Studies and first companies

10. Study in Poland

When the end of school came and it was time to choose my future path, I decided that I wanted to become a doctor. Already in high school I had to choose a direction. I decided to enroll in the biological-physical profile, which also had an extended music program, which gave me the opportunity to later apply to medical university while pursuing my passion for music. It was guaranteed that the additional classes were geared towards music in advance. This suited me very well, because by choosing this course, I was learning and preparing to apply to medical university, but I also had a lot of time to play the piano. It was a time when I practiced a lot and enjoyed it very much. When I got to high school for my chosen major, it turned out that my previous private piano teacher was not as qualified as the school one. This meant that he could not give me the grades that the school would recognize. I had to take up with a teacher from the school. This alone caused the first crush and my dissatisfaction, as I liked and appreciated my teacher very much. On top of that, at the first lesson I had an argument with the new teacher. She didn’t want to listen to my tunes and check what level I was at, but just at the first chord she rebuked me for not holding my fingers correctly. This upset me so much that I decided that I would not play with this lady again. I gave the school director an ultimatum: either I get another teacher (preferably my own), or I change my major to another, so that I could still get into medicine, but no longer have music lessons with this lady. It turned out that they didn’t have another teacher hired, so as a substitute, lessons with me were to be taught by the rector of the music school, who was also an educator from the piano. Lessons with him were such that sometimes he came, sometimes he didn’t, but he never informed me about it. Unfortunately, this affected my grade. On top of that, when I started this course, the school decided that I was too good musically to take a basic course, and they immediately threw me into a higher level, which resulted in me getting a three in piano at the end of the year. In Sweden, to get into medicine, you have to have the highest average in all subjects, but this is still no guarantee of admission – there are more people with the highest average than there are places per year. In fact, it’s all a matter of lottery: you’re lucky or you’re not. And if you don’t have it, even the best grades can’t help you. As a result, I got a three in piano playing, so I was immediately excluded from to a Swedish medical school. (This is my official version… I don’t particularly brag about the fact that I didn’t get high grades in other subjects either). Instead, my mother arranged for me to attend the University of Medical University of Lodz so that I could continue to pursue my dream of becoming a doctor. Despite the fact that I didn’t have the best grades, as a foreigner who pays for my studies, I was admitted. I began the adventure of moving to Poland, which at the time was not yet part of the European Union. From the time our family moved out of Poland, when I was a year and a half old, until my return related to my studies, I spent a total of about three weeks in the country. I was maybe two or three times. Poles who were in Sweden and found out about the idea of studying in Poland began to warn me. They said that I had to be careful and not invite anyone to my house, because if they saw that I had more than someone else, they could rob me or hurt me. They cautioned me not to say where I live and not to invite anyone. With this notion I started my adventure in Poland. I packed my car to the brim – helped by the following Mr. Zbyszek (the one I previously worked for in the laundry). He had Mercedes Vito and supported me in the move. The first trouble started at the border when I entered the Polish side. Customs officials stopped me and started asking what I was carrying and why I was going. They also asked why I was carrying so much with me. I explained that I was going to college and it was my equipment, including a stereo, a computer, and a TV, which I would have temporarily with me. Customs officials replied that it’s not that simple, that I can transport whatever I want. They told me to pay customs duty. They wrote down the numbers of this equipment and after spending a whole day at the border, they finally let me through. Later, I had to go on at the Customs Office in Lodz to continue this whole step of legalizing the importation of my private belongings that I wanted for my studies. I remember going to this office every day for a month. I always found myself in big lines, standing for two hours at a time, going from window to window and standing again

for another hour. Sometimes, when I got to the window, the clerk would say that I needed a university stamp. Other times, that I needed to go to the next office. For a month I shuffled between offices like this and collected a total of 47 different stamps. In the end, I managed to come to an agreement so that the equipment was registered in Poland as temporarily imported. As a result, it was no longer treated as imported, I didn’t have to pay customs duty, and I only had to pay an annual fee for temporary possession of the equipment in Poland. I had to do was, after graduation, export it to Sweden. After this month, satisfied that I already have the first paperwork behind me and still a month to go until the start of my studies, I was able to acclimate to Poland. I can’t hide the fact that for at least a few reasons it wasn’t that easy. I don’t speak with a distinct foreign accent, and at first glance you can’t tell that I’m a foreigner. My name doesn’t give it away either – as if didn’t, I was born in Poland – but when you grow up abroad and have no exposure to the language, both reading and speaking are not easy. Sometimes when I talked to people, they would look at me strangely because I didn’t have a foreign accent, but I would put sentences together strangely or use strange words because I tried to create them myself or translate literally from Swedish. Even such simple tasks as shopping were a challenge for me. I also had trouble telling the difference between butter and margarine. I remember once, in Tesco, I accosted an employee and showed him the cube of butter I was holding in my hand and asked if it was definitely butter. He looked puzzled and nodded. And when he turned and walked away, I caught up with him, stopped him and asked: ‘are you sure this is butter for bread?’. He probably thought I was making him look crazy. At the beginning of my stay in Poland, I had a lot of this type of situation. After spending about two and a half months in Poland, I had to get something done at the university. I went outside the house and saw that my car was not there. I wondered where I had parked it – I was sure it was under the block. I went around the building all the way, but

the car was not there. I thought that the predictions of all the aunts and uncles, who said that if I came in a car with Swedish numbers, they would steal it from me, had come true. Their prophecies came true less than two months after I arrived in Poland. I called the insurance company, where I was informed that if my car was stolen abroad, they would pay me a lump sum for cabs or cover the car rental fee every day for two or three months. This lump sum was high enough that under Polish conditions I could afford to do all my errands by s. I also had some savings left over from this lump sum. What made me laugh was that it only took two or three weeks of my driving cabs for there to be a stop next to my block. And so, after starting college, I followed the advice of my aunts and uncles and I avoided contact with people from my study group. When they asked me where I lived, I pretended I didn’t know because I was new to Lodz and lived with my grandmother. I also didn’t want them to know that I got around the city by taking cabs. I also didn’t quite know how to get around by public transportation. Sometimes I took cab, but I didn’t get to the block, but got out earlier. This way I was getting to all sorts of places, but no one saw me doing it too much. This caused people to think of me as a freak who doesn’t know where he lives, disappears after class, suddenly appears and on top of that speaks strangely. After a few months, during anatomy class, the professor was talking about something and used the word ‘feces’. I had never encountered such an expression before. When I heard it, I raised my hand. Everyone around me reacted nervously and wondered what I was doing. The professor turned toward me and asked me what was wrong. I then asked: ‘what is feces?’. Most burst out laughing, and some people had a strange look on their faces… Immediately after class, my classmates surrounded me and demanded that I tell them who I was and what I was doing here, because they didn’t know what was going on. I explained to them that I was from Sweden and had a problem with the Polish language. They

were all a little relieved, and I dispelled all their strange conjectures about me. From that moment on, they started to be friends with me. During the Christmas season, I went to Sweden. I remember that at the second day after arriving, I got a call from Poland informing me that my apartment had been broken into and all my belongings stolen. With two more weeks until my return to Poland, I what the thieves had taken. Upon my return, I was supposed to take an exam in biophysics and I had to study, but in the meantime I just looked at the book and wanted to cry. Upon arriving in Lodz, I heard that my apartment had been robbed in broad daylight. There was an old lady living next door to me, who, when the thieves were breaking down the door with a crowbar, leaned out and asked what they were doing, and they answered her that they were renovating it. With that, the burglars entered the apartment, and the neighbor did not call the police. The finale of the story was that I was left with practically nothing: my stereo, computer and TV were stolen. I wondered what to do next. The next day I had an exam in biophysics, so I went to it unconscious. I sat over a sheet of paper, wrote my name and looked at the first question for half an hour. All I could think about was how hopeless the country and that everyone in Sweden was right: they only steal, you can’t tell anyone anything. All the worst predictions came true. I aborted the exam with tears in my eyes and handed back the blank paper. I decided that I didn’t want to be in Poland and was going back to Sweden. This was not easy. I had to deal with the police and then with customs, because after all, they had written down all the stuff on entry, and now it was stolen. It even crossed my mind to buy the same equipment and put it under the original one. I went to the customs office with all the documents from the police asking what now. The people at the office were very silent. I was informed that since it was not a fire or flood, and therefore the equipment was not destroyed, it was presumed that it was still functioning. Consequently, I could not export it out of the country, which meant that I had imported it into Poland. So I had to pay customs duty, which was about ten thousand

zlotys. Again, I felt that this is a hopeless country and I will definitely never come here again. I was very determined to return to Sweden, but it appeared there was one issue that aroused a sense of loss in me. It wasn’t about stolen things. There was a girl in my group, Asia, with whom I had a crush. I never dared to ask her or even talk to her. Moving to Sweden meant I wouldn’t have the opportunity to do that again. When I had taken care of all the formalities of leaving, I went to the store and bought heart-shaped chocolates, then went to the dormitory and said goodbye to Asia. I never told her directly about my feelings, but I thought the gesture and the chocolate heart would be meaningful to her. In time, it turned out that they were. In the end, I embarked on a journey to Sweden. I was immensely tired. So much so that I had to make stops along the way because I had nosebleeds, which made it impossible for me to drive the car. Driving my new car off the ferry, I also encountered customs clearance. Customs officers saw that a car with Swedish numbers was driving and asked me not to stand in line, but to go through the side gate, where they let all the Swedes through without control. This was the moment when I felt that I was finally home, they were finally treating me like an honest, good person, and the people were friendly. I felt like they knew about my adventures and welcomed me with sympathy.

Then I learned that:

1. If you’re unhappy somewhere, everything is going as badly as possible, then you don’t have to hold on to your decision by force, it may be worth changing it.
2. If one had a vision as to one’s future, it is difficult to change the decision, accompanied by fear and great uncertainty. Now I know that a year or two in the perspective of a lifetime, matter less than we think, and the experiences we gain, although unpleasant, are very valuable.

11. Back to Sweden

After returning home, the emotions subsided. I began to think about what to do next. I had given up on medical studies, but wanted to start something else. In Sweden, there are exams that allow you to get into the Medical studies, if you pass it with good grades. I signed up for such an exam and got a catalog of the full program offerings from all universities. There was information about the requirements to get specific majors, such as the average in the last year and the grade on the exam. While looking through this catalog, I came across Luleå University of Technology, which offered a program called Space Engineering. I picked up the phone and called the number indicated to find out exactly what the offer was about. It turned that I had reached the professor who was in charge of the program I had chosen. I explained my situation to him, and he told me very interesting things and fascinated me with examples of what students do in classes and what one can do after this course. The professor did not think long and said that school had already started, so if I wanted to join, I had to register on Monday. He offered to let the registrar ladies know. I spoke with him on Thursday, so I had two days to think about it. Since I failed in Poland, moving 1,500 kilometers north this time didn’t seem like a terrible thing. At least I would still be in Sweden. That’s how I saw it at the time. On Saturday I packed the car and spent the whole Sunday, traveling those 1,500 kilometers north, spending the night in a car near the campus and a 24-hour gas station where I could use the restroom, brush my teeth, etc. I spent the first night in the car. On the second day I registered and went to my first class, I also started looking for an apartment. This is how I showed up in the north of Sweden at Luleå University of Technology. No longer a medical student, but a student related to Engineering.

12. Avenue of Stars and Web Development Company

Again, I was not able to calmly deal only with my studies. More ideas kept coming to my mind, and I kept thinking about creating my business. I remember one evening when my classmate Anders and I were sitting at his dormitory. He had a room located close to the common room for the whole floor. Such a common room with a kitchen and a TV. There were lots of people scrolling around, there was laughter and lots of alcohol. Other students from the dorm were partying, and we sat at Anders’ room staring at www.milliondollarhomepage.com. Someone had created a site where there was one picture consisting of a million pixels. Anyone could buy 1 pixel for $1 and almost all the pixels were sold. We were impressed that such a simple idea attracted so many people. It was strange, it made absolutely no deeper sense, but businesswise we thought it was brilliant. We thought about making our own ‘milliondollarhomepage’, but we could not copy the idea. We wanted to come up with something of our own. People would come into Anders’ room every now and then and call us to join them so we wouldn’t be so boring. I smiled, but thought to myself that they were wasting their lives terribly. When I was faced with a choice between – drinking a few beers in the company of people who did not interest me in any way or – discussing ideas for my own business with Anders, for me the choice was very simple. Sometimes there was pressure from others not to sit in front of the computer, but to join in to the party, was so great that we gave in to the pressure and went out to them for a while. Very often I would make an ‘English exit’, disappear without saying goodbye and wash off to my home. I had a 30-minute bus ride from Anders to a small house (the so-called ‘bagar stuga’, 25-30 sq. m, which was part of a larger farm). This was not a typical house, as in the old days we used to bake bread and other things in this building, so as not to do this and spread smells in the host’s house. This farmhouse consisted of one large fireplace in the central part of the building, a kitchen on one side and a room on the other, where I had all my things. On the way home and in the house (which, by the way, was in the woods), there was complete silence. There, I was able to continue thinking in peace about ideas and plans on what to do to succeed. We came up with the idea to make an Avenue of Stars. An endless avenue of stars, where anyone could buy their star and write their name or the name of their company. Anders started working on graphics, creating backgrounds and different models of stars to choose from. However, we knew that even if it looked cool, we have to pay for the domain, hosting and other technical elements, but also for marketing. Unfortunately, as students we didn’t have the money for such an investment. We had to raise finances somehow. The easiest thing seemed to us to get a client who wanted a website and would be ready to pay for its making.

I continue to be surprised by many startups that are looking for investors or asking how they should get funding for their projects. In my opinion, they very often overlook the fact that the best way to finance their own company is by selling. When I started asking people if they needed a, very quickly there was a person who knew a company that wanted a website – so I heard: ‘we don’t, but I know someone who just needs a site’. First client and first pitch: ‘We’ll do it cheap, because we’re students’ – it worked perfectly. Especially since whatever we earned was a plus for us, since we had no costs, and we wanted to donate everything to our Avenue of the Stars. We started collecting the first guidelines for the site and got to work. The project evolved, but the workload kept growing and there was no end in sight. With each proposal we made, there were also new ideas, suggestions and requests for changes from the client. With all this, Anders did every thing terribly carefully, every design and example was polished as if it were the final version for publication. The project began to drag, and frustration was accumulating in everyone. Exams were approaching, the end of the project was not in sight, and Anders was putting more and more emphasis on his studies than on the project. He was great at physics and math. He made he got the best grades. Not what I did. I definitely had an uphill battle. I preferred to think about our projects and businesses. Exams were terrible for me, but not because they were very difficult to pass. Just because they stood in the way of creating my business. They blocked my time, but especially Anders’, which meant that there was no progression in our business. After the exam session, we were severely tired and had little energy or motivation for anything else. We dreamed of nothing but a moment of rest, and here we still had to finish the design of a website for a client. I could see how much the whole assignment was tiring Anders. In fact, we just wanted to get it over with, and unfortunately I couldn’t help with that. I could only wait. It was terrible for me. In pain we finished the site and in the end the client paid us. We returned to our Avenue of Stars project. We had already gathered a dozen people in the dorm who wanted to buy their star. The website took off and we started collect money from our customers. Despite the fact that we quickly got our first paying customers, the takers ran out just as quickly. The site wasn’t really providing any value.

On the other hand, the project has been revised, and through this we have learned a few things:

1. If you are doing a consulting service or a website, then you need to define the scope of work, otherwise the client will eat you alive through their expectations, ideas and constant changes.
2. Even if many people around you say you have a great idea and get your first customers quickly, it doesn’t mean your idea will succeed.
3. The project may seem cool, but if you don’t build something of value, you will fail quickly.
4. Even if you are very fond of your partner, you need to know each other’s ambitions and priorities

before entering into any joint project. This is essential to avoid creating unnecessary tension and frustration between you. When the weekend came, we met at Anders. We checked how many people came to our site. We unanimously agreed that it would not be our ‘milliondollarbusiness’. Also, we told ourselves that rather we are not going to get carried away with designing pages for others and need to come up with something else. We bought beer, ordered pizza and turned on the Futurama series. Anders had downloaded all the seasons, so we hardly left his room all weekend. We watched episode after episode and hardly talked to each other. We had a lot to think about and preferred to drift off into this futuristic series.

13. Founding of Condotech and Creation of KYAB

In Sweden, a lot of attention is paid to ecology, the environment, safety, and especially to not wasting resources. In winter, mainly in the north, many people use heated floors and home heating in general. It’s cold enough that even if we have good insulation in the building, it still needs to be reheated heavily. On the other hand, if you count how much time Swedes spend and outdoors, a lot of energy is wasted. When I put these facts together, I began to think about this waste could be reduced without compromising the comfort of the home. I thought of a concept that would allow, for example, my underfloor heating in the bathroom to operate between the 06:30 and 07:30 AM, when I get up and get ready for university or work. After that, I’m gone all day, so I don’t need the heating, but I’d like it to be on again in the evening when I get home. So roughly between 7 and 10 PM. Well, and my head started working on ideas for solutions. Again, I saw an opportunity to solve a problem and create a business. The first idea was a small computer on which specific times could be set. However, this solution had its downsides. Although it would be possible to set the hours manually, it was not a perfect solution, because it would have to be repeated. In addition, the underfloor heating is only one element. I wanted opportunities to program different elements in the building. I started thinking about a smart home. There were many ideas, but I knew I had to focus on one thing and then expand on it. Reducing underfloor heating was not only a good part of the overall concept, but it also meant savings for the client right away. Many of the other ideas I considered were more in the ‘gadget’ category and wouldn’t generate as much savings for the system user. I wanted the floor to record on its own which days of the week and at what times it is used by residents, and learn when it is used and when it is not. For example, on weekends I rarely used the bathroom at 06:30 in the morning, rather much later and definitely longer than during the week. I had a few ideas about what sensors to use for this system, but I was unfamiliar with programming and didn’t know what would actually be the best solution. That’s why I started asking my colleagues at the university. There were a lot of people there who loved systems and programming. In addition to ideas about how the system would work and what the first function would be, you had to give everything a real dimension. It couldn’t stay a mere concept that I just think and talk about. I had to have something tangible that I could show. I decided to register a company, a sole, which I called Condotech - a combination of the English words “Condominium” and “Technology.” I also wanted to create a website and business cards. I felt that this would be useful if I needed to talk to someone more formally and give the impression that at this stage the company was bigger and there was a lot more going on in it than just the product idea itself. I also knew that this would motivate me strongly and build a sense of progress on the project, before I will see a viable, working system. I asked Anders to make a company website for me. I promised that I would not change the concept for him and add new ideas like our previous client. I also said that I would pay him in advance for the site and logo. I wanted to do this despite the fact that Anders himself offered to do the site for me for free as a friend. I was very keen to maintain a professional relationship. I wanted pay and get the product. I had a car, a Ford probe, which at the time seemed like a supercar. Sporty silhouette, headlights that hid in the hood and belts that came out when you opened the door. I bought it with the money I earned

while on vacation, but now it was time to invest in my business. I sold the Ford and bought an old Saab 9000, because I needed to have some kind of car to get. Unfortunately, the buses on the route to my house were now running less frequently, and I was meeting Anders a lot and returning at very different times. With the money I had left from the sale of the Ford, I paid Anders for the logo and the website, and still had some left over for fuel for the saab. At least for a while. Anders made a cool site and the logo was awesome. He made it into an animated version for the site. It looked like an old traditional building suddenly crumbled and a very modern taller building rose from the rubble. It was as if it was some kind of Transformers. He put a lot of work into it, because such an idea really to him, and he could also play with graphics creatively. I bragged about my site to people, because I was constantly in awe of this animated logo. I’m not sure, but I think Anders and I were the only ones who were so enthusiastic about it. I think everyone in their business has to go through such a phase at some stage. At the same time, I was constantly looking for people at the university who could help me realize my idea. I visited a lot of people in different departments and finally met Kimmo Yliniemi. He was doing his doctorate and was just finishing his project. He had invented a way to measure how energy is used in a building heated by the city grid. Hot water flows from the CHP plant, through a network of pipelines, into the building. In the building it splits into two nodes, one heats the building (radiators) and the other heats the water at the tap. He created a very simple solution that was easy to install in the building’s control panel and measure what the energy went to. Previously, one only measured the difference between how much energy went into the building and how much went out. His device was able to measure with a high degree of accuracy how much energy was used for the need to heating, and how much for hot water production. The device also provided for the possibility of connecting to the Internet, so that the recorded data could be sent somewhere and show current consumption on some site.

I presented him with my concept and showed him the company website. He liked the logo, which was a good sign. But he also liked my idea and we talked about how our designs could be combined. He worked alone, and so did I. He was very technical and had a product that would be a great base for my whole concept. I was more sales-oriented and with a ready-made business concept. A perfect combination. That’s why we decided to work together. Since his product was the result of a multimillion-dollar study, and I didn’t have much money, Kimmo became the majority shareholder in the formation of the company. And while contributing myself and my idea, I also threw in almost all the money I had. That’s how our joint company called KYAB was formed. I got so broke with this investment that I actually ran out of money. I didn’t even have any more money for fuel to commute to the university, where I now not only studied, but also had a company. What’s more, I didn’t even buy a bus ticket, but started going to the university on foot. I didn’t have enough money for a ticket, after all, I still had to buy some food. It wasn’t easy, and I didn’t want to admit to anyone that I was completely broke. As a result, many times I refused to go to a party, because I didn’t have money to go there, or to buy beer or a ticket to a student club. I ate mostly pasta with ketchup, and when I ran out of ketchup in the middle of the month, I just wanted to cry. But despite the difficulties, I constantly believed that we would succeed with our company and in the future I would buy myself a Ferrari.

14. Work at IdeHuset

Despite the fact that I was involved in a lot of different jobs and projects, on top of that I tried to start my own website making company in college and developed Condotech, all the time I had no experience related to running a business. I didn’t know how to really do business. Asking people what to do, I across IdeHuset, or (translating literally into English) House of Ideas. It was a project run by a state organization that supports entrepreneurship and innovation. A branch was created at the university to help students test their own ideas. It was a place where one could also come for business advice. For simpler issues, students got immediate guidance, and for more complicated issues IdeHuset knew where to send you, as the organization had a large network of contacts, and was familiar with other NGOs and their ability to support you in different areas and ways. I don’t remember exactly what project I appeared there with.I think I came to inquire about the web project. Then I had more questions. I realized something, came back to the foundation and asked again about something. And so on and so forth. The people who worked there noticed my interest and involvement. Finally, the project manager of IdeHuset – Olivier Dogo, asked me if I would like to help other students, because I was clearly doing a lot, still trying something, developing and not standing still. He offered me to join their team and work a few hours a week organizing events at the university and supporting students. For me, it was an incredibly attractive offer, and a source of some income. I thought that I could replace my lunches of pasta with ketchup with something better. It was also very important that through them I could gain knowledge and the contacts I needed. I accepted the job with joy. After about six months of my activity, it turned out that Olivier and the other active boy couldn’t go on because they were finishing their studies. Thus, I became the only person on board and had to increase my activity in IdeHuset. Not surprisingly, I became the project manager of this project. It was a great experience. Students came to us with different ideas, so I met a lot of people who also wanted to do something and had different concepts. Their approaches, budgets and what they had achieved so far were available to me at my. This built a broader perspective for me of how to think about different business issues. When assisting students, even if I didn’t do it directly because I didn’t have the experience, I got in touch with people who could support them and saw what kind of help they were able to offer. This developed me a lot. As time went on, I found it hard to run the House of Ideas on my own, so I recruited another person to it. It was Olov Renberg. Olov became my friend. I was extremely happy that he joined my team – I remember it very well. Olov comes from a family of entrepreneurs. His family has a company that sells reindeer meat, but not only that. I think they have half of the Swedish market today when it comes to reindeer products. It is a very large company, employing many people. However, Olov, due to the fact that his father was running the company all the time, was very involved, hardworking and helped with the family business. Being my age, he was very experienced in working with someone who runs a large business. He helped with the company’s logo design, marketing and sales. He had extensive business experience, and the company was growing well, so this also gave credence to his skills. Working with him was interesting. He was always professional and businesslike in their approach to various issues. For me, it was brilliant in terms of gaining more experience. When Olov was working at IdeHuset for a longer period of time, we were approached by doctoral students who had an idea for a system to secure computers by monitoring and analyzing user behavior, rather than by password or fingerprint. This allowed the computer to verify

whether the person was authorized to use it or not. If she wasn’t, the system locked the computer. After some time, Olov joined that team of PhD students and their director of operations. He still works for that company today, they have grown tremendously and operate all over the world. They inspire me. While working at IdeHuset, I also had a lot of contact with other organizations that supported entrepreneurs at different stages of business. For one of them, ALMI, I was a great liaison with students. They offered all sorts of support and assistance to young people. I referred a lot of people to them, which led me to establish a good rapport with ALMI, which turned out to be very important for me in my life. At IdeHuset there was a lot of inspiration and extra money to improve my living conditions.

During this period I definitely learned that:

1. Sometimes you don’t need to be competent, you are left alone on the board and just have to manage.
2. You never have to worry about a shortage of ideas, because there are plenty of them.
3. Doing projects for others later on proved to be a tremendous resource when implementing my projects – both in terms of knowledge and contacts.

I also learned new things about myself.

1. Even with no experience as a project manager, I was able to cope.
2. I can learn everything.
3. I enjoyed helping others with their projects. At the time, I still didn’t know what to do with it, and only then did it come together ‘dots’ and I understood where it could be helpful.

15. Commercialization at KYAB

At the same time, while I was working at IdeHuset, all the time work was going on to commercialize the scientific research in our new company, KYAB (when Condotech merged with Kimmo, we created the company KYAB). Everything was moving forward, but very slowly. We rented a room in the incubator, right next to IdeHuset, where we could work, although I usually sat there in the evenings and on weekends, while Kimmo, meanwhile, sat for long hours, but during the day. In the incubator were Lars-Erik and Daniel, who had a company called Netix. Very hardworking, cool and always smiling. When I came on weekends and evenings to work on KYAB, I always found them there.

I had the impression that they spent more time there than everyone else. No one spent so many hours on projects what they did. We became very friendly, which bore fruit later on, but we’ll come back to that. As for KYAB, we complemented each other perfectly with Kimmo. He was more of a scientist, but with the jam of an entrepreneur who wanted to commercialize his idea. I was the salesman and the one who wanted to make a business out of it. We didn’t argue, although I got very frustrated at times. I liked all the technological things Kimmo talked about, but our first product was a 10 x 15 cm box. Kimmo wanted to improve all the components that were inside and the electronic components in order to further reduce the size of the box to 5 x 10 cm and not add any new functionality. This was what frustrated me the most, because it meant that we had to spend more resources to make new prototypes and all the hardware that is inside. I didn’t understand why we couldn’t start with something that works after all and just sell it, and when we make money, then think about developing the product. Kimmo was terribly persistent because he didn’t want to enter the market with something, with which he was not satisfied enough. I understood that he wanted to show the market a product that he would be proud of. However, my feeling was that we should first collide our idea with the world and see if it even made sense, because everything was based mainly on theory and our assumptions. Just because we thought the idea was great and would build a good business on it didn’t mean that people would also see it that way or pay for it. I a lot with Kimmo about whether or not this was the right time to go to market with a product in this form. Knowing that there was a lot of resistance on Kimmo’s part, I had to approach the situation a little unconventionally. I thought to myself that our tool is something used in the homes of people who use the municipal grid and buy electricity from the CHP plant. Therefore, maybe it would be appropriate to meet with local CHP plants representatives and present our idea to them. Maybe it won’t be our direct customer, but I wanted to see what they thought about it. I was very keen to have at least part of the market validate our idea. I went on webiste, found some general number for the CHP headquarters and called them. Someone from the front desk answered, and I introduced myself and said that I wanted to make an appointment with the director and introduce him to a new product. I indicated in the conversation that I was talking about a scientific study of a product that we were commercializing at the moment, and would like to see if the company would be interested in it. As a result, I had no problem being redirected to the CEO’s secretary and setting up a meeting. I called Kimmo and told him I had a surprise for him. I wanted to meet him at the address given to talk about our product over coffee. He was definitely not up for surprises. However, I urged him to come and see, it would be fun. When the day of the meeting came, I showed up half an hour early. I was a little stressed because I didn’t know how Kimmo would react to all this. When Kimmo joined me, he saw that this was the CHP headquarters, so he asked what we were doing here. I replied that we had a meeting with the CHP president in ten minutes and that he was the one putting on the coffee. That’s when Kimmo got angry, he was shocked and didn’t want to show his device in prototype form. I reassured him not to get upset, because this is a non-committal meeting. We’ll say that this is a prototype, that we’ll have new and ready stuff in a while. I wanted us to go there together and tell the CHP people together what we were doing. That way we would see how they would react to it. Fortunately, in the end my partner agreed to do it all, although he still wasn’t happy with my plan. I remember how we rode the elevator, and Kimmo didn’t say a word to me, and his gaze pierced me. It was the longest elevator ride of my life. The person at the reception desk ushered us into a conference room. Only then did I feel the real stress - in front of me was a meeting with the chairman, and I didn’t know how my partner would behave. When the chairman arrived, we were greeted very pleasantly by him. The chairman asked what we were coming to him with. Then I asked Kimmo to tell us about his study and its results, as it might prove interesting for

the CHP. And suddenly something changed when Kimmo began to talk about his study and its results. It was clear that what he was doing was his passion and his life. After talking for half an hour about the study, our company KYAB, our product and how it works, the CEO said he found it very interesting. The idea was that our device was mounted in a central unit that distributed water to a node for heating a property, apartment or house. There was a node that ran through the radiators, heating the house, and a second node that produced hot water. When we drained hot water in the sink or shower, that’s when this second node worked. This unit could also be controlled at the control panel, as it had a programming function. Listening to Kimmo, the CHP president thought of another benefit of our device that we hadn’t thought of because we didn’t realize it. He explained to us that, especially in the winter, the CHP has the problem that in the morning before work and in the afternoon, when people return from work, a lot of hot water is consumed: showering, cooking, washing dishes, and so on. In addition, the heating in houses, which also needs hot water, is on all the time., there are two periods during the day, in the morning and in the afternoon, when CHP plants reach their peak, that is, increased energy consumption. During this time, the CHP plant is unable to supply 100% of the energy it needs. It has to spice up its network with other sources of energy so that there is enough energy in the city grid and this hot water they sell – a big problem. Thus, hot water is the cheapest form of buying energy, well, unless you have solar panels. All other the sources that the company had to burn to heat the water are much more expensive, and this means that the CHP loses out because it sells the energy at a lower price than it ends up costing them. Our device, by virtue of being able to know immediately where and how much energy is being produced and control it, could facilitate this process. The chairman asked us if we could, for that moment when hot water was being produced, turn off or reduce the heating and only produce hot water. This was possible. The idea

was that by turning off for a moment the hot water node responsible for heating, we do not cause the building to immediately become cold. On the other hand, with this solution, we would reduce the temporary demand for energy that could be used. Our idea could have helped heat only hot water instead of heating the building. The chairman said that if we are able to do so, let’s lower the him demand for energy in those places where they have to subsidize it. These were gigantic amounts of money – monthly would be millions of dollars in savings for the company during the winter. And our device was cheap and easy to install. Coming out of a meeting with the CHP president, it became clear that the concept of our product being aimed at smart home owners, where we could measure energy consumption, show it in a panel, connect it to other sensors and thus program and build a smart infrastructure in the apartment, was not complete. Suddenly, the CHP was able to pay a great deal to install such devices in many buildings. The result was that we came out of that meeting with a customer who had completely changed our track of thinking and business model. The company took a different direction, and we felt there would be good business from it.

16. Work at Swedbank

In the meantime, of developing my business ideas, I studied all the time. The way it works in Sweden is that if you study and pass exams, you can take a loan from the state for each year of study. This is a low-interest loan that you then pay back throughout your life. Most students do this in order to function (buy books, pay for the dormitory). For me, it was a sensational period to try my business ideas. I had something to live off of as I rolled out and tested my start-ups. I laughed that in my case it was a bit like a kind of investment fund that subsidizes my start-up during my studies. It finances your life, business and testing of various ideas, regardless of how you go. The only condition is that you pass your exams and move forward with your studies. This has been very convenient. Despite the fact that I found physics very interesting, and especially topics of quantum physics and space, however, it was not what I was passionate about. Anders and I talked about being on Space Engineery, when in the meantime he loves design and making models in 3D, and I, on the other hand, find myself best in entrepreneurship. I felt that first and foremost I was an entrepreneur. As a result, we decided that both Anders and I were in the wrong field of study and it should be changed. Therefore, after the first year of study, we decided change. I chose economics, and he went for Industrial Design. In the meantime, I worked in various places, such as IdeHuset, KYAB, but I also took care of my studies, feeling that they were necessary, that I needed to educate myself. The truth is also that sometimes in economics studies, when we were solving assignments on marketing and entrepreneurship, I felt that I learned a lot more in a week of my own doing than I did in a whole semester of a particular subject. However, I eventually graduated and had to continue somehow, because KYAB could not afford to hire me and pay me a salary. So I looked for a job. It seemed to me that the closest to my interests would be banking, so I applied for online banking at Swedbank in Stockholm and… got in. The same day I defended my thesis, I had my things packed with me and immediately after the defense I went to the airport to fly to Stockholm. On the second day I started work. This is how I found myself in Stockholm, in electronic banking.