Spain
I've founded several startups across different sectors- recruitment, publishing, SaaS, retail, and marketing - each aimed at solving distinct customer challenges. Some have worked, others haven’t, but every venture has taught me something new about building teams, products, and impact. Success or failure, I keep moving forward. Creating, learning, and improving is what I do, and what keeps me going.
From different vantage points I have taken an active part in more than 30 new ventures, working with private as well as institutional investors, coordinating cross industry efforts between academic institutions, private- and public sectors; as an entrepreneur, as a consultant, as a representative of investors as well as the public sector. I have a proven ability to define and implement unique solutions. Over the years I've executed ~40 projects: hands-on start-up, market and business analysis, business planning and development, marketing strategy, targeting and negotiating strategic partnerships, financial strategic planning and execution, recruiting, product development, etc. Customers have included larger corporations and public sector organizations, but mainly investors and growing/rapidly changing companies just having attracted, or wanting to attract, equity investors. Project execution has always been in co-operation with owners/investors and/or top-management. Project example: contracted by a Regional Economic Growth Association in Sweden, funded through local government resources and the EU, to define and lead new business creation activities in the region. I designed, implemented and directed a business incubator for starting business ventures in the region. I also proposed and prospected a local venture capital fund.
VINNOVA is the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems - an innovation fund with annual investments of €300M. I was recruited explicitly to enable and expedite change for VINNOVA’s involvement in the expanding area of service innovation. I structured and launched a number of unique initiatives to pilot change, and managed, among other things, to launch, by request from the Swedish government, VINNOVA's first steps into Pre-Commercial Procurement and Public Procurement of Innovation, as well as using open innovation to strengthen VINNOVA's own processes and structures for the first time. I was also involved in the effort to restructure and of VINNOVA's digital application system.
E-tailer of furniture and interior design, funded by external venture capital. Together with my two partners I developed the concept and secured EUR 1M venture funding from private and institutional investors. With my partners I realized the project, taking it from zero to a full fledgling business in under a year. A large part of securing external financing was the impressive team we had managed to recruit, motivating people to quit their jobs and come and work for our start-up, putting their faith in us and our business. Apart from starting the business and attracting external investors I recruited and managed a staff of 22. Together we worked with setting up a completely new business. As CEO I was also in charge of leading the staff, organizing the work flows and setting general guidelines for the operation, I was deeply involved in financing and technology development. I left the company when it was merged with and restructured within a larger business entity.
Internet service looking to unite students with relevant and available funding (scholarships), using its database as a marketing route for interested companies into the student consumer group. I developed the initial business idea, wrote the business plan, recruited personnel, including a managing director, and set up operations in Sweden; going on to lead an expansion team launching the company in France, Germany and the United Kingdom. My responsibilities included global strategy and business development, the local commercial and marketing strategies, legal negotiations, and the infrastructure and technological development choices as well as funding. The company went on to raise a total of around EUR 10M.