Leaders & Founders

Phil is a VP Engineering at Google, where throughout a 9-year tenure he's led a number of technical teams, including the Site Reliability Engineering group for Google Cloud Platform and Google's internal Technical Infrastructure. A UK native, Phil holds a BA in Mathematics from Oxford University and before joining Google, he spent 17 years as Chief Architect at Fidessa, where he led teams that designed and built databases and middleware technology for highperformance trading systems. He's passionate about the transformational opportunities created by Cloud computing, has a strong customer focus, and deep expertise in building highly reliable distributed infrastructure at scale. Phil has some incredible insight into what it takes to scale a company from 50 -> 2,000 people (Fidessa), just what working at Google is like on the west coast and of course, how we can all navigate a turbulent tech landscape in 2023. We hope you enjoy this one!

Anyfin was launched in 2017 by Mikael Hussain (CEO), Sven Perkmann (CTO) and Filip Polhem (COO), who together bring more than two decades of experience in helping to build some of Sweden’s leading technology success stories at Klarna, Spotify, and iZettle. Their mission is to help as many people as possible to become the best financially stable versions of themselves. Using new technology, they have developed fair, simple and smart services that help their customers get more from their finances, hoping to tackle this underrepresented part of the market. But not only do they want to help you when you are in bad times, they aim to become the financial guardian in your corner that will help you reach healthy financial status and reach your dreams! The Founders quickly saw that many everyday people pay unnecessary high interest fees for part-payments, credit cards and private loans, which is where they started out. Through smart technology and skipping unnecessary middlemen, they quickly found they could offer the lowest possible rate. Jump forward to 2022 and Anyfin have incredible services that help their customers to manage their everyday life and get the most from their financial services, including innovative savings products and many other amazing products coming to the market soon! To date, Anyfin have raised an impressive $101M in funding from investors including Northzone, EQT Group, Accel, Global Founders Capital, FinTech Collective, Quadrille Capital and Augmentum Fintech. They have also raised over $500M in debt capital from a range of undisclosed lenders. With the total of outstanding unsecured consumer credit within Europe standing at a staggering €1,200 Billion, there is a huge market and incredible opportunity to make a genuine difference to millions peoples' lives all over Europe. In this awesome episode we discuss the early days at Anyfin - from listening to impossible to follow audiobooks on the treadmill, not fully understanding good terms sheets to bad ones and everything in between! Yook also gives us his insight into what makes a great Product function and how to prioritise your roadmap and launch products in the market!

Tomas Ohlson is the Founding Engineer at Einride, joining as one of the company’s first 5 employees. Originally from the countryside in Sweden, Tomas grew up on a farm where he was always surrounded by creative minds, passionate about helping those around them. A societal obligation was instilled in him at a young age. Following his passion for engineering, computers and building things, Tomas graduated from university with a Masters in Computer Science and Networks. At University, he met several close and important friends that he would go on to strike amazing relationships with and work alongside in his professional life. Tomas’ passion for building continued at a fast rate as he co-founded a number of very successful tech businesses in his early professional years and beyond. His quest for building took him from Gothenburg to Silicon Valley and back again, where Tomas now sits as one of Einride’s earliest employees and technical visionaries. When Tomas, Robert, Linnea, Filip and the Founding team at Einride first started their mission to build an autonomous vehicle capable of replacing traditional driven-trucks, people called them crazy. But, they dared to dream big and have gone on to achieve a huge amount in the company's highly impressive, but short life. Fast forward to 2021 and Einride are now one of the world’s most advanced and highly anticipated electric and autonomous trucking businesses, with the eyes of the world firmly on their incredible Einride Pod. The Pod is a glimpse into the future - something Tomas says was done deliberately by design - and offers insight into where the world of trucking may be heading with the correct technology and adoption. With incredible new funding behind them, a recent launch in the US and a hugely ambitious roadmap ahead of them, Einride are here to change an industry and improve the future of all of our lives. The freight industry contributes to both a sad and huge amount of CO2 emissions into our planets' atmosphere. Einride firmly believe that electric and autonomous trucking can have a positively dramatic impact on climate change over the coming years, and are here to lead the way for Europe. They are making their own footsteps in the stand where no one in Europe has gone before them and with this comes both great excitement, but also great expectation. They are leaders, trailblazers and great people building products that may will become a part of our every day life quicker than you might believe! To check out Einride, please head to their website: https://www.einride.tech and check out their blog and media channels for more awesome updates on their global expansion! 

Matthew O'Riordan is the CEO & Co-Founder of Realtime Tech company Ably. Ably provides cloud infrastructure and APIs to build realtime features like chat, notifications, live maps, loT control.  Matt has a very interesting background, coming from South Africa to the UK we hear about his journey. He founded and successfully sold digital consultancy, Econsultancy. We hear about how the idea for Ably came about and how he managed to get the business off the ground right through to successfully achieving funding and growing the business to where it is today. We get a good insight into Ably and what they do and also what its like going through funding, he also gives some good advice for future founders.  This is a really great episode and one i really enjoyed.

Jakub Zakrzewski is the Managing Director of APAC at Kraken Digital Exchange, one of the world's most successful and widely used Cryptocurrency exchanges. As MD of APAC, Jakub guides the team on their growth journey in the region and plays a huge part in allowing the business to scale to meet the incredible demand for their product worldwide. With Cryptocurrency and Blockchain once again being at the forefront of many people's minds in 2021, Kraken are seeing more customer acquisition than ever before and are continuing to add to their world-class team to meet the demands for their amazing product. But asides from their exchange, Kraken also received their US Banking license in 2020 and now plan to offer a range of cutting-edge, unique cryptocurrency banking services to their global population. Some amazing things lie in store for the Kraken! Jakub's career has been a textbook example of amazing growth, huge success and a whirlwind of a journey that has seen him at the helm of a number of high-growth businesses that have gone through to achieve unicorn status and IPO. After studying Rocket Internet Group as a thesis student, Jakub was offered a job by them in Singapore, which meant up and leaving Europe to find a new life in Asia. It is something that he would do time and time again and is thankful for the incredible opportunities that moving to Singapore has had on his career and his life. As the first employee of Rocket Internet - Lazada in Singapore, he helped steer them to a $1Bn acquisition by Alibaba Group, which led him on to his next journey as Head of Growth at EasyShip, an award-winning digital logistics business that gained amazing press for their seamless logistics experience. Then, after being approached by Revolut, he joined as an early employee to help them launch in Singapore. This meant spreading his time between Europe and Singapore and being part of the Revolut rocket which went on to take the world by storm with their well-crafted and hugely popular FX services. After a once in a lifetime experience with Revolut - Jakub joined Kraken as MD APAC in January 2020. It was certainly not that he wanted to ever leave Revolut, but because of his belief to try to see new trends in the market and take amazing opportunities when they arise. Jakub sees cryptocurrency and decentralised finance playing a huge part of our everyday lives in the coming years and believes in the power of the technology behind how finance could be shaped in the coming years. Jakub wanted to be a part of that revolution and sees Kraken as the perfect place to learn the craft, understand the market and to achieve some marvellous milestones with this high-growth business!

Nicholas Goubert is the Chief Product Officer at CLARK, an exciting German-based InsureTech scale-up and has had an incredible career within Product Leadership at some of the most innovative technology companies in Europe. After studying Computer Science and geography at university, he started working in geospatial technology which took him all over the world, working on some very unique challenges. After mixing software development with project management, he then found his way into what is now widely know - but wasn't so much then - as Product Management. This led him to head of Product at innovative businesses such as HERE, Nokia, SoundCloud, Native Instruments and now at CLARK, where he is overseeing their vision following a very successful $85M funding round. Alongside his main work as a CPO, Nicholas is also a technology advisor and mentor to a number of early-stage and high-growth startups, as well as up and coming Product and Engineering enthusiasts. He is a big advocate for mentorship and believes that paying it forward is a huge part of his role as a successful Tech professional that has great lessons for the future technologists of tomorrow. It is some of this thoughts and life lessons that really took our interest, though, as well as his approach to life, work and technology. He wants tomorrow's leaders to be curios, be bold and to take the leap of faith. If you do not do this, then how can you say that you tried? And if it doesn't work, then what's the worst that can happen? Great advice for those that are still figuring out their next step and need words of encouragement to step outside the box and strive for what you truly want! He also gives us some great insight into how he builds his teams, how he sets them up for success and where he sees the future of Product heading. When not working, Nicholas can be found perfecting his surfing technique, drinking a fine glass of wine and spending time with his friends and family. We really hope you enjoy this one, Nicholas is a great guy and has some amazing advice for anyone working in engineering, product and technology, and for leaders looking for innovative ideas on how to build successful teams!

Sustainability Leadership is the brand new book from Henrik Henriksson, CEO & President of Scania Group and Elaine Weidman-Grunewald, the Founder of the AI Sustainability Centre and former Chief Sustainability Officer at Ericsson. Honest about the dilemmas but bullish on the opportunities, Henrik and Elaine advise leaders on how to accelerate sustainability in their organisations told through a Swedish lens, where the country’s values and culture permeate the boardroom and the C-suite, bringing a unique clarity and conviction to leading with integrity. What is extremely interesting, is their view on how the corporate world will look in the next 10-20 years. Now, more so than ever, businesses need to not only think about sustainability from a “we should be doing more” perspective, but also as a genuine factor in your continued success and even existence. Throughout the book, more than 25 interviews with other leading CEOs of Swedish companies as well as successful start-ups, investors, economists, and other experts illuminate the path to sustainability leadership from different perspectives. These are complemented by case studies describing how companies got it right – or turned themselves around after getting it very, very wrong. Together, they are two of the most passionate people we have had the pleasure of speaking with and have highly decorated careers in the c-suite and executive world. Elaine has dedicated her life towards improving sustainability in the world of technology and also launched the “Technology for Good” showing how tech is a powerful accelerator for the Sustainable Development Goals, that spread from Sweden to Africa to Silicon Valley, and is now embraced by the broader tech sector. Henrik, as CEO & President of Scania Group, has been instrumental in changing not on Scania’s but also the entire logistics industries perspective on the part the have to play to improve the planet. Their energy and passion for improving the world we live in is plain for all to see and we were honoured to be able to get some time with them. Throughout the episode, we get a great look into how Swedish culture may play a part in why Sweden are leading much of the charge on sustainability, how sometimes we should all be a little more “Lady Gaga” and more importantly, how we can all play a huge part in improving the future. We hope you enjoy this episode, we are fully behind Henrik and Elaine and can’t wait to see the amazing things they go on to do!

For the first instalment in our VC and Investment focused series, we are extremely excited to be joined by the awesome man that is, Hampus Monthan Nordenskjöld. Hampus is a Founding Partner at TrueSight Ventures, a venture capital firm investing in pre-seed and seed stage startups in Europe and the US, with a focus on the Nordics and UK markets. They invest in ambitious founders and teams going after large markets and solving important problems with technology. Truesight support founding teams by advising on strategic decisions, providing relevant industry contacts and helping to raise next rounds as they continue to scale. Hampus' story is a very interesting one; he is very open about saying that when he was younger he had no idea that he would go on to co-found his own VC company. After originally following the professional sports route within Swedish football, Hampus went on to follow his burning passion for building companies before moving to Hawaii to study as an undergrad. This led him to move to New York, which led him into the crazy world of Wall Street, and then onto a number of years spent between Asia and Sweden whilst he studied for his MBA and ultimately, his move into Venture Capitalism. Today, Hampus and his co-founders are involved in a number of the most exciting and high-potential tech businesses in Europe. They look, first and foremost, for the person that they can invest in. Whilst the business idea or the problem their partners are looking to build is important, nothing is more important than finding the right people to work with. As a dedicated team of 4, TrueSight are still relatively small but bring a huge amount of power and support to their partners. They love to be involved as much as possible to really help their startups grow and are on hand for any questions, big or small, that may be required. TrueSight have seen great success very early in their life and have huge ambitions and plans for the future. They are looking to invest in more businesses all the time and have huge aspirations for where they want to be as a business. Hampus would encourage anyone seeking investment to reach out to see how he and his team may be able to help. Securing funding is difficult, challenging and super invasive. But, once the partnership is right, in TrueSight you have the right partner that is by your side. This is a super interesting episode for any leaders and founders going through this process right now. We hope you enjoy it!

Wow...do we have a special episode for you today! We were thrilled, delighted and excited to catch up with our most recent Leaders & Founders guest, Amanda Thomson. Not only is she an absolutely lovely and brilliant person, but a seriously successful entrepreneur with a passion for changing her industry for the better and delivering world-class products. Amanda is CEO and Founder of Thomson & Scott, voted one of Business Insider’s Coolest People in Food & Drink 2019. She is leading the global shift to delicious alcohol-free drinking with her game-changing Noughty - the first top quality organic, vegan, halal non-alcoholic low sugar sparkling wine. B Corp certified Thomson & Scott is also driving the debate for greater transparency in wine production and labelling. Amanda is passionate about this, and wants consumers to push to know what’s in their wine bottle. To this end, the company produces limited edition no added sugar vegan Champagne, top quality organic and vegan Prosecco alongside its alcohol-free bottle - Noughty. Following (and during) her very successful career as an Arts Broadcaster for the BBC, Thomson had the desire and vision to launch the business. But, that meant moving her young family to Paris, where she studied for her Diploma in Wine at the renowned Le Cordon Bleu School. Just another thing about Amanda is that she always succeeds; at Le Cordon Blue, she was Entrepreneur of the Year 2017 and became an EY Winning Woman. Thomson & Scott now sells in key territories around the world including Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the US. From day one, the company has had many big name fans but it doesn’t use influencers or sponsorship deals to push the brand. Instead it has built smart partnerships with like-minded pioneering brands. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

Worldfavor are an exciting sustainability business based in Stockholm, Sweden on a mission to help founders and business leaders all over the world make more conscious and educated decisions when looking to improve their value and supply chain. Through their digital sustainability hub, they harness the power of huge data sets to allow their partners a transparent, real-time view of their entire value chain and how the decisions they make may impact their chain and ultimately, the planet. From a tiny apartment in Stockholm to where they are today, Worldfavor help more than 20,000 users in more than 60 countries globally make hundreds of high-value and high-impact decisions on a daily basis that help transform the value chain all over the world. Frida Emilsson is a Co-Founder and COO at Worldfavor. As long as she can remember, she wanted to do something that made a positive difference to the world. Although she and her co-founders didn't exactly know what that was, they quickly understood the huge impact - both positive and negative - that corporate businesses have on people, suppliers and other businesses all over the world. When WF is coupled with corporate decision makers who genuinely want to make positive change in their value chain, the Worldfavor platform empowers leaders to make decisions that genuinely help make the world a better place for so many people across the planet. After years of incredibly hard work to gather data and study supply chains globally, what they have built is one of the most powerful digital hubs for supply and value chain the world has ever seen. And they are just getting started! Frida talks us through some of the highs and lows that Founders experience, the good and the bad and also, just what it means to be a successful Leader and Founder. She gives a very open and honest view on what startup life can be like, what to look for when choosing the right investors and as always, so amazing parting advice to founders and startups just getting started with their journey!