (NordicBAN). NordicBAN represents over 10 Nordic & Baltic business angel networks, linking over 1700 business angels, sharing angel investing best practices and supporting the matching of syndication ready startups. In addition to angel activity, Claes Mikko has an entrepreneurial background and during his studies was part of establishing student entrepreneurship society BoostTurku.
FINLAND
INVESTOR
23
ANGEL
THE NORDIC 100
DANIEL EK Daniel Ek founded Spotify 2006 and serves as their CEO, leading them to an (unusual) IPO earlier this year, where at times their valuation was touching $30 billion. While the market has cooled slightly since then, Spotify’s numbers haven’t, As of June 2018, Spotify had 83 million paying subscribers worldwide, up from 57 million paying subscribers in June 2017. Daniel is one of the most successful entrepreneurs to have come out of Europe and in Spotify has created and led a true global tech success. He started his first company in 1997 at the age of 14 before co-founding Spotify in 2006 together with Martin Lorentzon. Prior to Spotify, Daniel founded Advertigo, the online advertising company acquired by TradeDoubler, having previously held senior roles at Nordic auction company Tradera (acquired by Ebay). He also served as Chief Technology Officer at Stardoll, the fashion & entertainment community for tweens.
SWEDEN
ENTREPRENEUR
MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT
24
THE NORDIC 100
DAVID HELGASON David Helgason is a technologist, founder of Unity, non-exec director to others, and a restless entrepreneur with a passion for creating feedback loops between innovation and teams and products, applying new and old business models to changing industries, and pushing people to do the very best they can do. David’s background is in programming, an assortment of university dabbling, creating companies, and helping entrepreneurs. He served as CEO of Unity Technologies since co-founding it in 2003 and until October 2014, with an unflinching vision to democratize game development, and to develop technology and business models for the next phase of the games industry.
DENMARK
ENTREPRENEUR
25
ANGEL
GAMING
THE NORDIC 100
DORA PALFI and BEATRICE IONASCU Dora Palfi and Beatrice Ionascu are the co-founders of imagiLabs, where they want to inspire the next generation of female technologists and increase the proportion of women studying and working in the STEM fields. imagiCase started as a research project where they co-created ideas with young girls and where they learned that self expression is extremely important to teenagers, as well as their cell phones. This is how the idea of their first product, imagiCase was born: a phone case with embedded LED lights that can be programmed to display any text, design, color through programming with the imagiApp. Dora and Beatrice have been practically inseparable for the past 6 years, even though academic and professional commitments have taken them to many different countries (and continents). This is the second venture they’ve started together, following weSTEM (women empowered in STEM) a student club they founded in university, NYU Abu Dhabi in their senior year. imagiLabs is the next step on this journey.
SWEDEN
ENTREPRENEUR
26
EDTECH
IMPACT
THE NORDIC 100
EKATERINA GIANELLI Ekaterina is an investor at Inventure, a Nordic venture capital firm investing in seed and early-stage technology startups. Based out of Helsinki, Ekaterina is an active community builder, and has been contributing to multiple initiatives strengthening the Nordic tech ecosystem. Previously, Ekaterina has been operationally involved in scaling Fjord, the design & innovation consultancy (acquired by Accenture Interactive in 2013), and a Nordic adtech startup Kiosked. Drawing on her experiences, she actively bridges the gap between design, business, and technology.
FINLAND
INVESTOR
27
VC
DESIGN
THE NORDIC 100
ELIN HAMMARBERG Elin Hammarberg is the part owner and CXO of MatchingID, a platform that will anonymize, digitize and streamline talent sourcing with the ambition of enabling a global switch to a more diverse and fair job market - where gender, age, name, photos and brands have been swapped for potential, skills and future ambitions. Previously Elin was the Comms Manager for SUP46, one of the most prominent member organizations for tech startups in the Nordics. Here, Elin work tirelessly to give visibility to Nordic community organizations and startups through SUP46’s own channels and also via the NordicMade initiatives since the official launch in NYC 2015. Elin was also the project manager of the Swedish startup manifesto (first edition) with the ambition to create awareness of understanding of startups from politicians - something that resulted in several political changes for the better and subsequently shared knowledge of this process to stakeholders in other Nordic countries.
SWEDEN
COMMUNITY BUILDER
28
ECOSYSTEM
THE NORDIC 100
ELINA BERGLUND Dr. Elina Berglund is the CTO and co-founder of Natural Cycles the fertility app, which allows women to help prevent, plan and monitor pregnancies. As a top physicist, Elina was part of the Nobel Prize-winning team that discovered the Higgs boson at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland. Following this success, Elina and her husband, CEO and co-founder of Natural Cycles, Dr Raoul Scherwitzl, were looking for an effective natural contraceptive. With few effective natural birth control methods on the market, and a desire to avoid the side effects of hormonal contraception, Elina decided to apply her mathematical techniques to create a unique algorithm that could accurately pinpoint when a woman was fertile. Elina’s mission is to educate and empower women worldwide to take control of their fertility and future, championing a vision where every pregnancy brings happiness.
SWEDEN
ENTREPRENEUR
29
HEALTH AND WELLNESS
THE NORDIC 100
ELSA BERNADOTTE Elsa Bernadotte, co- founded Karma to help restaurants, grocers and cafes eliminate food waste through a seamless-style app that lets customers access food and easily track the food waste they eliminate. In 2018, Karma announced it raised $12 million in Series A funding. Swedish investment firm Kinnevik led the round, with participation from U.S. venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners, appliance manufacturer Electrolux, and previous backer VC firm e.ventures. It brings total funding to $18 million. Elsa was recently named as one of Forbes 30 Under 30, specifically as one of the social entrepreneurs bringing change In 2018.
SWEDEN
ENTREPRENEUR
30
IMPACT
THE NORDIC 100
ERIK BYRENIUS Erik Byrenius is the co-founder and former CEO of European online food ordering company OnlinePizza, which was acquired by Delivery Hero in 2012. He is now a Stockholm-based angel investor and one of the co-founders of Nordic Makers. Erik is also running StartupDocs, providing free and standardized documents for Nordic startups, such as term sheet, shareholders’ agreement, stock options, unit economics etc. Through this endeavour Erik is having a positive direct impact on the Nordic early-stage ecosystem, making it easier for companies to raise and tangibly improving conditions for early-stage Nordic startups.
SWEDEN
INVESTOR
31
ANGEL
LEGAL
THE NORDIC 100
ERIK ENGELLAU-NILSSON Erik Engellau-Nilsson joined as CEO of Norrsken Foundation in January 2017. Norrsken Foundation is a non-profit foundation combining entrepreneurship, technology and venture capital to maximize social good. The foundation launched Norrsken House which has quickly grown to become the largest ecosystem for social entrepreneurship in Europe with more than hundreds of companies working to solve societal problems. Last year, the foundation closed the first Founders Fund supported by unicorn founders investing 300 million SEK in entrepreneurs creating transformative companies solving the biggest challenges facing humanity. In addition, the foundation has launched initiatives seeking to reduce global corruption and democratizing and spreading personal growth tools leveraging technology.
SWEDEN
ENTREPRENEUR
32
IMPACT
THE NORDIC 100
GULNAZ KHUSAINOVA Gulnaz Khusainova is the Founder and CEO of EasySize, a data-driven company disrupting fashion e-commerce. Originally from Russia she moved to Copenhagen to start her current company, Easysize. Prior to Easysize she was a founder of 2 tech startups in e-commerce and big data (with the first company founded at the age of 19). With more than 7 years of experience in marketing and project management, she is a passionate and skilled entrepreneur. Gulnaz holds MSc in Strategic marketing and has an experience in big data technologies, while working as a Head of Unit in one of the largest banks in Russia. Gulnaz has been recognized as one of the most inspiring young entrepreneurs in Europe – most recently by Forbes in its “Forbes 30 Under 30” list.
DENMARK
ENTREPRENEUR
33
RETAIL
THE NORDIC 100
HAMPUS JAKOBSSON Hampus co-founded TAT (acquired by Blackberry for $150m), ran M&A Blackberry for two years after the acquisition, left and co-founded AI startup Brisk (folded after 4 years). On the side, he co-founded startup community MalmรถStartups and startup co-working place The Ground (100+ people), and co-founded angel group NordicMakers. Hampus is now Venture Partner at Blueyard and an angel investor (to date 80+ startups). He loves learning and helping ambitious people with interesting problems.
SWEDEN
INVESTOR
ANGEL
34
ECOSYSTEM
THE NORDIC 100
HEIDI LINDVALL Heidi is head of the accelerator at Fast Track Malmรถ, responsible for the program and the new batch. She is an entrepreneur herself and has lived in startup hubs such as London, Berlin and Silicon Valley while building her own startup Storygami, a 500 Startups company that has worked with major brands in the media space. Apart from tech Heidi also has an interest in human rights and social entrepreneurship and used to run a documentary film company called Codoc which created films on social and global issues.
SWEDEN
INVESTOR
COMMUNITY BUILDER
35
THE NORDIC 100
HELGA VALFELLS, HEKLA ARNARDÓTTIR and JENNÝ RUTH HRAFNSDÓTTIR Crowberry Capital is an early stage VC fund founded by former NSA Ventures veterans Helga Valfells, Hekla Arnardóttir and Jenný Ruth Hrafnsdóttir in 2017, based in Iceland and investing across the Nordics. Crowberry Capital is the first Nordic VC firm with all female Partners. Helga has been involved in Venture Capital since 2009. Prior to founding Crowberry Helga was the CEO of NSA Ventures from 2010 to 2017 and Chairman of the Board of Frumtak. During her tenure at NSA she had overall responsibility for a total of 51 investments at all stages of funding. Hekla has been in venture capital for 7 years, first as an investment manager at an independent evergreen fund where she has been on the board of 13 tech startups, working passionately for their international success. Jenny has served on number of startup boards and was on the management team of an US based Health Tech company BionX. BionX spun out of the MIT MediaLab, around Dr. Hugh Herr´s vision for man-machine interfaces. It was sold to Otto Bock, a German Medical Device company in 2016. ICELAND
INVESTOR
36
VC
THE NORDIC 100
HJALMAR WINBLADH Hjalmar Winbladh is Partner at EQT Ventures and a seven-time entrepreneur. The multi-stage ₏566 million EQT Ventures fund invests in fast-growing, innovative and technology-driven companies across all industries, with a primary focus on Europe. Prior to starting EQT Ventures, Hjalmar supported EQT Partners for several years as a key Industrial Advisor within the TMT segment. Hjalmar founded SendIt in 1994 - one of world’s first developers of mobile internet technology, including the first cloud mobile mail service. In 1997 SendIt listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange and was later acquired by Microsoft in 1999. Additionally, Hjalmar was the co-founder of Wrapp, Rebtel, Sinch, Epidemic Sound and Pedal. He has achieved a number of successful exits for the companies he has founded, including an IPO and two trade sales to publicly listed companies.
SWEDEN
ENTREPRENEUR
37
INVESTOR
VC
THE NORDIC 100
IDA TIN Ida Tin is the CEO and co-founder of female health tracking app, Clue. Born in Copenhagen, Ida graduated from Denmark’s prestigious creative business school, the KaosPilots. A lifelong entrepreneur, she previously led motorcycle tours around the world and published a book about her experience, “Direktøs” which became a Danish bestseller. Ida is recognized for coining the term “Femtech” to describe the sector of technology focused on improving women’s health.
DENMARK
ENTREPRENEUR
38
HEALTH AND WELLNESS
THE NORDIC 100
ILKKA KIVIMÄKI Ilkka is the Founding Partner of Maki.vc, a new 70 million euro fund based out of Helsinki, Finland but investing pan-Nordic. Whether it’s in the guise of an investor, entrepreneur or community builder, IIkka has been one of the most prominent figures in the Finnish ecosystem for a long time and has had a significant impact. Formerly to Maki.vc Ilkka was a Partner at Inventure. He started his career at Kone Elevators, but moved on to found PC-Superstore and was Co-Founder and CEO at SAP Labs Finland. As the Co-Founder of Wicom Communications, he ran the company as the CEO until 2007. He served as Senior Vice President at SAP, and he was in charge of the communications product portfolio globally. After three years at SAP, he returned to revitalize the startup and growth company scene in Finland. IIkka served as Head Coach of Startup Sauna and is the Founding Chairman of the Startup Sauna Foundation. He serves as the Board Member of the Growth Team of the Federation of Finnish Technology Industries. IIkka is a serial entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in running high-growth technology companies. FINLAND
INVESTOR
39
VC
ECOSYSTEM
THE NORDIC 100
ILKKA PAANANEN Ilkka Paananen is the CEO and co-founder of Supercell, the Helsinki-based mobile games developer behind Clash of Clans, Hay Day, Boom Beach, Clash Royale and Brawl Stars. In June 2016, Supercell became one of the first privately-held European technology startups to reach a valuation of $10 billion. In addition to his role at Supercell, Ilkka helps other entrepreneurs as both an investor and as an active member of the Helsinki-based startup community where he mentors and coaches other founders. Alongside his co-founder Mikko Kodisoja, he has established the We Foundation to fight social inequality and help marginalized children and families in Finland. Prior to founding Supercell, he was the CEO and co-founder of Finnish games developer Sumea, which was later acquired by Digital Chocolate, where he worked as President until 2010.
FINLAND
ENTREPRENEUR
40
GAMING
ECOSYSTEM
THE NORDIC 100
JACOB DE GEER Jacob de Geer is a Swedish serial entrepreneur and co-founder and CEO of iZettle, the fast-growing mobile payments company that lets anyone take card payments and manage and grow their business. Earlier this year PayPal acquired iZettle for $2.2 billion shortly after iZettle announced its intention to go public, with Jacob leading the company to one of Europe’s largest tech exits in recent years. Before starting iZettle, Jacob was the first employee at performance marketing firm TradeDoubler. Here he helped to build one of the largest advertising networks in Europe before leaving to co-found movie sharing firm, Ameibo, and Tre Kronor Media, an award-winning communications agency. Both companies were acquired in 2010.
SWEDEN
ENTREPRENEUR
41
FINTECH
THE NORDIC 100
JAKOB JØNCK Jakob has an impressive track record as one of the most successful entrepreneurs in Denmark. Jakob was a co-founder of Endomondo that was a part of revolutionizing fitness tracking with functionalities geared for the smartphone users. Endomondo was sold to Under Armour for $85 million. Furthermore, Jakob led the international expansion of MyFitnessPal, one of the world’s most prominent fitness and health apps. MyFitnessPal created a novel model for activity tracking combined with food consumption. MyFitnessPal also exited to Under Armour for $475 million. Currently Jakob is building a new venture in Denmark – Simple Feast – that brings high-quality ready-made vegetarian meals to private households. Simple Feast recently raised a 12 million Series A funding round led by Balderton Capital in London, with participation from 14W in New York.
DENMARK
ENTREPRENEUR
42
FOOD
IMPACT
THE NORDIC 100
JAN ERIK SOLEM Jan Erik Solem is the CEO of Mapillary and is passionate about all things computer vision. Prior to co-founding Mapillary in 2013, he founded Polar Rose, a face recognition software for mobile and web which Apple bought in 2010. He worked as a computer vision team leader and researcher at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, CA. He is a former professor, a WEF Technology Pioneer (twice), and the author of a best selling computer vision book. Mapillary has raised $24.5 million so far from the likes of Sequoia, Atomico, Navinfo, BMW and Samsung and recently announced a partnership with Amazon and specifically its Rekognition API, to detect and read text in Mapillary’s database of 350 million images.
SWEDEN
ENTREPRENEUR
43
COMPUTER VISION
THE NORDIC 100
JANE WALERUD Jane Walerud is a serial tech entrepreneur who has worked with a number of prominent startups, including Bluetail, Klarna and Lensway, and Tobii. She is a Honorary Doctor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Gold Medal recipient at the Royal Academy of Science (IVA), member of the Swedish Startup Hall of Fame, board member of the investment firm Creades, member of the Swedish Government Innovation Council, Chair of Satcube, Board member at Racefox, and Startup Fintech Course Leader at STING. In 2016, she joined forces with her daughter Caroline, a successful tech entrepreneur who co-founded Volumental, and her husband Bengt, a successful entrepreneur in management consulting, in Walerud Ventures, which joins very early stage deep tech startups.
SWEDEN
ENTREPRENEUR
44
INVESTOR
THE NORDIC 100
JASON DAINTER Jason Dainter is on a mission to prove that there is life in the Swedish ecosystem outside of Stockholm, in fact, less than an hour away, in Uppsala. And through Base10, a co-working space now the heart of the local tech scene and Uppstart, an annual event that showcases and brings the International tech world to Uppsala, he’s doing a pretty good job at proving it. Previously, Jason served as the Head of Brand Relations at Universal Avenue. At Universal Avenue, he was responsible for managing new and ongoing relationships with the various Universal Avenue brands. His background is as a technology entrepreneur where he has built several e-commerce startups in the UK.
SWEDEN
COMMUNITY BUILDER
45
ECOSYSTEM
THE NORDIC 100
JENNY GYLLANDER Jenny is an investor with Backed VC, a London based seed fund backing teams building products the millennial generation love and founders solving the biggest problems faced by the next generation. Jenny was formerly an integral part of the Slush leadership team, starting as Head of Social Media covering all digital communication channels for Slush and ultimately being promoted to CMO and part of the first executive team of the event. As CMO for Slush, Jenny was responsible for the brand development, marketing and internationalization of the event. Efforts resulted in participant growth from 7500 to 15000 attendees from 100 countries, becoming one of the leading startup events globally. More recently, Jenny has become known as “The Best VC on Instagram� due to her thingtesting account where she reviews products from her personal perspective and from an investment perspective.
FINLAND
VC
COMMUNITY BUILDER
46
THE NORDIC 100
JEPPE RINDOM Pleo was founded in 2015 by fintech veterans Jeppe Rindom and Niccolo Perra, both early team members of the Danish fintech success, Tradeshift. Earlier this year, Pleo secured a $16 Million investment in Denmark’s biggest Series A funding round of the past 10 years. Pleo offer a simple spending solution for companies with their payment cards and employees are able to set limits on the software or on their phone, match receipts and track the entire company’s spending with analytics provided. In addition to being the co-founder and CEO of Pleo, Jeppe is an angel investor in start-ups in Europe and US focused on business software and FinTech and an advisor to Private Equity funds and their portfolio companies. He’s also a frequent public speaker at international payments, accounting, fintech and digital innovation conferences and the winner of the Pioneer of the Year award 2016, a competition with 3,000 international startups.
DENMARK
ENTREPRENEUR
47
FINTECH
THE NORDIC 100
JESSICA BLECHINGBERG Jessica Blechingberg is the Country Manager for Finland for The Hub taking care of the strategic partnerships, marketing and growth strategy of the platform. The Hub is an open digital platform tailored to the needs of growth startups. In addition Jessica is on the community team of Maria01, the Helsinki co-working space, taking care of everything regards to community and developing the house. Formerly Jessica had been taking care of the Nordic Operations at Slush since 2016. She is also an active initiator of NordicMade – the community-based movement that promotes awareness of the Nordic tech ecosystem, startups, and new ideas. Through her work with Slush, Jessica was instrumental in organising trips for Nordic founders and hub managers to Tokyo, Shanghai, Singapore, San Francisco and New York. Besides strengthening the ties between the Nordic hubs the trips also helped serve Nordic founders to accelerate their businesses by showcasing them to local venture capitalists and tech media.
FINLAND
COMMUNITY BUILDER
48
ECOSYSTEM
THE NORDIC 100
JESSICA SCHULTZ Jessica is a Partner at venture capital firm Northzone. Northzone has to date raised 8 funds and invested in more than 100 technology companies. Jessica focuses on the consumer sector, with a special passion for ecommerce and marketplaces. Her portfolio companies at Northzone include Lesara, NA-KD, Klarna, Matsmart, Lemoncat, Outfittery and Fyndiq. Jessica is also a board member of Swedish Private Equity & Venture Capital Association. Before joining Northzone, Jessica co-founded HelloFresh, the global meal kit delivery service with market-leading operations in eleven markets. At HelloFresh, Jessica was Global CMO and spearheaded the global marketing operation. HelloFresh is today listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the company has an annual revenue run-rate of USD 500m and 3000 employees. HelloFresh was awarded the fastest growing European company by the Financial Times in 2017.
SWEDEN
ENTREPRENEUR
49
INVESTOR
VC
THE NORDIC 100
JOEL HELLERMARK An enterprising child, Joel taught himself to code in C at age 13 and founded his first company, a video recommendation technology, at 16. While a senior in high school, Joel developed the initial Sana algorithm. Although it was only the seed of what Sana would become, the technology received widespread attention from world-class investors, advisors and artificial intelligence researchers. Subsequently, at age 20, Joel raised $1M from some of Europe’s most prominent investors to bring Sana to the world. Today the Sana team is made up of engineers and scientists from the likes of Google, CERN, and Imperial College. Recently, Joel was awarded “Entrepreneur of the Year” by SEB for his work on the Sana algorithm.
SWEDEN
ENTREPRENEUR
EDTECH
50
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
THE NORDIC 100
JOEL LARSSON Joel is co-founder and Managing Director at Fast Track Malmo, one of the largest startup accelerators in the Nordics investing in early stage startups. He holds a master of science in information and communication technology, has a strong tech background and loves programming in languages starting with R. Joel has started or held leading positions in everything from non-profits, bootstrapped startups to companies with larger investments. He spends most of his day meeting with startups and weekends renovating an old sailing boat.
SWEDEN
INVESTOR
COMMUNITY BUILDER
51
ECOSYSTEM
THE NORDIC 100
JOHAN ATTBY Johan Attby is a serial entrepreneur with a passion for building game changing businesses. He founded the b2b software company Tific and took it all the way from an idea and raising venture capital to a highly profitable company with global customers such as Symantec and Microsoft. In 2011 he got his first exit when the company was acquired by Plumchoice, Inc. After that the co-founded Fishbrain which is the world’s fastest growing mobile app & social network for the world’s biggest hobby - sport fishing. Today Fishbrain has more than 5 millions users globally and recently raised a $13.5 million Series B led by B Capital Group, the VC fund founded by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, with participation from SoftBank Ventures Korea, and existing investors Northzone, and Industrifonden. In 2015 Johan was awarded “Founder of the year” in Sweden by Nordic Startup Awards. Johan is also an angel investor, advisor to and board member at early stage hi-tech companies and a frequent speaker on entrepreneurship and startups. SWEDEN
ENTREPRENEUR
52
SOCIAL NETWORKS
THE NORDIC 100
JOHAN BRAND Johan is dedicated to helping build organisations, businesses and the startup ecosystem in the Nordics. He is a founder, mentor, advisor, angel investor and thought leader. He co-founded Kahoot!, one of the world’s fastest growing learning brands, used by millions each day in over 180 countries. He was CEO of Kahoot! until fall 2016 and left day to day operations in the spring 2017. Under his leadership Kahoot! grew from a research project to cultural phenomena that capture over a 1/3rd of US classrooms each month and millions of business users. Johan is the captain and founder of EntrepreneurShipOne, a unique zero emission pay it forward platform for the Nordic startup community. He co-founded and is a partner at We Are Human, a venture partner for purpose driven organisations striving for social and commercial impact.
NORWAY
ENTREPRENEUR
53
EDTECH
THE NORDIC 100
JOHAN BRENNER Johan is one of Europe’s most experienced venture capital investors having worked across a broad set of industries globally, built a number of successful businesses as an entrepreneur, and as Partner in leading venture capital firms. As an entrepreneur and angel investor, Johan first co-founded eTrade in the Nordics before selling it to ETrade and then running ETrade’s European business. He was an angel investor and COB of Jobline, which became Europe’s largest Online Recruiter, went public and sold to Monster Inc. He co-founded Tradera which was bought by eBay. He was an angel investor and COB of DIBS until it went public and co-founded Payson which was sold to Svea Ekonomi. He also co-founded Livebookings, Europe’s largest restaurant reservation management system. He has been an early investor in several other companies like the online insurance broker Insplanet, and the dental chain Smile Group, the largest Nordic private dental chain. Before Creandum, Johan spent more than 4 years as a General Partner at Balderton Capital (previously Benchmark Capital Europe) with investments in companies like MySQL, Rebtel, Zopa, Habbo Hotel and Wonga. SWEDEN
INVESTOR
54
VC
THE NORDIC 100
JOHANNES SCHILDT Johannes Schildt is CEO and cofounder of Kry, whose mission is to develop into the world’s leading healthcare provider by combining medical expertise with state-of-the-art technology. The company’s first product allows people to see a doctor over video on their smartphone at a time and place of their choosing. Offering a more accessible and convenient digital healthcare service, KRY has in under two years had over 350,000 patient meetings in Sweden, Norway and Spain and grew by 740% in 2017, making it the largest digital healthcare provider in Europe. KRY currently accounts for over 3% of all primary care doctor visits in Sweden and has over 300 clinicians working in the service. It’s secured significant funding to date, raising a $66 million Series B round in 2018 led by international venture capital firm Index Ventures with participation from existing investors Accel, Creandum, and Project A.
SWEDEN
ENTREPRENEUR
55
HEALTH AND WELLNESS
THE NORDIC 100
JONAS ALMELING Jonas Almeling is an entrepreneur, communicator and community builder. He has 25+ years of experience in building and leading companies and organisations in the IT, media, event, innovation & non-profit sector. For almost 10 years he has worked to support entrepreneurs and startups. He was the regional manager for Venture Cup in western Sweden, served on the board of Young Entrepreneurs of Sweden and co-founded the Swedish and Nordic part of Startup Grind, the world’s largest community for entrepreneurs in over 200 cities. Jonas is also part of the teams behind Startup Guide Stockholm, Nordic Startup Awards, Next Generation Incubator & Sweden Demo Day.
SWEDEN
COMMUNITY BUILDER
56
ECOSYSTEM
THE NORDIC 100
JONAS NORDLANDER and FILIP ENGELBERT
Swedes Jonas and Filip are the co-founders of Avito, one of the largest online destinations in Russia, and the second largest classifieds site in the world. In 2015, Avito was acquired by Naspers for $1 billion+ making Jonas and Filip two of the most successful entrepreneurs to come out of the Nordics in the last few years. Subsequently, Jonas and Filip have used some of their newfound liquidity to start injecting their capital and knowledge back into the ecosystem and are now two of the most prolific angel investors in Sweden, amplifying their recent impact on the region even further.
SWEDEN
ENTREPRENEUR
57
ANGEL
RETAIL
THE NORDIC 100
JĂ˜RN LYSEGGEN Jørn Lyseggen is a Norwegian serial entrepreneur and founder and CEO of Meltwater and the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST). In 2001, Lyseggen established Magenta News, an online media monitoring company analyzing online news in real time in Oslo, Norway. He bootstrapped the company, starting it with just a $15,000 investment, and within two years it had nearly $2 million in revenue with no venture funding. The company changed its name to Meltwater News and moved its headquarters to San Francisco in the mid 2000s. As of 2017, Meltwater, employed over 1,600 staff in over 60 cities and 26 countries while generating revenue of over $250 million. In 2017, Lyseggen released the book Outside Insight: Navigating a World Drowning in Data, which is aimed at helping business leaders learn how to implement data-led decisions. The book covers the role of analytics and AI in the business world as well as the importance of an outside perspective and industry trends to influence financial decisions of companies.
NORWAY
ENTREPRENEUR
58
DATRA AND ANALYTICS
THE NORDIC 100
KAREN DOLVA Karen Dolva is CEO and co-founder of No Isolation, an Oslo-based startup founded in October 2015, with the goal of reducing involuntary social solitude. Its first product, a physical avatar called AV1, was designed to help children and young adults, forced by illness to take extended time away from school, to maintain a presence in the classroom, communicate with friends, and socialise. Before co-founding No Isolation, Karen studied Computer Science and Interaction Design at the University of Oslo, the highest ranked institution for education and research in Norway. During her studies, Karen began her career at StartupLab Oslo, and went on to co-found UX Lab - a user experience consultancy, created to help companies with user testing and the designing of digital user experiences.
NORWAY
ENTREPRENEUR
59
LONELINESS
IMPACT
THE NORDIC 100
KARL MUNTHE-KAAS Karl Munthe-Kaas is the co-founder and CEO of Kolonial.no, Norway’s largest online grocery store. Kolonial.no was founded in 2013 and offers grocery delivery to approximately 40% of Norwegian households, a share that they expect to continue to increase. The company grew revenues by 88% to approximately $100 million in 2017. Earlier in 2018, they raised $35 million led by Kinnevik. Previous to leading Kolonial, Karl was the co-founder of Nabobil.no, Norway’s first and largest P2P carsharing service, meaning he is one of Norway’s most prominent repeat entrepreneurs. Prior to this he was a management consultant with McKinsey and a business developer at Schibsted.
NORWAY
ENTREPRENEUR
60
FOOD
RETAIL
THE NORDIC 100
KATJA TOROPAINEN Katka Toropainen is the Chief Curator of Slush, one of the most important and leading roles in any event and when that event is one of the largest tech events in the world then that’s some responsibility. Luckily, Katja is more than capable of being up for the challenge, with the Slush programme in 2018 shaping up to be one of the most thought through and tangibly of value yet, with a focus on building companies. Katja is also a passionate community builder and plays a lead role in the Nordic ecosystem. Her interests include behavioral finance, crypto & blockchain and inclusion and diversity in tech, so now you know what to look out for in the Slush programme this year!
FINLAND
COMMUNITY BUILDER
61
ECOSYSTEM
THE NORDIC 100
KLAUS NYENGAARD Klaus has been in the tech space for more than 20 years largely on the entrepreneurial side. He has been involved as a leading figure in three major European startups including Just Eat, and is today heads down on his own startup, GenieBelt, a leading ConTech company as well as being chairman for a couple of other companies. Furthermore, Klaus is an investment partner in Nordic Makers as well as initiator and chairman of the biggest Danish tech startup event, TechBBQ.
DENMARK
ENTREPRENEUR
62
INVESTOR
ANGEL
THE NORDIC 100
LAILA PAWLAK Laila Pawlak is the co-founder and CEO of SingularityU Denmark and faculty member at Singularity University in Silicon Valley. As CEO of SingularityU Denmark, Laila heads up the 5000m2 campus in Copenhagen Science City that offers a variety of education programs, accelerators, makerspace as well as a co-working space for both startups and corporates leveraging exponential technologies to scale positive impact. Among others she has launched the highly successful accelerator thinkubator; a corporate, crowdfunded accelerator program that helps corporates work with entrepreneurs and establish their own incubator to kick-start innovation, leverage technology and deep dive into the exponential mindset. Similarly, she co-founded the award winning innovation hub DARE2mansion, a professional playground in Copenhagen, which serves as an incubator, coworking and event space where entrepreneurs, businesses and academia come together to create disruptive businesses and scale positive impact. Laila is also an active angel investor, board member and advisor to politicians and organizations through numerous appointed positions. DENMARK
INVESTOR
COMMUNITY BUILDER
63
IMPACT
THE NORDIC 100
LASSE CHOR Lasse Chor is an entrepreneur, community builder and the heartbeat of the Aarhus startup ecosystem. In addition, he’s a mentor and judge for 10+ startup programs around the world (Startup Chile, MIT/Portugal, Bizoo Sarajevo and more) Lasse has built a lot of initiatives to accelerate his local startup ecosystem in Aarhus - and exported some of them to other startup ecosystems around the world. Full of energy and enthusiasm (his nickname is The Happiest Man Alive) he’s also facilitated more than 150 startup weekends and other hackathons around the world and in the process built a huge global network around himself.
DENMARK
INVESTOR
COMMUNITY BUILDER
64
ECOSYSTEM
THE NORDIC 100
LINDA LIUKAS Linda Liukas is a Finnish children’s book author, illustrator and an instructor for beginner programmers. In 2014, her Hello Ruby coding book for children raised $380,000 on Kickstarter becoming the platform’s most highly funded children’s book. She’s also the co-founder of Rails Girls, a site designed to help women learn basic programming. Thanks to her involvement, the approach has become a worldwide success, leading to workshops in over 160 cities. In 2013, the European Commission gave Linda Liukas the title of “Digital Champion of Finland.
FINLAND
ENTREPRENEUR
65
EDTECH
IMPACT
THE NORDIC 100
LISA KENNELLY Lisa Kennelly is the CMO at Fishbrain, the No. 1 app for people who love fishing with over 5 million users. Previous to this she was the Director of Marketing at Clue for over 4 years where she developed and directed content marketing and brand positioning for one of the world’s top female health apps, from launch to global expansion. Lisa is now sharing some of these insights with the rest of Stockholm’s tech ecosystem through her role as an advisor to some of Sweden’s most promising early-stage health startups, notably Grace Health and Boost Thyroid.
SWEDEN
ENTREPRENEUR
66
MARKETING
THE NORDIC 100
LISA MARIE NYVOLL Lisa is the lead for Norway for Nordic Scalers and the CEO of Startup Extreme, the world’s most extreme startup festival in the Norwegian fjords. Prior to this she worked as a Management Consultant at Accenture Strategy and holds an MSc from The London School of Economics. She is passionate about strengthening the Nordic Startup Ecosystem through investing, mentoring and showcasing startups & scaleups from the region.
NORWAY
COMMUNITY BUILDER
67
ECOSYSTEM
THE NORDIC 100
LUCAS H. WELDEGHEBRIEL and PER-IVAR NIKOLAISEN Lucas H. Weldeghebriel and Per-Ivar Nikolaisen are the founders of Shifter, an independent online newspaper about Norwegian technology companies in the new economy. They cover small and large developments in the Norwegian start-up industry, but also follow innovation in larger companies. As the Norwegian startup ecosystem continues to boom, Shifter is the best resource around for following its increasingly faster movements. They both have a journalistic history, with Lucas having a background from VG and Aftenposten, while Per-Ivar previously worked in Aftenposten, Bistandsaktuelt, Dagens NĂŚringsliv and Tekniske Ukeblad.
NORWAY
MEDIA
COMMUNITY BUILDER
68
ECOSYSTEM
THE NORDIC 100
MARAL KALAJIAN Maral was tweeting about the Stockholm tech scene before it was cool and is one of the most recognisable faces and voices in the ecosystem. Maral loves supporting founders and is an inspiration to many in the Stockholm startup scene. Maral’s core focus is heading up marketing at Watty, an AI startup that helps you make smart energy decisions and keeps your home & family safe by understanding your energy use. In addition, she has been the co-organiser of SUP46 Femtech and the co-founder of Peppy Pals.
SWEDEN
COMMUNITY BUILDER
69
MARKETING
THE NORDIC 100
MARGRETHE VESTAGER Margrethe Vestager is the most influential politician in European tech. Margrethe has been the European Commissioner for Competition since 2014, sitting in the driver’s seat when it comes to decisions about Europe’s tech scene’s competitiveness. She works closely with corporate giants who are operating in the EU and is in charge of protecting consumers and preventing monopolies to ensure competition drives innovation. Mrs. Vestager is widely known for fining big tech giants such as Apple, when they have not followed the antitrust laws of the European Union. Google, too, will soon face its second multi-billion-euro fine for taking advantage of its dominant position in the market. However you feel about regulation, there’s no denying that Margrethe is in a position of real influence when it comes to shaping the future of the European technology sector.
DENMARK
POLITICS
70
REGULATION
THE NORDIC 100
MARIANNE VIKKULA Marianne is the recently appointed Head of New Markets at Wolt, an online food ordering and delivery service having worked previously in the expansion team there after joining them in the last year. Prior to this, Marianne was the CEO at Slush, the leading startup and technology event in Europe and Asia. She’d been part of the team since 2013 running finance and sales prior to working as the CEO. With 20,000 attendees and top quality speakers from across the world flying in, Slush plays a vital role in the Nordic ecosystem, and under Marianne’s leadership it continued to expand internationally while doubling-down on its efforts to support the local region.
FINLAND
COMMUNITY BUILDER
71
ECOSYSTEM
THE NORDIC 100
MARTA SJÖGREN Marta Sjögren is an investor with Northzone, focusing on early stage companies. Northzone is a leading European venture capital firm with a significant presence in New York. Marta’s areas of interest include gaming, edtech, HR-tech, healthtech, and security. Marta works closely with a number of Northzone’s portfolio companies at a Board level, including Labster, Aevy, HappyOrNot, Zervant, Seriously, BehavioSec, and Sqore. Prior to joining Northzone, Marta was an investor with DN Capital, a London/Palo Alto based VC firm, where she worked on investments in the music, fintech, and classifieds verticals, including supporting investments in companies such as Shazam, OLX, and TBricks. Marta is a member of the steering committee of Rising North, a threeyear project funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers and operated by the Finnish Startup Foundation, aiming to support projects that help the Nordic startup ecosystem continue developing as a globally leading innovative ecosystem. Marta is also a mentor/advisor to Wave Ventures, Europe’s first student-run VC.
SWEDEN
INVESTOR
VC
72
COMMUNITY BUILDER
THE NORDIC 100
MARTIN VON HALLER GRĂ˜NBÆK A co-founder of Nordic Makers, a co-creator of CPHFTW and a partner at Bird & Bird, Martin has been a pioneer in the Danish startup community. He co-founded several startups and regularly advises and mentors many more. Martin is a leading expert on open business, advising on open source licensing, open APIs and open data. He is a co-founder of the Danish Open Source Vendors Association and Creative Commons Danish chapter.
DENMARK
INVESTOR
73
LEGAL
THE NORDIC 100
METTE LYKKE A third of all food produced in the world is wasted. As CEO of Too Good To Go, Mette leads a team of 200 talented Waste Warriors with a strong mission. They want to inspire and empower everyone to take action against food waste. For starters, they’ve created a marketplace for surplus food saving millions of meals from going to waste and work with 12,000+ supermarkets, restaurants, bakeries, hotels and any other food retailer that throws out food by the end of business on a regular basis. Previously Mette co-founded Endomondo in 2007, a social fitness community with the mission of making fitness fun with now more than 30 million users across the world. Mette left Endomondo in 2017 to take on fighting food waste as a new important challenge.
DENMARK
ENTREPRENEUR
74
SUTAINABILITY
IMPACT
THE NORDIC 100
MIKI KUUSI Miki Kuusi is the CEO and co-founder of the Nordic tech company Wolt. Founded in fall 2014, Wolt has raised EUR 15 million in funding to define how the internet should change the way people discover and get great food. Previously, Miki ran Slush as co-founder & CEO, where he oversaw the event’s growth from a local, 300-person gathering in Helsinki to one of the leading tech and investor events in the world attended by more than 30,000 people annually, expanding across Europe and Asia. Wired listed Miki as #32 on their top technology influencers in Europe for 2015, while Forbes featured Miki on their 30 under 30 list for 2016.
FINLAND
ENTREPRENEUR
75
FOOD
ECOSYSTEM
THE NORDIC 100
MIKKEL SVANE Mikkel Svane is the CEO and founder of Zendesk. He started the company with Morten Primdahl and Alexander Aghassipour to make great customer service available to everyone and create software that people love to use. Today, he leads Zendesk’s global operations and business strategy with those same goals in mind. A Dane-turned-San Franciscan, Mikkel in 2009 moved the company from Copenhagen to San Francisco. He keeps Zendesk’s Danish design roots at the center of the product while growing the number of people using it to hundreds of millions worldwide. During his earlier time in Denmark, Mikkel led a service-management consulting group, founded and served as the CEO of Caput, a software company for online community, served as a technology consultant, and launched Denmark’s first community portal.
DENMARK
ENTREPRENEUR
76
SAAS
THE NORDIC 100
NATALIA BRZEZINSKI As the CEO of Symposium Stockholm and the Brilliant Minds Foundation, Natalia curates a global community of creative entrepreneurs who want to make change and cutting-edge innovation together. Natalia is an experienced moderator, journalist, and communications strategist focused on building dynamic dialogue across numerous sectors and cultures. She has held senior roles in the U.S. Senate Press Office for Senator John Kerry, to The Huffington Post, to the U.S. Embassy in Sweden and is a Senior International advisor to Kreab, a strategic communications and public affairs firm headquartered in Stockholm with a global footprint in Europe, Asia and Latin America. Natalia is also the host of the podcast series, The Brilliant Minds Podcast and a Global-Editor-at-Large at Thrive, the new lifestyle and media platform launched by Arianna Huffington. She has been blogging for The Huffington Post since 2009 on Millennials and generation change, social entrepreneurship and women’s empowerment with a strong focus on Sweden and the Nordic region.
SWEDEN
COMMUNITY BUILDER
77
NETWORK
THE NORDIC 100
NEIL S W MURRAY Neil S W Murray is the founder of The Nordic Web, the number one resource for data-driven analysis on the Nordic tech and startup scene. The Nordic Web is relied on by the regions’ and Europe’s most prominent investors and entrepreneurs for dealflow and intelligence. In addition, Neil is the Founding Partner of The Nordic Web Ventures, a pre-seed fund backed by 50+ individuals passionate about supporting the next generation of Nordic founders. In little over a year the fund has established as one of the most active and prominent pre-seed funds in the region, having invested in all five Nordic countries and co-investing alongside Y Combinator, Seedcamp, Point Nine Capital and more.
DENMARK
INVESTOR
COMMUNITY BUILDER
78
ECOSYSTEM
THE NORDIC 100
NIKLAS ADALBERTH Niklas is the co-founder and chairman of Norrsken Foundation, a non-profit foundation combining entrepreneurship, technology and venture capital to maximize social good. Niklas has also been an active angel investor and is now investing through a 300MSEK fund that Norrsken has raised investing in transformative companies solving the biggest challenges facing humanity. Previously, Niklas was one of the co-founders of Klarna, the leading European payments company with investors such as Sequoia, Atomico, and General Atlantic. Niklas has a master’s degree in international business from the Stockholm School of Economics, where he founded Klarna together with his two co-founders, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO, and Victor Jacobsson.
SWEDEN
ENTREPRENEUR
FINTECH
79
INVESTOR
IMPACT
THE NORDIC 100
NIKLAS ZENNSTRĂ–M and MATTIAS LJUNGMAN Niklas ZennstrĂśm and Mattias Ljungman are the founding partners of Atomico. Atomico has partnered with and supported a growing number of highly successful technology companies, including Supercell, Klarna, Rovio, ofo and many more. It raised its fourth fund in 2016, which was the largest independent venture capital fund ever raised in Europe. Niklas is an experienced technology investor and entrepreneur, having previously co-founded and managed globally successful technology companies including Skype, Kazaa and Joltid. He sits on the boards of Rovio, Mapillary, Pipedrive, Truecaller and Farmdrop. Niklas is most excited about founders that are solving major world problems using digital technology. During his time at Atomico, Mattias has been involved in exits or substantial transactions for companies including Supercell (multi-billion sale to SoftBank over two transactions in 2013 and 2015), 6Wunderkinder (acquired by Microsoft in 2015), The Climate Corporation (acquired by Monsanto for $1.1B in 2013), Xobni (acquired by Yahoo! in 2013), Massive Media (acquired by Meetic in 2012) and Power Reviews (acquired by Bazaarvoice in 2012). SWEDEN
INVESTOR
80
VC
THE NORDIC 100
NIKOLAJ NYHOLM Nikolaj is the co-founder & CEO at esports platform RFRSH Entertainment and former General Partner of Sunstone. Having raised a further 10 million euros for RFRSH in 2018, Nikolaj shared their ambition to establish BLAST Pro Series as part of the mainstream scene of world class competitive entertainment on a level with NBA, UFC, football, movies and online entertainment in general. They’ve already taken a pioneering role in creating the esports brand for the mainstream audience and they are also the owner of Astralis, the team that currently holds the number one spot in the entire landscape of CS:GO. Prior to Sunstone, he co-founded Polar Rose (Apple), Imity (Zyb/Vodafone), Organic Network, and Speednames (Group NBT). Nikolaj was also an advisor to Mojang (Minecraft) from founding through the sale to Microsoft.
DENMARK
ENTREPRENEUR
81
ESPORTS
THE NORDIC 100
PÄR HEDBERG Pär is the founder and CEO of STING, Sweden’s leading accelerator programme. Since 2002, Sting has worked with over 240 companies, 70 percent of which are still active and growing. Every year they evaluate over 400 startups applying for their programs. In addition he’s been an instigator of a number of intiatives improving the Stockholm ecosystem including Sting Business Angels, Sting Capital, SUP46, THINGS, Sting Game Incubator, and Propel Capital. He’s also the Co-founder of Luminar Ventures, a new Swedish seed fund. Pär has also worked as CEO in a number of small and medium-sized technology companies and has experience from production of electronics, logistics and as head of quality.
SWEDEN
INVESTOR
82
VC
THE NORDIC 100
PÄR-JÖRGEN PÄRSON Pär-Jörgen (PJ) Pärson is a General Partner at Northzone. PJ led Spotify’s A-round for Northzone in 2008 and served on the Board of Directors for nine years. He also led the fund’s investment in Russian online classifieds site Avito.ru which was sold to Naspers at a $2.7bn valuation in 2015, in one of the Europe’s largest venture-backed tech transactions of that year. PJ’s current board positions include live sports video service Fubo.tv and ad-tech company Sourcepoint, both based in New York, iZettle, Soundtrack Your Brand, and Bloglovin’. Previous investments include Pricerunner.com, Videoplaza, X5 Music Group and Jasper Design Automation. Having headed up Northzone’s New York office, PJ focuses on bridging the gap between the European and East Coast ecosystems, investing in companies on both sides of the pond and supporting them in achieving global growth.
SWEDEN
INVESTOR
83
VC
THE NORDIC 100
PETER CARLSSON After five years at Elon Musk’s side, serving as the CPO of Tesla, Peter Carlsson is back in Sweden to start his own gigafactory, with a venture called Northvolt. The goal is to produce the next generation lithium ion batteries, at half the current price. The Stockholm-based company has raised close to $100 million to date to help them achieve this lofty ambition. Peter joined Tesla from NXP Semiconductors where he was responsible for purchasing and outsourcing. As CPO, he took the purchase organization from a tactical decentralized structure to a strategic global commodity organization. Before starting at NXP, Peter was CPO at Sony Ericsson. Peter had a total of 13 years experience from different roles with Ericsson and Sony Ericsson in Sweden and the US. He led the team that built and implemented Ericsson’s framework for Supplier Quality Assurance.
SWEDEN
ENTREPRENEUR
84
ENERGY
THE NORDIC 100
PETER VESTERBACKA Peter Vesterbacka is an entrepreneur from the Heart of Eurasia, Helsinki, Finland. Branded communities co-created and initiated by Peter include the HP Bazaar, Mobile Monday, Slush and Startup Sauna to name a few. He was the Mighty Eagle at Angry Birds for many years taking that brand to unprecedented heights. In 2011 Time Magazine named Peter one of the 100 most influential people on the planet. These days Peter spends the majority of his time working on building one of the most ambitious construction projects in Europe, physically connecting Finland to Estonia through a 103-kilometre tunnel which will host bullet trains with the ability to reach Tallinn from Helsinki in just 20 minutes.
FINLAND
ENTREPRENEUR
GAMING
85
COMMUNITY BUILDER
THE NORDIC 100
PIA ELLA ELMEGÅRD Pia is an entrepreneur & community builder by heart, and has been building initiatives supporting the tech startup ecosystem in Denmark and the Nordics and Baltics since 2010, as well as co-founding a media company on startups and digital entrepreneurs. Pia has extensive experience with people management, strategic messaging, brand positioning and event management from co-initiating projects and companies, and consulting and advising startups and startup founders. Projects include #NordicMade, TechBBQ, NordicAI, TechFamily & Znergy. Most recently, Pia became the co-founder and Managing Director of Growth Tribe for Denmark, Europe’s 1st Growth Hacking Academy.
DENMARK
COMMUNITY BUILDER
86
ECOSYSTEM
GROWTH
THE NORDIC 100
RICCARDO ZACCONI Riccardo Zacconi is one of King’s founders and has served on their Board of Directors and as their chief executive officer since March 2003. With over 20 years of experience in strategic management, consulting and e-commerce, Riccardo brings exceptional knowledge and expertise to both the social and casual gaming domains. Previously, Riccardo served as vice president of European Sales and Marketing at uDate.com Ltd., an online dating service, and was involved in driving market penetration and partnerships until the company was acquired by InterActive Corporation in 2002. Before that, he was managing director for Spray Network GmbH an online portal based in Hamburg with a presence in Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, Denmark and Norway. In addition, Riccardo has been an entrepreneur-in-residence at Benchmark Capital Partners.
SWEDEN
ENTREPRENEUR
87
GAMING
THE NORDIC 100
RISTO SIILASMAA Risto Siilasmaa is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Nokia. Under his tenure Nokia has successfully transformed from a mobile phone manufacturer to a leading communication technology company. Risto is the founder of F-Secure Corporation and an entrepreneur at heart. He is also an active contributor in many European and Asian industry associations and public debate. He is the Chairman of the Board of the Federation of Finnish Technology Industries and the Vice Chairman of the Confederation of Finnish Industries (EK). He is also a member of the European Roundtable of Industrialists (ERT), the Tsinghua SEM Advisory Board at Tsinghua University and the International Business Leaders Advisory Council for the Mayor of Beijing. Risto also invests in early-stage startups through First Fellow Partners.
FINLAND
ENTREPRENEUR
INVESTOR
88
TELECOMS
SECURITY
THE NORDIC 100
RITU JAIN Ritu Jain is the co-founder and COO of LifeX, a co-living community for people relocating to a new city for work. Previously, Ritu worked at Tradeshift in San Francisco where she met her co-founder and husband Sune Theodorsen. LifeX started out as a side project for the pair, however, with both having experience of starting their own companies before, they knew they were onto something and after going all-in, saw instant traction and were subsequently able to raise significant capital to allow them to pursue their vision. Ritu has also worked as Head of Product at Danish startup Peakon and previously went through Y Combinator with her startup LearningJar.
DENMARK
ENTREPRENEUR
89
COLIVING
REAL ESTATE
THE NORDIC 100
RUDI SKOGMAN Rudi Skogman is co-founder and CEO of Blok, one of Finland’s fastest growing startups and fastest growing real estate player in the country. Selling your apartment with Blok is simple and affordable. All that’s required of the seller is to hold the viewing, Blok does the rest. They’ve twice been included in Wired’s Finnish startups to watch and have raised $2 million to date. Previous to Blok, Rudi worked as an Investor at Reaktor Ventures building on his experience as heading up Investor Relations at Slush for some 4 years. Rudi is one of the most well-liked and well connected people in the Nordic ecosystem having worked as an entrepreneur, investor and community builder already despite his relatively young age.
FINLAND
ENTREPRENEUR
COMMUNITY BUILDER
90
REAL ESTATE
THE NORDIC 100
SANDY ERRESTAD Sandy Errestad is the Head of Communications of Mapillary, the street-level imagery platform that uses computer vision to fix the world’s maps. Previous to Mapillary, Sandy joined Minc the startup house in Malmö, as their Comms Lead in September 2016 after having spent several years in London’s Tech City, working with the likes of TransferWise and Twilio, as well as at the startup PR agency Albion Drive. Sandy moved to Sweden to help put Malmö’s tech scene on the international map, and secured more than 150 articles in over 55 publications worldwide in her first ten months at Minc, reaching some 400 million readers. Since moving to Malmö, Sandy has also coached 50+ startups in the Öresund region on how to gain attention from Swedish and international press.
SWEDEN
MEDIA
PR
91
COMMUNITY BUILDER
THE NORDIC 100
SEBASTIAN SIEMIAKOWSKI Sebastian Siemiatkowski is co-founder and CEO of Klarna, one of Europe’s main providers of payment solutions for ecommerce and one of Europe’s highest-valued unicorns. Sebastian and his two co-founders developed the idea for Klarna during a competition at the Stockholm School of Economics. He graduated from the Stockholm School of Economics with a master’s degree in economics and while at school founded the company with his co-founders. Sebastian has received multiple awards for his leadership including the “Rising Star of the Year” by Ernst & Young, “Leader of the Year” by Adecco, “Manager of Tomorrow” by Sweden’s leading Management Magazine and “European Entrepreneur of the Year Award” by TechTour.
SWEDEN
ENTREPRENEUR
92
FINTECH
THE NORDIC 100
SIGRUN SYVERUD Sigrun is the co-founder and CEO of FJONG, transforming the world’s second most polluting, $1.7-trillion global fashion industry by introducing a convenient way to rent and share clothes. FJONG reinvent the way people consume, by providing clothing rentals from a limitless, virtual closet. Their goal is to be our customers’ digital stylist, matching them with personalized outfits that make it easy to save both money and the environment, without compromising style. In just over a year, they’ve organically grown their user base to 25.000+ users and have over 3000 items to rent. They recently set a double Norwegian record with their crowdfunding campaign (highest amount raised and highest female investor share) and are now about to expand internationally and improve their platform’s technological sophistication.
NORWAY
ENTREPRENEUR
93
RETAIL
IMPACT
THE NORDIC 100
SISSEL HANSEN Sissel Hansen is the founder of the book series Startup Guide, often described as the Lonely Planet for entrepreneurs, and Startup Guide is today a creative media and self-publishing company. The first book came out in 2014, and all 300 copies sold out in less than 24 hours. Today StartupGuide has books in over 20 cities in Europe, the Middle East and the USA, including Copenhagen, London, Tel Aviv and NYC. In Autumn 2018, the company launched a media website. In 2015, Hansen was nominated as a Female Entrepreneur of the Year and named one of the 100 most aspiring talents and young leaders in Denmark. For the last two years EU-startups has identified her as one the 50 most influential women in Europe’s startup and venture capital space.
DENMARK
ENTREPRENEUR
MEDIA
94
COMMUNITY BUILDER
THE NORDIC 100
SOPHIA BENDZ Sophia is a Partner at Atomico focusing on the Nordic region. Based in Stockholm, she advises founders on communications and marketing strategy and scaling their brand. As an active player in Stockholm’s startup scene, Sophia also helps with sourcing and the evaluation of new investment opportunities. Sophia was the Global Marketing Director at Spotify from 2007-2014, where she built out a strong consumer brand from scratch, while launching and marketing the service globally. Today she is an active angel investor and advisor to startups. She is also a co-founder of non-profit foundation AllBright.se and has invested in start up’s such as Tictail, Clue, DogBuddy, Shim, Joints Academy, Search Inc, Bokio, DigiExam, Greta.io, Scout, Brighten, Prion, Simple Feast, Engaging Care and Sana Labs.
SWEDEN
INVESTOR
95
ANGEL
BRAND
THE NORDIC 100
TATIANA SHALALVAND Tatiana works on the investment team at Inventure, a Nordic venture capital fund investing in seed and early-stage technology startups. Tatiana started her career as a crisis management consultant at Prime Weber Shandwick. Since then, she’s worked at Ericsson, the growth company Zound Industries and most recently as the COO of a SaaS startup Sparta. Tatiana has studied both in Sweden and France, and is fluent in four different languages (English, Swedish, French and Farsi). Tatiana is based out of Stockholm, and focuses on investment activity in Sweden and the Northern Europe.
SWEDEN
INVESTOR
96
VC
THE NORDIC 100
THARALD NUSTAD Tharald Nustad is a Norwegian serial entrepreneur and investor in the tech sector. He is the founder of Nordic Impact, a company that incubates and invests in social/environmental impact tech startups and impact funds. He is co-founder of Katapult Future Fest, an event focusing on technology, impact investing and the future society, Katapult Accelerator, a leading accelerator for impact tech startups and Katapult Fund. Nordic impact is very active in the future of education, and how we can create the future we want to live in. Tharald is active in building the impact investing ecosystem in the Nordics, and is an active player in the startup scene. He works with Ashoka helping social entrepreneurs, is an active member of Toniic, a global impact investor network, and is co-chair for the impact investing group in Nexus. He also leads Mallin, a family office focusing on Impact real estate developments.
NORWAY
INVESTOR
97
IMPACT
THE NORDIC 100
THOMAS MADSEN-MYGDAL Thomas is a Danish designer, entrepreneur and activist behind companies like TwentyThree (where he is currently CEO), Podio and Mondo. He’s a successful angel investor with recent exits in Opbeat and Holvi, as well as being the first angel investor in Clue and a founding member of Nordic Makers, the angel collective. In addition, Thomas was one of the main instigators behind CPHFTW, the grassroots community run for and by startups in Copenhagen and Techfestival, where more than 16,000 humans gather in Copenhagen to explore the impact of technology on our lives. This has led to The Copenhagen Letter and more recently the Copenhagen Catalog, a set of 150 guiding principles giving direction for a new wave in tech.Thomas is also well known for founding and running reboot festival, as well as founding the first web agency in the Nordics.
DENMARK
ENTREPRENEUR
ANGEL
98
COMMUNITY BUILDER
ECOSYSTEM
THE NORDIC 100
THOMAS WALLE and KJARTAN SLETTE The Norwegian startup community is young and requires nurturing. Thomas Walle and Kjartan Slette were part of the founding team at TIDAL, acquired by Jay Z in 2015, and realized that they would not only go on to build another global company out of Norway but also that they would help build the Norwegian startup community itself. After TIDAL, Kjartan and Thomas co-founded Unacast - headquartered in NYC, leaders in their category, and one of the fastest growing Norwegian startups. Unacast built the Real World Graph™ to power a proprietary platform for real-world data so that other companies and industries can use accurate and transparent location and proximity data. Building a startup ecosystem is done best by building companies and in sharing that story frequently and honestly to the rest of the ecosystem, Thomas and Kjartan do both. Unacast recently raised $17.5 million to continue to lead through best practice.
NORWAY
ENTREPRENEUR
COMMUNITY BUILDER
99
ECOSYSTEM
THE NORDIC 100
TIMO AHOPELTO Timo Ahopelto is well-known as the founder and managing director of CRF Health and a founder of Lifeline Ventures, one of Finland’s most prominent VC funds. CRF Health was sold for over one billion euros this year, becoming Finland’s fourth unicorn. Lifeline Ventures is well-known for being the first investor in Supercell and also has 6 other exits under its belt so far, including Peak, BetterDoctor, Applifier and Nonstop Games. Timo is also known for his role with Slush, where he was recently appointed as the Chairman of the Board of Directors.
FINLAND
INVESTOR
100
VC
ECOSYSTEM
THE NORDIC 100
TOMMY AHLERS This year Tommy Ahlers was appointed minister for Higher Education and Science in Denmark, meaning one of Denmark’s most successful entrepreneurs was now in the Government, an appointment that was well received by those in the Nordic tech ecosystem. Tommy is best known for the social networking and mobile backup site ZYB, sold to Vodafone Europe BV for nearly $50m in May 2008. Before ZYB, where he held the position of CEO since the company’s inception, he spent six years in strategy and management, partly in the mobile industry. After ZYB, Tommy invested in and became CEO of Podio in 2010. Podio was acquired by Citrix for $43.6 million in April 2012. He is also well-known for being in the Danish version of Dragon’s Den.
DENMARK
ENTREPRENEUR
101
POLITICS
THE NORDIC 100
TOMMY ANDERSEN and ERIC LAGIER Tommy and Eric are the founding partners of byFounders, a ‘for founders by founders’ early stage venture fund investing in Nordic founders. Based in Copenhagen, Denmark, Tommy is one of Denmark’s most renowned serial entrepreneurs, co-founding Embedit and Libratone. Until recently, a very active angel investor and founding partner in Nordic Makers. Eric has been involved in some of the Nordic most successful tech companies. Part of the early team at Skype, Tradeshift and most recently co-founder at Memolane. Based in San Francisco, Eric has built a strong network of tech executives and VC’s in Silicon Valley and leverages this as advisor for numerous Nordic startups making their way to Silicon Valley.
DENMARK
INVESTOR
102
VC
THE NORDIC 100
TROND RIIBER KNUDSEN Trond Riiber Knudsen is Founder and CEO of TRK Group AS, an Oslo-based investment and advisory firm focused on active ownership and advisory within disruptive technologies, digital service transformation and new African growth markets. Prior to this, Trond Riiber Knudsen was a Senior Partner and member of the Leadership group in McKinsey & Company, with responsibility for McKinsey’s Marketing & Sales practice. These days, Trond is undoubtedly the most active angel in Norway.
NORWAY
INVESTOR
103
ANGEL
THE NORDIC 100
TYLER CROWLEY For the past 6 years Tyler has worked with Stockholm stakeholders to develop the city as a leading startup ecosystem where he hosts the Europe’s largest monthly meetup for geeks in Sthlm Tech Meetup as well as Sweden’s largest annual Startup festival each September, Sthlm Tech Fest. Tyler has been instrumental in putting Stockholm and Sweden on the global startup map and helping them start getting the International attention they deserve as one of the world’s leading tech hubs.
SWEDEN
COMMUNITY BUILDER
104
ECOSYSTEM
THE NORDIC 100
VEDRANA HÖGKVIST TABOR Vedrana is the CEO and co-founder of Boost Thyroid, a digital health company focused on solving health complications caused by thyroid autoimmune conditions and empowering people to live healthy and age well. Vedrana’s goal is to increase public awareness as well as research interest in thyroid conditions, predominantly female conditions, and prevent health complications coming from delayed diagnoses. Born in Zagreb, Croatia, Vedrana obtained her doctorate degree at Humboldt University in Berlin, and has worked on cancer research in some of the world’s most renowned institutions, such as the Netherlands Cancer Institute and Karolinska Institutet. Before Boost Thyroid, Vedrana was Director of Scientific Research at the period app Clue. Vedrana is a digital health advocate and a frequent speaker on the power of digital tools at events including TEDx and WIRED Health and at universities such as Oxford, Stanford, and Columbia. Vedrana believes that the right to health information is one of our basic human rights.
SWEDEN
ENTREPRENEUR
HEALTH AND WELLNESS
105
IMPACT
THE NORDIC 100
VOITTO KANGAS Voitto is the CEO of Maria01, an industry campus for startups, investors and other tech folk in an old Helsinki hospital and Finland’s main co-working hub. Previously to running Maria01, Voitto has been heavily involved in pushing the Helsinki startup scene forward through a number of positions, including as the Managing Director of the Startup Foundation, working towards better environment and culture for entrepreneurs and new growth companies, locally in the Nordics and outside and Head of Partnerships at Slush.
FINLAND
COMMUNITY BUILDER
106
ECOSYSTEM
THE NORDIC 100
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107
THE NORDIC 100
2018
108