Oscar Höglund is the CEO and Co-Founder of Epidemic, the global technology company disrupting the music industry. As the second-fastest growing technology company in Sweden according to the Financial Times, Epidemic is on a mission to Soundtrack the World.
Oscar has a background in television production and management consultancy. He was a part of the management team for Zodiak Television, which has produced popular shows such as The Inbetweeners and Wife Swap. Oscar also worked at The Boston Consulting Group.
Elsa is the Co-Founder and COO of Karma. Elsa is passionate about creating a motivated high-growth organisation to galvanise the first zero food waste generation. Karma now has 60 employees globally, who have the collective goal to lead the way to a truly circular economy and ultimately solve global food waste.
Prior to founding Karma, Elsa, a serial entrepreneur, founded Pop Fruits a healthy ice-cream alternative where she spearheaded operations in four markets. Elsa sold the company and soon thereafter founded Karma. Elsa has featured on the Forbes ’30 under 30’ list, Business Weekly’s “Most Powerful Business Woman in Sweden 2019”, Ledarna’s ‘Top 75 Female Leaders in Sweden 2018’ and Dagens Industri’s ’40 hottest serial entrepreneurs under 40’.
A Swedish native, Elsa moved to London in 2019 in order to launch Karma in the UK. Karma’s London office has grown to 13 employees in three short months.
In the course of her numerious commercial and general management positions in Western and South-Eastern Europe, industry expert Marie-Helene has gained sound experience in the Telecom Industry as well as in the Oil and Gas Business.
Magnus Nilsson is a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of iZettle, a fintech company headquartered in Sweden and named by The Financial Times as one of Europe’s most innovative and fastest growing companies.
Magnus currently serves as the Executive Chairman of the board at iZettle. Under his and his co-founder Jacob de Geer’s joint leadership, iZettle expanded into 12 markets to become the leading small business commerce platform in Europe and Latin America. In May 2018, iZettle was acquired by PayPal for $2,2 bn, giving it access to millions of merchant relationships around the world.
Kina Zeidler is a Swedish business journalist and author.
In her first book, "Det svenska techundret"/"The Swedish tech tycoons", she tries to find out why Sweden – a country with a population of 10 million – has become such a unicorn factory. What are the underlying factors of the unique digital progress seen in Sweden in the last 20 years? Who are the people behind the greatest Swedish tech company successes, what drives them, and what are their recipes for success?
Through unique interviews with the Swedish unicorn founders, investors and family members, Kina Zeidler investigates what turned tiny Sweden into a digital super power. She also tries to find out the common denominators and drivers of the unicorn entrepreneurs.
Seth Pierrepont joined Accel in 2013 and focuses on enterprise software, cybersecurity, and fintech.Seth helped lead Accel’s investments and ongoing work in Kry, PillPack (acquired by Amazon), WorldRemit, Soldo, Anyfin, Snyk, Shift Technology, CallSign, Carwow, and FRVR.Prior to Accel, Seth invested in European companies with Vision Capital. He previously advised technology and media companies on strategy with Oliver Wyman in San Francisco.Seth is from Chicago, IL and attended Dartmouth.
Jessica is a Partner at Northzone, the VC fund backing the entrepreneurs building Europe's game-changing companies, including Spotify, iZettle, Klarna and Trustpilot. Jessica has a strong interest in e-commerce and consumer internet, and has invested in companies like Matsmart, Red Points, Na-Kd and Klarna. Prior to Northzone, Jessica co-founded and was CMO of global recipe-kit delivery service HelloFresh.
Louise is a partner at Blossom Capital, a new European VC fund built to move as fast and the businesses it funds, leading series A rounds in startups all across Europe. Portfolio companies include Duffel, Frontify, Fat Llama, Sqreen and Checkout.com.
Before Blossom, Louise worked at Klarna, a leading European fintech startup, where she led technical sales and product development, as well as Norrsken foundation, a not-profit investment vehicle and startup hub, where she started the investment practice. Louise has also been an active angel investor investing in companies like Pleo, Anyfin, Stravito etc.
Few have had a closer inside look to the rise of the Nordic startup ecosystem than Staffan Helgesson. Staffan has been in the venture industry for 15 years and brings significant company building experience from the many ventures he has been associated with.
He also has extensive international management experience from McKinsey & Company, Procter & Gamble and IKEA, in Europe, the US and Asia. Staffan was previously founder and Managing Partner of Startupfactory (first investor focused on mobile internet) and started Creandum in 2003. At Creandum Staffan has worked with investments in all of Creandum’s focus areas but have a particular interest in enterprise products and services, applications built on the blockchain and other innovations capable of disrupting existing industries. He has specific domain expertise in marketing and sales management. Staffan has spent significant time in the US and is also a Kauffman Fellow. He was also invited and participated in the first ever international Kauffman Fellows class in 2005.
Sara Bjelkstam has since her studies at the Stockholm School of Economics worked in a number of entrepreneurial technology companies. Most recently, Sara was the COO at Fishbrain and before that, she was CMO for the digital mailbox Kivra. Nowadays, Sara runs her own company where she supports start-ups on issues such as how to build a successful team, ways to maintain and attract talent, and how to proactively work to build a corporate culture that enables innovation and rapid growth to achieve business goals.
