Inside Looking Out special Nordic Edition of GS-insight · PDF fileof our magazine, we...

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In this issue

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p e o p l e • t e c h n o l o g y • b u s i n e s s

During this time we have seen huge change as the region has moved from being a relatively isolated

geographical player to centre stage in Europe. We have seen the investor mix move from only local VCs to both European and US investors coming in at B, some A and now even seed level funding. The expectation is for $1.5bn of funding to be raised in the Nordics in 2015, which compares with a likely $2bn for London. This reflects the hugely diverse, disruptive and innovative propo-sitions that the region has to offer.

For us, this has continued to expand and now includes the Baltic States, mainly Estonia, but we are now building our activity in Latvia and Lithuania. We have partnered with Europe Unlimited and the Nordic Venture Forum for over six years and this growth has been reflected in terms of the breadth and quality of the presenting companies and the truly international array of investors.

I feel our recent project with Indoor Atlas sums up the buzz and opportunity of the region. This Oulu based company has created an indoor location solution that uses the magnetic field footprint of a building and the compass in a smartphone to give high accuracy indoor location data. We were asked to find a Chief Commercial Officer in the US and the Board wanted a ‘rock-star’ - always a challenging brief, not least because we’re talking about an early stage and pre-revenue company. But through our search process in the US, we found that ‘rock-star’ in Dan Patton, who had already taken AWS to $1bn revenues! Despite Dan having a number of local opportunities in the US, he took the decision to join this exciting company as it has the potential to change the world.

But, this is just one example and only our perspective. In this dedicated issue of our magazine, we interview a cross section of the Nordic community and let you hear their views of what has made the region so great!

Welcome to our special Nordic Edition of GS-insightGillamor Stephens Executive Search was founded in 1998 and for the last ten years we have been working with early (and later) stage Nordic companies.

2 Inside Looking Out We have views from Northzone,

Creandum, TeliaSonera and Conor Ventures

5 The Chairman’s View Tim Weller, Trust Pilot

6 Going Places Patrik Fagerlund, CEO, Widespace talks about growth

7 Outside Looking In We have views from Draper Esprit and

Accel on investing in the Nordics

9 International Insight Charley Polachi, Partner

Polachi and Access Search Partners

10 A Mobile Insight Julien Codorniou, Head

of Global Partnerships, Facebook and the move to mobile

12 They Will Come Paul Gillespie, Gillamor

Stephens and hiring the best talent.

I would welcome your views and feedback, Paul Gillespie, Partner, Gillamor Stephens Executive Search [email protected]

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Inside Looking Out We spoke to four of the key investors in the Nordic regionBjørn Stray, General Partner, Co-Founder at Northzone, Manu Mäkelä, Co-Founder and Partner at Conor Ventures, Nils Granath, Head of Investments at TeliaSonera andDaniel Blomquist, Partner at Creandum

Where do you think we are in the lifecycle of Nordic Venture?

Bjørn: We believe that we are still in the early stages with a lot more room to grow. The success of several Nordic companies will further accelerate a development where more people, teams, support network and finance will leverage experience.

Nils: It’s still in the investment phase. The leading VCs are busy deploying their recently raised new funds. Also larger late-stage funds are currently being raised to take the successful companies to the next level globally.

Manu: It’s in a strong position with the US and UK investors working a lot of deals here. I would say it’s becoming an important market for them. The entrepreneurial spirit has increased a lot - everyone is looking to create their own start-up.

Daniel: I would say until the late 90s, there wasn’t widely distributed entrepreneurialism in the Nordics, but now it’s everywhere, which has led to a big increase in start-ups. I think Skype had a lot to do with the shift, being the first really globally successful start-up out of the region that people could relate to. We’re still in the start-up phase, but it’s

developing and getting stronger on a yearly basis.

Has something changed to generate this success?Nils: I think the success has been largely due to the fact that role models like Daniel Ek (Spotify) and Niklas Zennstrom (Skype) have fostered a fearless global conquest mentality.

Manu: The ecosystem here, in general, has grown up and improved a lot. For a start there are more knowledgeable VCs, and the teams are much stronger than in the past, which has led to more experience in the market. On top of that, companies are setting out with a robust global mind-set, which creates interest from the international VCs.

Bjørn: The Nordics have always been internationally oriented economies, with the world as its target market. Large innovative companies across many industries have been created in the region for ages. The Nordics have produced winners within the internet and technology space since the nineties, and now have a reputation for being a place where it is possible for local and international VCs to make attractive returns. This has made it into a kind of comfort zone for investors.

Daniel: The Nordics has for a long time been very international and the region is also very early to adopt new trends and technology.

Bjørn Stray, General Partner, Co-Founder at Northzone

“The Nordics have produced winners within the internet and technology space since the nineties.”Bjørn Stray, General Partner, Co-Founder at Northzone

Inside Looking Out

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Inside Looking Out

The real change has been in the number of successful role models such as Skype, Spotify, Klarna, King and others that have led to the top talent today looking to build a start-up instead of joining a consultancy firm and or an investment bank.

What is your own sector focus now? Manu: B2B software is the main area of focus for Conor, so we look for different types of cloud services and other enterprise software companies. But we are also looking at core technology companies. We are one of the few in Europe who are still engaged in deep-tech, working alongside companies such as TactoTek (3D electronics) and Scint-X (x-ray scintillators).

Bjørn: Northzone still takes an interest in technology. However we tend to demand more at the development stage than we are willing to within online opportunities. We look to invest in early-stage, A-round companies, as well as B, C and even pre-IPO rounds.

Nils: Telia and Sonera were already both very active venture investors back in the 1990s. The activity has been picking up again since 2013 and in 2015 we have made four new investments so far. We focus on building a commercial partnership with our investees first, and then invest to strengthen the partnership and develop joint products. The long cycles in core technology, combined with being capital intense, and having a limited number of potential acquirers, make us very selective about those investment opportunities.

Daniel: Creandum is a pretty classical Silicon Valley style early stage venture capital firm. The focus is primarily on Consumer and Software-related companies from the Nordics but the fund has made investments in the UK, US and Germany as well. Our ambition is to find the top entrepreneurs at an early stage and help them build global category leaders in their respective sectors.

What comes after local market commercial traction? And how have your portfolios executed?Daniel: What’s common for many of Creandum’s portfolio companies and, I guess, most of the more

ambitious entrepreneurs from a small market, is that pretty much from the get-go you’re targeting an international market. So, of course, that’s a challenge. You’re a small company, maybe 20 to 50 people, and then you’re setting up an office up to nine or ten hours away, which puts a lot of constraint on how you can scale. We try to help companies with this because we’ve experienced it ourselves, and through many of Creandum’s successful portfolio companies like Spotify, Vivino, Neo Technology and Tictail.

Bjørn: Our portfolio has performed really well as a result of being part of some of the largest successes

Daniel Blomquist, Partner at Creandum

Manu Mäkelä, Co-Founder and Partner at Conor Ventures

“B2B software is the main area of focus for Conor, so we look for different types of cloud services and other enterprise software companies”Manu Mäkelä, Co-Founder and Partner at Conor Ventures

“Our ambition is to find the top entrepreneurs at an early stage and help them build global category leaders in their respective sectors.”Daniel Blomquist, Partner at Creandum


- Spotify, Klarna and Avito to name just three. We expect to see several exits in the short to medium term.

Nils: Initially we want to roll out across our local markets in the Nordics and Baltics, which will scale up and prove the business model of the portfolio company. Further expansion depends on the market and product fit. We’ll also be continuing to work closely with other global operators to actively promote our portfolio companies to them. It’s very challenging for Europe based companies to build a successful US presence without local investor and management on board, but companies should aim to establish a presence there in spite of the difficulties.

Manu: I think the key for us is to go global early and be where the main customers and markets are. In many cases this is the US and in some cases Asia. We want to help our companies to grow international markets very early on. In some cases even their pilot customers are in the US.

What next for you, your portfolio and the region?Bjørn: We will continue to look for opportunities in the Nordics as well as across Europe, and we are excited about the times ahead. The split will be determined by where we see greatest potential, but we believe investments coming out of the Nordics will remain significant in our portfolio.

Nils: The aim is to build larger companies poised for long-term growth and job creation, rather than target a quick exit to a US acquirer. Hopefully a new generation of Ericsson, etc. will come along. It is also crucial that the local champions learn

to work with the entrepreneurial ecosystem and join in investing and acquiring local growth businesses.

Manu: We continue to see strong deal flow from the region. Of course, the valuations are a little high so we need to be prudent, but we are actively looking at companies both in Finland and Sweden, as well as Denmark and the Baltics. We are working on several exit opportunities as well.

Daniel: We’ll continue to primarily focus on the Nordics and Nordic-related companies but we’ll also be

looking at opportunities in other geographies in verticals that we know well. For the Nordic region, I think we’ll see a continued focus on the US in the short-term where many companies are going straight to the US instead of focusing on expanding to the UK or other European markets.

Who should we be watching?Nils: We really like “Soundtrack Your Brand”, they are the only provider of Spotify Business to leading brands such as Starbucks and Mcdonald’s globally.

Manu: There are several interesting players to look out for. I think Neo is a category leader in graphical databases, which is an interesting and very rapidly growing market. Blackwood Seven, as a newcomer, is very interesting as well as Verto Analytics and Zervant.

Daniel: Out of Sweden, I’d pick Truecaller – they’ve done an amazing job in building a consumer service, which is loved by hundreds of millions of people around the Middle East and in Asia. Another one is Tictail which has more than 100,000 eCommerce stores on its platform. There are very interesting companies in Denmark, too, such as Tradeshift, which is an e-invoicing platform, and Vivino, the world’s most used wine app.

Nils Granath, Head of Investments at TeliaSonera

Inside Looking Out

“The aim is to build larger companies poised for long-term growth and job creation, rather than target a quick exit to a US acquirer.”Nils Granath, Head of Investments at TeliaSonera

“We will continue to look for opportunities in the Nordics as well as across Europe”Bjørn Stray, General Partner, Co-Founder at Northzone


The Chairman’s View We spoke to Tim Weller the Chairman of TrustpilotTim joined the Board of Trustpilot in 2013. He is also the Founder and Executive Chairman of Incisive Media, a leading B2B information and events company which serves the financial and professional services markets globally.

A bout Trustpilot Trustpilot is an online review community aiming to set

new global standards in consumer to business dialogue by enabling businesses to engage directly with customers. Currently boasting more than 14 million consumer reviews of 115,000 businesses, Trustpilot produces a TrustScore for businesses based on recent reviews. Trustpilot’s community is live in 27 countries and more than 10,000 consumers sign up to Trustpilot every day.

What was the Trustpilot proposition and state of the business when you joined? When I joined, the proposition of building trust between consumers and businesses was tried and tested in its local market of Denmark and the business displayed great renewal metrics. Businesses embraced the idea of getting insight from customer review data and in turn, improving their business operations and customer satisfaction. Working from the Copenhagen office, the sales teams had also begun to see real momentum in the UK and other European markets. I could see a great potential here.

What made you decide to join? In short it was the Founder and CEO, Peter Mühlmann. He had a clear vision of how to help both consumers and businesses. There was a wonderful energy about him and he was totally transparent. I immediately liked him and thought there was a great chemistry with him and the investor group. The quality of the investor group was also a major plus as SEED, Northzone and Index could all see the potential in the business.

Tell us about your journey at Trustpilot? It has been a fantastic couple of years. The business has grown from a single office in Copenhagen employing 110 people to now having additional operations in New York, London, Melbourne and Berlin. We now have 500 employees representing 40 different nationalities and revenues have grown three-fold. We are the leading player across a number of markets with business customers in 65 countries, and there is still so much more to play for. Every month, half a million new reviews are posted on Trustpilot. We have built an excellent platform from which to successfully execute the strategy and we have the financial muscle to do so.

How do you and Peter complement each other? First there is trust between us. Peter runs the business and he is its guiding light. I help him with strategy and developing the big picture. I am there more as a mentor and coach; someone who offers support and advice given my experience of founding and building Incisive Media. Invariably, Peter answers his own questions, my job is to listen and guide. It is also great fun which is important for both of us.

What have you done right? Besides being a coach and helping the team identify issues that matter, I am most pleased with how I helped complete the recent $73.5m Series D investment from Vitruvian Partners with all of the existing investors following. The series D funding brought total investments in the company to $118 million, which is a reflection of the opportunity. I really believe we have a clear strategy in place for the business

and that the team is up to the task of executing that strategy. I believe I have led the board through experience and persuasion as well as helping to facilitate the good decisions of others.

What could you have done in hindsight? I could have been more of a support in the recruitment of some C level executives when I first joined. I think I could have helped the team if I had been part of the selection process.

What next for the business? Right now we are expanding a lot in the US, which is key to our growth plans. Adding a second office floor in New York has enabled us to double our staff there to almost 200. We have strong momentum in the major markets across the globe, a proven business model with fabulous recurring revenues and a viral distribution model that fuels cash-efficient hyper growth. All of which give me the confidence that Trustpilot will become a billion dollar company.

Are there any significant differences working on a Nordic board compared to a British Board? No, not at all. Maybe the sense of humour? My wife is half Danish so I get it!

What is your general view of the Nordic venture scene? The venture scene and especially the calibre of entrepreneurs is extraordinary. This is underlined by the number of Unicorn companies that have been started in the Nordics including Skype, Spotify, King, Avito, Klarna and Mojang.

The Chairman’s View


Going Places We spoke to Patrik Fagerlund, CEO of Widespace who are driving the next generation of mobile advertising

Who are Widespace?Widespace is a brand mobile advertising

company. We focus 100% on mobile and 100% on brand advertising. Our idea is to provide the end users with a perfect experience and advertisers with engaged users in a very brand safe environment. We deliver the world’s most engaging mobile advertising using machine learning and predictive technology, that’s our uniqueness and nobody beats us on this.

What are the biggest challenges for your business? I think the biggest challenge, when it comes to mobile advertising, is that it’s been cluttered with a lot of bad, crappy advertising that people get annoyed about. It doesn’t generate a positive feeling. The recent ad blocker discussion is testament to this. What we try to do is to take care of the end user, and make the end user happy. Then, if we do that, by sending them relevant advertising, we know that the brands will get what they need. I think there has been a lack of care for the end user and that’s been a problem.

What would you say you have done right as a business? We have dared to make big bets. We saw the company from the beginning as an international company. We wanted to go international from the start and address more markets than just Sweden or Scandinavia. We needed to be in the international camp. I think us having that idea from the beginning, and never making a

smaller bet, I think us having that idea from the beginning, and never making a smaller bet, made a big difference for the company.

You closed funding in 2012 from Northzone and Industrifonden. Is that when the company started to take off? I would say from the small levels we were at, let’s say in 2010, it then started to take off as the market began to mature in Scandinavia. With only friends and family money, we went into the other Nordic countries and that went extremely well. But in order to get into the larger European markets, we needed to make bigger bets, and then it really helped having VCs like Northzone and Industrifonden backing our proposition.

What would you do differently? I would have loved to have had VC funding earlier, but we didn’t manage to achieve that. Maybe we should have tried to do the pitch a little bit differently? In

addition, of course, when you scale the business, there are certain decisions you need to make during that time. Some of those decisions could probably have been made a little bit earlier; such as how to create the leadership structure that you need as you grow. Not only in the headquarters structure, but also in the regional markets.

What advice could you give to new start-ups? I’m always impressed by anybody that’s trying to create and build something. What advice should I give? I think you should go after the opportunities. Do not be afraid of changing or adapting your idea so that it actually fits the market needs. And yes, be stubborn, but listen to what the market says and to the feedback.

What’s next for Whitespace? Next for Widespace is to be undisputed leader for brand mobile advertising in Europe! To be considered as a company that brings a lot of extra value to their clients, but also doing something good for all mobile users.

What about the US and Asia? Ultimately, we want to be the global leader in this field, so we will need to set up our business in the US, probably in New York, but we will need more funding in order to do that. Silicon Valley? Regardless of your proposition, so much is happening in Silicon Valley, you just want and need to be there. I would like to have some kind of presence there.

Going Places


Outside Looking In We spoke to two leading European VCs that invest in the Nordics for their views of the region Simon Cook, CEO of Draper Esprit and Seth Pierrepont, Investor at Accel.

How interesting are the Nordics as a region for you, and what drives

that interest?Simon: Draper Esprit focuses on western and northern Europe. We see the Nordics being on a par with just UK & Germany in terms of an area of opportunity for us. They’ve had a great run of exits and notable successes.

I’m a former games coder, so I know the region and gaming sector well. Europe had 70-80% share of this market in the ‘90s before the Americans moved in with big Xbox Hollywood production values. Then there was a shift to mobile gaming and the Europeans, particularly the Nordics, regained the upper hand because they’ve always had the talent to write amazing playable code – Nordic style is always clean and succinct.

So, when we invest in a company in games or any market, we look for the guy with the product vision, who understands what the customer wants and how to deliver it. If you have somebody with a product vision to put across the solution, in the most efficient and elegant way, you will win because you can buy all the other execution skills.Seth: We think the Nordics, and Sweden in particular, is one of the few micro-versions of Silicon Valley in Europe, thanks to a mind-set and location that allows companies to grow quickly. One of the key drivers in recent years has been the previous generation of successful entrepreneurs moving into the role of great mentors, role models and angel investors for the newest generation of start-ups and founders. The Nordics tend to produce great leaders, and we’ve seen this with companies like Spotify, which has created a great “outside looking in” company culture, and Avito, whose founders have promoted young people working for them, showing the importance of having fun, working hard and taking risks.

How many investments do you have in the Nordics?Simon: We’ve invested in companies like Trustpilot, M-Files, Bitbar, and CRF and we are looking at opportunities in digital health, enterprise software and electronics. Seth: Our first Nordic investment was in a business intelligence software

company called QlikTech from the Malmö/Lund part of Sweden which was also our first billion-dollar-plus exit in Europe. Subsequently, we’ve backed a number of fantastic companies, including ForgeRock, Spotify, Supercell Avito, KnC, and Rovio.

At what stage would you look to invest in?Simon: We tend to focus on the capital required to get you from Helsinki, Stockholm or Copenhagen into the US market, because that’s where you probably need to be. Once you’ve broken that market, you can raise significant further capital because you’ve de-risked the business from a US investor point of view. In the very early stage we prefer to work with local partners, and that’s because as a syndicate we can write the B-round cheque faster and

Simon Cook, CEO of Draper Esprit

“When we invest in a company in games or any market, we look for the guy with the product vision, who understands what the customer wants and how to deliver it.”Simon Cook, CEO of Draper Esprit

Outside Looking In


more knowledgeably. We can help the company accelerate without having to go and spend a lot of time in America answering questions like, “Where is Helsinki?” because that does still happen!Seth: Our average investment size is anywhere between $500,000 and $50 million, and we do both earlier and later-stage deals opportunistically. We typically like to be the first or second institutional investor in a company.

What do you think is the key for Nordic companies to be successful in conquering the world?Simon: We look for teams that think globally - a team that is too focused on its home market isn’t going to be a global winner. The most perfect example of expansion out of the Nordics into the global market is Skype, where Tim Draper was on the board and Draper Associates was a seed investor. Because its management team was thinking globally from day one, they were able to move the company into London from the Nordics and then out into the rest of the world.And again, I can’t stress enough that the most important thing we look for is product vision in a company. When you have great design inherent in your region, that’s where it should stay.

Seth: We know that one of the great things about Nordic entrepreneurs is that they think globally from the outset. Moreover, they’ve been witness to a great number of success stories in their region, which fosters an “I can do this too” mentality. And, as I’ve already mentioned, successful entrepreneurs are very good at giving back to the ecosystem. You see that not only in how they invest, but in how they support local conferences and businesses. For example, if you look at the speaker list from Stockholm Tech Fest in September, you had Daniel Ek from Spotify and Jacob de Geer from iZettle on the stage telling their story - which is great.

Is there anything you will do differently in the future?Simon: From a Draper Esprit perspective, we probably haven’t done as much consumer tech investing in the region as we should, so we are going to be working harder on that alongside our enterprise and hardware deals. We have people on the ground in the region on a regular basis, and that will continue. We are going to be hiring more people next year

and pushing more of them into that region. Seth: It’s still a relatively young ecosystem and these things take a while to develop. I think you have a lot of the right initiatives from the government providing funding to early stage companies, to a proliferation of accelerators. It’s this connective tissue that helps young companies get to that first proof point, which in turn attracts institutional capital to help them grow to the next level. That’s a very positive trend and something that will create more opportunities for global companies to come out of the region.

Finally, what do you think is the future for the Nordic region? Are there any potential unicorns on the horizon?Simon: No one region has something that gives them the ultimate right on a long-term basis to be the centre of technology, but there are many interesting areas in the Nordics. As we go forward, engineering and design efficiency is more important than brute force. The inherent proficient design skills of the Nordics will come to the fore, ultimately playing out. Maybe the real reason for the Nordic success is the Throne of Denmark, which is actually made from unicorn horns so they have a long tradition of unicorns in their history! There will be many more.Seth: Well, I would certainly add all of our Nordic portfolio companies to the list of rising stars! Most are unicorns already but there is still a lot of value creation ahead for them.

Outside Looking In

Seth Pierrepont, Investor at Accel

“We know that one of the great things about Nordic entrepreneurs is that they think globally from the outset.” Seth Pierrepont, Investor at Accel


View from across the AtlanticCharley Polachi, Principal of Gillamor Stephens’ US based partner company, Polachi, provides insight into the US tech sector

Just over fifteen years ago, March 27, 2000 to be specific, the NASDAQ crossed 5000. It

just did it again on March 2, 2015! This time, however, it’s different. The fundamentals have shifted and we’re dealing with real companies with real revenue, earnings and solid balance sheets. Sure we have a few notable “unicorns” - the trendy term coined for the few lucky firms seeing valua-tions and/or exits in excess of $1B - but the vast majority of companies are very real. The Bay Area is white hot right now with the demand for talent off the charts. CFOs with public or IPO experience, in particular, are in high demand. Their “shelf life” as a candidate on our searches is brief, measured in a few weeks. It’s best advised that if you get a good one engaged, you need to go for the close. If clients wait to see “what else is in the pipeline” the good ones are likely gone. Boston continues to see strong growth with startup companies in life sciences, robotics, mobile applications and SaaS industries that are attracting and hiring a solid amount of young talent from the academic ecosystem. The Center for Innovation and Collaboration (aka Cambridge Innovation Center) has over 600 startups at their facilities located in both Boston and Cambridge. We see a great number of well-run companies in the $50M+ size who are eyeing exits through either an IPO or sale. Microsoft, Google, eBay, Yahoo, Amazon and a host of other large west coast headquartered companies have

either opened R&D centers or done acquisitions (“acqui-hires”), to obtain the engineering, design and marketing talent available locally. New York sees continued growth in financial and advertising technology, big data, payment systems and enterprise software. The startup community is quite robust - Silicon Alley 2.0 is real – you can get cost effective space and employees who will take the train in from the boroughs. The guy in jeans sitting next to the guy in the Armani suit is probably on his second startup and easily a millionaire working on getting to his first $100M. We are now witnessing an emergence of the CMO holding a critically important role at companies of all stages. Whether it’s a “growth hacking” startup or a public company working on continued brand development, the demand for experienced marketing executives is high. Areas of growth continue to be AaaS – Anything as a Service. We’ve all seen SaaS – Software as

a Service, but we are also seeing almost everything being in the cloud as a service with recurring revenue models. We are also seeing the emergence of the “free agent” model for execu-tives. Just like professional athletes, tech executives are playing the market and offering their services to the highest bidder with lucrative employment agreements. Boards of directors are being challenged to be fully engaged on behalf of shareholders, not just rubber stamping the CEO’s requests.More and more often, Board members are being monitored for their attendance and active participation in the management of the company. Boards are also being challenged to be more diverse and truly reflective of the world we live in today. 2020 Women on Boards, a leader in the movement for gender equality in business, is making great strides to achieve their goal of 20% women on public boards by the year 2020. Check them out at www.2020wob.com. Traditional definitions of executive roles are changing with CFOs becoming more operational and CHROs becoming strategic partners to the company on talent acquisition and development. Another example is the emergence of the CISO, a role that didn’t exist 10 years ago, which focuses on information security. And finally, CEOs are being recast as more than just visionaries but brand stewards, globally focused and ready to manage the millennial workforce as it emerges over the next 10 years.

Sound Byte


Mobile Insight

Facebook’s App Economy Julien Codorniou talks about Facebook’s growth in mobile and shares his perspectives on the app ecosystem

Alot has been written about Facebook’s shift to mobile in recent years.

Can you tell us more about where you and your team fit into that? I manage the global platform partnerships team. That’s the team that works with developers, the people and companies who are building apps on the Facebook platform. We manage that ecosystem, and our focus is to grow the ecosystem and drive adoption of the platform from London to Tel Aviv through Russia, Singapore, Silicon Valley and beyond. We work with small companies on their way to becoming billion-dollar companies, and also big companies

that are shifting to mobile. We try to give them the best possible support. We’ve pivoted to mobile, so we like to think that we can help our partners go through that transition as well. King.com is a great example. The company was started 12 years ago, and even up to four years ago it was a company just doing skill games on King.com and on some other internet portals. They weren’t on mobile, they weren’t on Facebook. Once they’d made the decision to monetise these games on different platforms, they became the number one grossing app on Facebook, iOS and Android – in a mere three years.That’s the great thing about the Facebook platform. It can make you big on Facebook, obviously, but also

on mobile. Because King.com was number one on Facebook, almost immediately they became number one on mobile.

How does the Facebook platform differ from the Google, Microsoft, and Apple platforms? Facebook is the only cross-platform platform. Apple will make you big on iOS; Google will make you big maybe on the web and also on Android. But, Facebook is a company that will make you big on Facebook, on the web, on iOS, on Android, on Windows Phone. We want our developers to be successful everywhere there are users. Facebook has 1.3 billion active users a month, most of them


on mobile. If you want to grow fast on the web and on mobile, that’s an interesting place to start! We also don’t compete with our developer partners. We don’t do Facebook music, but we do work with Spotify and others to help bring them onto the Facebook platform and create a great music experience. We also don’t do games or e-commerce. It’s a strategic decision that enables us to work with everybody.

How do you manage the developer community? We believe and we hope that the platform is self-service, so that anybody can come and develop an app and use Facebook to build, grow and monetise their application. Usually we know these companies or their VCs or their engineers. We run developer events almost every day in every country. We also do a roadshow every six months, travelling around Russia, Israel, France, Germany, Spain, UK, and the Nordics. What defines a platform company like Facebook is that we do well when our partners do well. It’s important for us to manage the big partners, but we are also constantly trying to identify and engage with our next generation of partners.Who is going to be the Blablacar or the Skyscanner of tomorrow? We spend a lot of time with the start-up communities everywhere in Europe.

What trends do you see in the developer community in EMEA?We clearly see the rise of the superstart-ups - a new generation of companies in Europe. 95% of their people are technical, and the business is built to be “mobile first” or sometimes mobile only. We see a lot of companies like this popping up in emerging markets. In contrast to Silicon Valley, there is no start-up investment or infrastructure in

Belgrade for example. Therefore, companies have to make money on day one. This creates very different kinds of companies, and I think that’s good for Europe because they have global reach and millions of users, making them highly profitable. Mobile also lends itself to easier set up. Take any software company that wants to launch in the US; you have to open an office, hire management, do some marketing and develop partnerships just to distribute your software. Right now, if you have a mobile app, you just click “Launch on the app store” and that’s it. You’re in a market of almost 300 million people instantly. The cost of building software is trending towards zero, but so is the cost of distributing software. The expense of a platform is nothing compared to the pain and the friction it was 10 years ago to deploy a global software company. This creates huge opportunities for creative and innovative developers in places where you would not expect to see the next billion dollar software company.

What do you see happening in the mobile industry overall? We clearly see the growth of Android devices. The monetisation is not the same on Android as on iOS, but it’s getting better. We’ll see more good Android devices and that will produce more Android-first developers, which was not the case three years ago. That’s interesting from a platform developer perspective. I also see some e-commerce companies in Europe already making 50% of their revenues on mobile. Conversely, I also see companies doing less than 5%, or nothing, but they will come to it. Some of them don’t even have a native mobile app that allows people to buy stuff.

That shift to mobile is going to hit the world and create some new kings. It will also kill some established companies that do not move fast enough. This is true in ecommerce, media, entertainment, and every possible vertical you can think of. The CEO of Facebook said that, if he was to launch the company again today, it would be mobile only, like Whatsapp. We’re seeing numerous highly sophisticated teams with a lot of very smart money from successful VCs being mobile only. They’re not even looking at the web. That’s an interesting change for everybody.

What are the key skills needed for the mobile economy of the future? Simple. It is RoI driven. These new companies, Facebook included, are all the same - they live on BI. Most of the decisions are based on A/B testing and Excel reports. That’s quite a contrast to many long-established companies. I sit on the Board of Le Monde and they don’t do A/B testing. Everything is based on intuition rather than data-driven reports and A/B testing on hundreds of different samples. But that’s how mobile works and it’s a big challenge for companies that don’t have the right developers, and don’t have data analysts or BI people to do that. E-commerce is starting to get there. Amazon is a good example, but the average European ecommerce company does not operate like them, where every click on mobile and on the web really matters. That’s a great opportunity for the next generation of European engineers.

Mobile Insight


They will come Paul Gillespie looks at hiring international talent for Nordic companies

• It is never too early to add international talent and experience to your company. It doesn’t have to be an executive; it could be as a Non-Executive Director or even just an Advisor. In this scenario, they don’t always mind if you have little funding IF the proposition has the ‘wow factor’.

• If you are hiring an executive and you are open-minded on location, we would always recommend a trans-Atlantic search, then you can choose from the best available talent rather than being geographically constrained. In this scenario, there does need to be a level of funding (18+ months, ideally) to reduce the perceived risk in joining the company and ideally a level of commercial traction or

adoption. But, in a number of cases (not just Nordic) if the candidate has ‘banked’ some money they may be open to a more risky situation. Again, the product/proposition and market opportunity is critical to attracting the talent.

• If we are hiring into a new remote office, it is so important that this doesn’t just end up as an ‘outpost’ especially if this is a hire into the executive team. This does mean they come to you, but equally this means you and the existing team commit to being there. They have to feel they are still ‘around the watercooler’ as the Americans would say!

• But, whether you are hiring locally or internationally, just because they have a great CV you still have to ensure they will fit the culture and style of your company. This can be really hard to assess and hence having a structured approach to hiring is key, not just ‘what a great guy – lets hire him”. This means multiple interviews with key stakeholders and also switching a later stage interview to focus on their understanding of your business and how they would approach the role with them presenting to you. Something as simple as a one-to-one dinner with candidates also gives an insight, we also believe that psychometric testing can add valuable data to a key hiring decision.

So my advice; if your business has a great proposition and market traction, then always try to make the best possible hire regardless of geography and don’t compromise. We continually surprise our clients with the calibre of talent that is out there and the fact they will come - even to the smallest company in the more unusual locations.

The normal trigger for us working with a Nordic company is the Board looking

to internationalise the business or attract international talent into the company. Many think this is to replace the founding CEO, but more often it is about building experience and talent around the Founding CEO and their product vision. This can

be hiring into the existing HQ in the Nordics, or more likely to leave the engineering and innovation team in the HQ and open a commercial operation in Western Europe or US. We have recently done both – working with Indoor Atlas to hire a Chief Commercial Officer in the US and with MultiTaction to hire a VP Marketing in London.

I think there are some useful steering points for early stage companies:

Always happy to talk further, just reach out at [email protected]

They Will Come

Inside Looking Out special Nordic Edition of GS-insight · PDF fileof our magazine, we...

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