Speakers

Anders Östlund holds an MSc from Stockholm School of Economics. While a student at the SSE, Anders was also involved in the establishment of the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship. Anders became inspired while studying and working at SSES and chose to become an entrepreneur rather than pursuing a corporate career. In 2006 Anders co-founded Ticket2.com, an internet market place for event ticket trading, and was listed as one of Sweden’s hottest IT-entrepreneurs by Internet World in 2007. Today, Anders lives in Ukraine, where he has co-founded Stella100, a professional development network that offers job opportunities for students and young professionals and recrutiment of top talent for companies.

Moderator

Anders will be moderating the talks on main stage.

Alexander Seifert realised that climbing someone else's career ladder isn't quite as fun as creating a ladder of his own. Having found a strong partner in HackFwd, as an upcoming developer of web based games, he started Pro 3 Games to realise his ideas on how to change the gaming market with his two middle names; 'passion' and 'dedication'. Gone are the days as graphical artist, web developer, community manager, software engineer, teacher or cold blooded sales guy. Now Alex favorite activity actually consists of connecting (with) people and building up business networks.

Where passion meets momentum

Alexander will talk about what it means to be a geek and how to make a living out of it. He will tell you that to conquer the world you don't need 100+ employees, just a few truly passionate and elite geeks and their insights into what will be the next big wave… In short, momentum.

Ernst Nathorst-Böös is founder and CEO of Propellerhead, a company that has created some of the world’s most innovative and widely used music software applications. Founded at a kitchen table in 1994, Ernst's and his colleagues' work has spawned novel product categories and paved the way for new ways of making music, even affecting musical styles and genres.

Reason to brand

Ernst will talk about how he and his team, with minimal experience in entrepreneurship, became one of the most important players on the music software market and try to explain why some people walk around with the Reason logo tattooed on their body.

Kajsa Balkfors Lind is one of the entrepreneurs and leaders behind Cirkus Cirkör, one of Sweden's leading cultural and social enterprises and the "next major Swedish export after Abba" according to Le Soir. Entrepreneurial creativity and value-based organizational management are some of Kajsa's areas of expertise. She has a background in political science and as a communications consultant at Universum, Investor and Scania, and has co-founded several companies and non-profit organisations, before she "ran away with the circus" some 10 years ago.

Behind the scenes of a circus entrepreneur

Listen to Kajsa explain how the vision to change the world has been the key success factor when bringing a new innovation to a market.

Matias Myllyrinne is one of the key figures behind Remedy Entertainment's success. Since joining the company in 1999, he has helped build Remedy into one of the world's leading independent game developers. With over nine million games sold to-date, the company's mission has been to develop state-of-the-art action games (Death Rally, Max Payne series and Alan Wake). Utilising innovative ideas, cutting edge technology as well as a magic mix of talented people.

From garage start-up to focused player in the global game industry

Matias will talk about the three principles that have guided Remedy along their exciting journey, add color to the gambles they took and share the vision they continue to follow.   

Beth Topolovsky is the founder and Managing Partner of Stinson Partners AB, which specializes in cultivating high performing companies in a style that bridges Silicon Valley with that of the Nordics. Beth has over 18 years of senior management and technical experience from Silicon Valley working in Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, and KLA-Tencor. While working for Cisco Systems in 2001, Beth relocated to Sweden to manage an acquisition formerly called Qeyton Systems AB. Thereafter, Beth was co-founder and CEO of Q2 Labs AB, which was later sold to Net Insight AB. Beth serves on the board of The American Chambers of Commerce in Sweden as well as The American Club of Sweden and is an advisor to a few early stage companies in Sweden.

The top pitfalls of an early stage company

Beth will talk about the most common mistakes that start-ups do and tell you how to avoid them.

Filip Engelbert had a career in the Swedish investment banking community. After Filip started, and discontinued, a classic dot-com project in 2000 he eventually became CEO of Remium Fondkommission. During the years as CEO, Remium became the leading investment bank in Sweden targeting small listed companies and their owners. In 2006 he started Kontakt East Holding in Russia. Kontakt East business concept was to copy successful Internet project from the west and launch in the east, “What works in the west works in the east”. Since then Filip has moved to Moscow with his wife and three children and have been involved in a number of project relating to Kontakt East. Today Filip is the Executive Director and co-founder of Avito. Avito is the leading online classified in Russia with almost 14 million unique visitors per month and one of the top-10 online sites.

What works in the west works in the east

Filip will talk about starting and ramping up a major online project in an emerging market, where business is done, for us Scandinavians, in very different ways.

Soledad Piñero Misa is the founder of the social enterprise Retoy. Retoy creates places where children can play without any commercial pressure, borrow sustainably manufactured toys and games instead of buying, and learn about sustainability from an ecological and social perspective deeply rooted in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. She has also founded Diferencia, a knowledge consultancy helping organizations prosper through sustainable leadership, intersectoral collaboration and respect for human rights. Soledad has been appointed by the Swedish government to serve on the board of the Skansen Foundation and was ranked number nine in Veckans Affärer's list of "Sweden's 101 Super Talents of 2008". She has a background as secretary General of LSU, the Swedish council of youth organisations, head of office for Youth against racism, and president of the Red Cross refuge centre. Her vision is a world in which we all consume sustainably and show solidarity with nature and our fellow human beings, locally and globally.

Playing our way to a better world

Soledad will talk about the opportunities and challenges of following your heart in your work, illustrated by her experience from creating social innovation that changes the world. Soledad is also on the jury for “Pitch your social innovation”.

Mai-Li Hammargren founder and CEO Mutewatch, is passionate about time management and learning about people. She started her first international project at the age of sixteen and discovered her interest in sales and consumer electronics working at Sony Center. As a student, Mai-Li explored and expanded her skills attending Stockholm School of Economics, London School of Economics and the CEMS master-program at the University of St Gallen.

Oscar Ritzén Praglowski founder and CTO Mutewatch, is passionate about product development and user/product relations. Oscar has worked with product development in China and Finland and he received his master's degree from The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

How to be a young team and develop a product

Three years of hard work is about to be shipped out to stores around the world. Hear Mai-Li and Oscar tell their story of what it’s like bringing an innovation to the market, and the balancing act of getting the sales, the product development and the financing in place.

Cecilia Hertz founder and CEO of Umbilical Design, a company dedicated to space design and technology transfer from the space industry to consumer products. While still a design student at Lund Institute of Technology, Cecilia went to NASA and the Johnson Space Center in Houston, and showed 8,000 engineers how to build a space ambulance. Today, her company Umbilical Design has the role as Swedish NTTI - National Technology Transfer Initiative for the European Space Agency and work with clients like Electrolux, Academedia and Lidköping Municipality to name a few. Cecilia believes in the notion that nothing is impossible and that we need to challenge our clients so we don’t just create more products.

A journey from space down to earth

Hear Cecilia explain how to benefit from “weightless thinking” and a team of dedicated “why-not-people” when building your start-up.

Benjamin Rohé is an entrepreneur who, since the age of 15, has been working in the digital media space. At the peak of the new economy, he co-founded on-web AG, an e-commerce specialist. From 2002 to 2007 Benjamin contributed as Director Operations to the success of the Italian media company, Buongiorno SpA, which went public in 2004. Entrepreneurship being his true passion, he has been investing time and money into startups for the past 3 years. His most recent investment is a software service company that provides a customer review systems for hotels, called Customer Alliance. Since 2009 Benjamin gives guest lectures about business models, entrepreneurship and e-commerce at various universities (including European School of Management and Techonology) and as an associate professor at the Zeppelin University.

Why worry? Meet failure: an entrepreneur’s best friend

Benjamin will talk about lessons learned from 12+ years of entrepreneurship in the internet and new media industry.

Gustav Borgefalk in 2008 turned down the standard SSE banking career and made the choice to become a full time entrepreneur. After being CEO of the digital marketplace Filehill.com, Gustav co-founded Student Competitions, an innovative company that connects students with competitions and that creates competition formats for companies and organizations worldwide. Gustav has also worked with microfinance in India and has a vision of how competitions one day will be used to solve all mankind's most pressing problems.

Challenge the world

Gustav will talk about the lessons learned from launching a natural global start-up.

Gregg Vanourek is an author and expert in the fields of leadership, entrepreneurship, and personal development. He has co-authored two books (including LIFE Entrepreneurs), with a new one in the works. He serves as Adjunct Faculty at KTH and teaches one of SSES courses. Vanourek founded Far Horizon and co-founded New Mountain Ventures. Before that, he served as SVP at K12 Inc., VP at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, and Research Fellow at the Hudson Institute. Vanourek is a featured speaker both in the U.S. and in Europe.

Moderator

Gregg will be moderating the inspirational talks on Floor 2.

Henrik Berggren is a hacker, entrepreneur and ex DJ who's fallen in love with e-books. He has been working with the web for almost 15 years and have been involved in SoundCloud, Music Hack Day and Physical Interaction Lab. Right now Henrik is, together with a friend, bootstrapping a new platform that helps people share, discover and talk about books.

From angels to VCs

Henrik will share his recent learnings from raising a seed round of money in Europe for a new web startup.

Lukas Duczko is a serial entrepreneur with a passion for IT. With a broad background from sectors such as education, entertainment, business development and sales, Lukas has a knack for smart solutions and unconventional ideas and strategies. At the moment he is exclusively focusing on his new start-up SkrivaPå, an e-contracting cloud service. In five months, Lukas has grown the company from two to 12 people on a zero budget and is managing a distributed team of nine nationalities spanning four countries.

Managing distributed teams

Lukas will talk about the challenges and experiences from building and managing a distributed team on a zero budget under tight time pressure.

Jakob Persson is a founding partner and web strategist at NodeOne – the biggest company in Europe building websites and web applications exclusively using the Drupal content management system. Jakob has a multidisciplinary approach and deep knowledge in usability and web development. When he discovered Drupal six years ago he knew he'd found a powerful platform that was further strengthened by its open source values. He realized that you can do good things and build a strong business on and around those values. Those values include freedom, openness and the idea of sharing openly with customers and competitors in the open source community.

Drupal powers websites such as whitehouse.gov and is one of the most popular content management systems in the world. Today NodeOne has 43 talented employees from all over the world. The company is steadily growing and has offices in Stockholm, Göteborg and Copenhagen.

Become successful by being the good guy

Jakob Persson will tell you how to build a "good" company and make a good living at the same time, by empowering the users on the Internet.

Rahul Barwani joins us as the recent winner of the Global Entrepreneurship Challenge 2010. He prides himself as an entrepreneur of sorts with a strong interest in CleanTech and Product Design. His background is in Mechanical Engineering with a B.S. and M.S. from University of California, Berkeley, but he also has certifications in Management of Technology, Engineering & Business for Sustainability, and Entrepreneurship & Technology. Currently, Rahul is working with two start-ups focused on making alternative energy more accessible to consumers in the U.S.

The importance of public relations

Rahul will be discussing different Public Relation strategies and how to get your company on the map. In a world of so many start-ups, how do you get yours to stand out and succeed?

Riikka Olli works as Head of Business Development at PayPal for Nordics with a special focus on new innovations. Riikka holds a degree in International Business from Helsinki School of Economics but has spent most of her career in business development roles for international Ecommerce in Paris and now in Stockholm.

What’s next in payments

Riikka will co-moderate the PayPal workshop "What’s next in payments"

Orkun Saitoglu is Sales Engineer for PayPal, he works for France, Benelux, Nordics and Turkey. After his computing studies he worked for 3 years as a webmaster where he became familiar with web development and best practices for ecommerce. He is the contact of large merchants and partners for PayPal integration and he is an evangelist for PayPal X Platform.

What’s next in payments

Orkun will co-moderate the PayPal workshop "What’s next in payments"

Corrado Tomassoni coordinates the technology evangelism activities towards the Developers audience across Europe for PayPal as Developer Community Manager for Europe. He is also “Seedcamp” and “Launch48” mentor.

Before joining PayPal, he worked as Software Engineer for several companies, including Accenture, moving then in the “Developer and Platform Evangelism” group at Microsoft where, as Web Lead, he was in charge of the Web Technologies stack adoption evangelism activities with top customers and partners in Italy. More recently he drove a Technology startup on Mobile / Web Digital Brand Management incubated by a Startup Accelerator and funded by a VC. Corrado currently holds a Master in “Business and Corporate Strategy” from SDA Bocconi - School of Management, a BEng in “Computer Engineering” from Polytechnic of Milan and a BMus from a National Conservatory of Music.

What’s next in payments

Corrado will co-moderate the PayPal workshop "What’s next in payments"

Karina Töndevold left her role as Marketing Manager at SSES in 2006 to move overseas. She ended up spending 4 years in London and Amsterdam, working in digital marketing at agencies such as AKQA, helping clients such as Sky and Nike. When she returned to Stockholm, she spent a year in market research before finding herself back in the academic world. She now works on Idea to Product® Global at KTH. Karina holds degrees from both Stockholm School of Economics and Stockholm University.

Pitch your social innovation

Karina will be moderating the session “Pitch your social innovation”.

Stefan Krook co-founded Glocalnet at the age of 24 and was the CEO from 1997-2002. In five years, Stefan had challenged the Swedish telecommunications monopoly, taken the company to the Stockholm Stock Exchange and, at least temporarily, been good for hundreds of millions. Money, however, was never the driver for Stefan, who in 2005 decided to found GoodCause foundation, where he is chairman today. The foundation starts and operates companies that (through the foundation) donates all future dividends to good causes. One such company is GodEl where Stefan is the founder and chairman. The foundation has also started a fund management company, GodFond, that now manages some €80 million for its investors. Stefan is an SSES alumnus from 2002.

Pitch your social innovation

Stefan is on the jury for “Pitch your social innovation”.

Amir Sajadi is the founder and director of Hjärna.Hjärta.Cash., a nationwide organization promoting innovation and entrepreneurship for social change. After a decade in politics, several years as an entrepreneur in the communications industry and as business advisor at Drivhuset and NFC, Amir realized that the combination between social needs and innovation - social innovation - could solve many of the challenges politicians and the society has been struggling with for many years. The organization is now working throughout Sweden to help entrepreneurs finding a curiosity for social challenges and vice versa, getting socially committed people to understand innovation and entrepreneurship as method for change.

Pitch your social innovation

Amir is on the jury for “Pitch your social innovation”.

David Lundborg works as business advisor at SU Innovation with a special focus on service innovations and will assume a key role in the center for social innovation at Stockholm university that is to be launched in May. David holds a degree in macroeconomics from Stockholm School of Economics but has spent most of his career in start-up environments in Stockholm and London.

Pitch your social innovation

David is on the jury for “Pitch your social innovation”.