Main stage speakers
Giovanni Fili
CEO and Founder of Exeger
Key note speaker
Giovanni puts all his professional focus in to Exeger which he founded in 2009 and is the CEO for. Exeger invented and developed a new and unique solar cell technology that converts all light sources to energy that can be directly integrated into consumer products to power them with clean, endless energy. He says it is with great pride that he leads Exeger, who will play a key role in the transition to renewable energy in people’s everyday life.
Asked for a big rolemodel in his career, Giovanni mentions his father as an early inspiration he often draws on. He was in charge of several factories for SKF and managed to head the most profitable factory while being familiar with everyone working there. Giovanni vividly remembers the times he visited his father at work which has made a long-lasting impression on him.
Giovanni loves being at Exeger and working with amazing people everyday. His life is based on a balance between working hard to achieve his goals, spending time with his wife Jeanette and his three awesome kids (Luca, Matteo, and Enzo), and tough physical activities like competing in paddle. When we asked him what he does to unwind his answer was that when he manages to strike the right amount of each, he feels “unwinding” isn’t necessarily needed.
Jessica Schultz
General Partner at Northzone
Jessica is General Partner at Northzone, an early-stage venture capital fund partnering with founders at Seed, Series A and Series B stage. Northzone was founded in 1996 and has to date raised eight funds and invested in more than 130 companies. Jessica has been at Northzone since 2016 and her main focus os DTC and consumer internet. Her portfolio includes NA-KD, Klarna, Einride, Matsmart and Red Points.
Previous to Northzone, Jessica co-founded and was the global CMO of HelloFresh. Jessica holds an MSc in Economic and Business, with a major in Accounting and Financial Management from Stockholm School of Economics.
As for role models within entrepreneurship, Jessica believes that Gunilla von Platen is an amazing entrepreneur and big inspiration.
Johannes Schildt
CEO and Co-founder of Kry
Johannes Schildt is the CEO and co-founder of Kry/Livi, Europe’s largest digital healthcare company. Kry/Livi revolutionize the way people access primary care by combining medical expertise with state-of-the-art technology. Johannes has been named one of the 2018 “30 under 30” in Europe by Forbes Magazine. Kry/Livi has been ranked as one of Wired’s Hottest Start-Ups in Stockholm and recently achieved a unicorn valuation of $2bn following closure of its series D funding round.
Johannes background is in tech, product and entrepreneurship. He founded 4 companies in retail and e-commerce before co-founding Kry. When asked about role models in his career, Johannes says that there are so many bright and ambitious people out there he can’t name only one - but in general he really admires people with big ambitions and the courage and grit to act on them.
Stina Ehrensvärd
CEO & Founder of Yubico
Founded Yubico, and co-created the YubiKey and the FIDO U2F open authentication standard to enable a safer internet for everyone. The company's technology secures access to computers, servers and online services for nine of the top ten internet brands, including Google, Facebook and Salesforce, and is loved by millions of users in 160 countries. Speaker on internet identity, security and entrepreneurship, recognized with numerous international awards, and regularly featured in leading tech media.
Born in Seattle, USA. Grew up in Sweden, and have since 2011 lived in Palo Alto, California with husband and three children.
Klaus Hommels
Founder and Chairman of Lakestar
Klaus Hommels is Founder of Lakestar, who invests in European as well as U.S. companies that show fast international growth. Klaus has been involved in the early days of investments such as Skype, Xing, King, Facebook, Spotify and Airbnb. More recent investments include online men's grooming business Harry's, GoEuro, Opendoor and FiveAI.
He was ranked as one of the top Europe-based venture capital investors in the global Midas List 2013, 2014 and 2015 and just became third best European investor in the first European list of the same ranking.Klaus has a strong voice in the European Tech Ecosystems which he supports passionately with various initiatives, eg. the 'Internet Foundation'.
Heather Farmbrough
Financial Journalist & Editor
Heather Farmbrough is an award-winning freelance journalist and Forbes Senior Correspondent, where she specializes in green startups. As a former investment manager and Junior Markets correspondent for the Financial Times, she’s always had a particular interest in rapidly growing smaller companies.
In the last few years, she has written about several Scandinavian startups, worked as an editorial consultant for Swedish companies and is the English editor of The Bumblebee Nation, The Hidden Story of the New Swedish Model.
David Rowan
Investor, writer & journalist
David Rowan has invested in more than 80 early-stage tech companies, including eight that became billion-dollar “unicorns”, and has built small health-tech and climate-tech funds around the VOYAGERS.io community that he runs. VOYAGERS.io is a not-for-profit community of 600 innovators working to solve health and climate problems.
He is also the author of “Non-Bullshit Innovation: 17 Proven Ways to Transform How You Work” which has been translated to several languages. David was founding editor-in-chief of WIRED's UK edition and is a technology columnist for a number of well renowned media as well as an adviser to Lakestar and Outsized Ventures.
Founders Forum speakers
Maria Swedin
COO of CaCharge
Maria is the COO of CaCharge – a company with the vision of a society where the car is as easily charged as the mobile phone. CaCharge provides services and charging boxes for electric cars and has developed an affordable solution that serves many cars within the existing electrical power capacity of a facility and is minimizing investment in the facility’s power grid. Before joining CaCharge, Maria was Head of New Equipment, Sales in Sweden and Projects in the Stockholm region at Otis AB. Prior to that, she was Head of Fleet management at Bombardier Transportation, being responsible for the train maintenance in the Nordics.
Furthermore, she also holds a MSc in Chemical Engineering from KTH Royal Institute of Technology. As role models within her career, she mentions Sting’s business coach Magnus Rehn.
Ola Lowden Landström
Founder & CEO of Omocom
Ola is the founder and CEO of Omocom, an insurance solution for the circular economy that will rock the foundations of the insurance industry. Omocom was founded with a sole purpose, to create incentives to keep existing resources in use, and is as much about insurance as it is about creating incentives and enabling a more circular economy.
Ola has a law degree from Uppsala University and has eight years’ experience in data flows and digital trade. He has given lectures at universities and organizations such as the UN, WTO and CIFTIS as well as both the EU-parliament, commission and the Swedish Riksdag. Ola has also been appointed expert in several parliamentary committees.
As his role model, Ola mentioned Socrates. “His thesis that “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” has always been my guiding principle as CEO and founder.
Elsa Bernadotte
Co-founder, COO/CPO at Karma
Elsa founded her first venture back in 2013, Pop Fruits, which offered a healthy substitute to ice cream: frozen fruit on a stick. She sold that company in 2015 to one of our European distribution partners and soon after founded Karma in 2016. As the ultimately responsible for Product at Karma, she’s started learning to code and in order to both keep her own motivation as well as encourage other late bloomers like herself to get going, she’s put together a coding group, where they do coding challenges together in their spare time. Elsa is also about to join the board of CB Save Earth Fund which invests in companies active within cleantech, renewable energy and water management.
As for role models in her career, she mentions her parents. “I watched them closely while growing up as they worked relentlessly starting up their own businesses. It showed me both the hard work behind starting your own company, but equally the joy and freedom it can give for yourself and your entire family once it starts to take off.”
Julian Lee
Founder & CEO of Airmee
Julian is the CEO and founder of Airmee, a logistics technological platform with the vision of optimizing every transport in every city in the world. Airmee has a strong focus on sustainability, and they believe that convenience and sustainability aren’t mutually exclusive, but the future. They focus on that by expanding their fleet with carbon free vehicles and climate compensating, in addition to the optimization of the fleet with our technology.
Julian also holds an MBA from Stockholm School of Economics, and before founding Airmee in 2016, he has had roles such as business consultant, business manager and commercial director in various tech companies.
When asking about his role models, he replies that he doesn’t have one, but instead he tries to learn bits and pieces from everyone he meets.
Rosie Linder
CPO & Chairman at Peppy Pals
Rosie is the CPO of Peppy Pals, a company with an ambition to equip, strengthen and nurture children’s social and emotional intelligence. As the CPO of Peppy Pals, Rosie leads the creation of their products. In her work, she often tries to wear the hat of their customers to make sure they add more value than the customer expects. The past four years she’s also been a Board Member of BRIS.
As for her role model within entrepreneurship and in her career, Rosie says “Brené Brown is probably my greatest female role model. I admire her leadership style built on respect and empathy. To realize the fact that entrepreneurship is not a one man show. That our success is built on the efforts of people in our team. Once you realize that, you´ll try to find the potential in people and develop that potential instead of giving people roles and titles that they are not passionate about.”
Alexander Hjertström
CEO and co-founder of Airinum
Alexander is the CEO and co-founder of Airinum, a Swedish healthtech company tackling the climate change’s influence on global health by empowering people with innovative products to live healthier lives. Alexander has previously worked as Global Venture Developer at Kinnevik owned Rocket Internet, Venture Developer at Kinnevik owned Millicom and as management consultant at A.T. Kearney.
Alexander holds a BSc in Management & Financial Accounting and MSc in Management from Stockholm School of Economics.
Asking about his role models within entrepreneurship, he replies “There wasn't one single person who has inspired me but a bunch of people: my mentor, my old classmates who started their own business, my old teacher in the entrepreneurship course and family. Then reading about Elon Musk changing the world doesn't take away from the commitment to choose an entrepreneurial path ;)”
Sara Rywe
Investor at byFounders
Sara is an investor at byFounders (New Nordic early-stage VC) where she oversees their investments in Scandinavia. An entrepreneur at heart, she embarked on her first venture as a 17-year-old and has since then been supporting young entrepreneurs across a range of initiatives. She has also worked as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company and led the global strategy implementation at Danske Bank.
She holds an MBA from INSEAD and Wharton Business School, and a Bachelor in Business & Economics from Stockholm School of Economics. Sara is also working closely with several of byFounder’s portfolio companies, such as Normative, Greenely, and BonBot in Sweden. Proper and Corti in DK, as well as Qvin & Digitail in the US.
As for role models in her career, Sara directly mentions Pippi Långstrump and her quote: “I have never tried that before, so I think I should definitely be able to do that.”
Jimmy Hanna
Co-founder & CEO at Fairlo
Serial entrepreneur with insatiable passion for creating sustainable financial services. Founded his first fintech in 2007 at the age 24 using a proprietary software to democratize asset management and within a few years became a major disruptor in the Swedish pension system. He then went on to combine his obsession for a value-driven organisation with cutting edge technology and, together with his brother, founded Fairlo - a fintech startup outsmarting the predatory credit market. Fairlo is in the forefront of transparent and fair lending services, giving people the opportunity to solve temporary cash flow needs in a safe and sustainable way.
When we asked Jimmy about role models, he says that “I’m bad at having a role model, guess it’s too culty for me. I believe I’m made up of a mix of learnings from every person I have engaged with in person or read/heard about.”
Maja Magnusson
COO & Co-Founder of Care to Translate
Maja is the COO and Co-Founder of healthtech company Care to Translate, which solves language barriers between patients and healthcare staff. Care to Translate is a digital medical translator for everyone who needs to communicate in healthcare. Talk to your doctor, no matter the language.
Maja is passionate about tech, innovation and building beautiful companies inside and out. When asked about role models she answers “I can’t specify one particular person. I get inspired by many different people and journeys. Especially inspiring are people who manage to build companies with a healthy and transparent company culture.”
Jyri Engeström
Partner & Co-founder at Yes VC
Jyri Engeström has previously co-founded and sold two companies: Jaiku, a mobile social network acquired by Google; and Ditto, a local recommendations app acquired by Groupon.
Jyri is currently an early-stage investor at Yes VC, based in San Francisco. They invest in the pre-seed and seed stages of companies connected with cultural movements. Jyri is an early investor in Unity, Dapper Labs and many other companies. Prior to co-founding Yes VC he was on the investing team at True Ventures.
Einar Braathen
Investor at Accel
Einar Braathen joined Accel in 2020 and focuses on software, fintech, and the Nordics.
Prior to Accel, Einar spent time at General Catalyst, Boston Seed, and Mosaic Ventures. He started his career working in the Private Equity Group of Bain & Company.Einar is from Oslo, Norway and graduated from the University of St. Gallen and London Business School
