Hello you!

Last week I attended a webinar discussing the skills supply for industrial investments in the North of Sweden. This was a webinar hosted by IVA’s (Kungl. Ingenjörsvetenskapsakademin) student council. The attendees included Peter Larsson, a coordinator for social change at company establishments and expansions in Norrbotten and Västerbotten, a Vice-Chancellor at Umeå University, a representative from ABB, students as well as other representatives from IVA. 

The main discussion points were how the skills supply for industrial investments is managed today, as well as how we can get more people to move to smaller cities in Norrbotten and Västerbotten. We discussed the problem of when startups or big industries decide to move to smaller cities, not looking at the workforce and competence in that city. In Sweden we’ve started to see many examples of this in the past few years. For example Skellefteå was not able to meet the demand of Northvolt’s workers, creating shortages in housing and schools. The reason I found this webinar relevant for this course is because we are trying to learn all sides of starting a business, and I’d like to argue that skills supply and worker demand is a very important part of this. 

Allow me to try to retell what I’ve learnt from this webinar. First off, the student council had conducted a survey trying to rank the importance of various factors for when people move to a new city for a job. They came to the conclusion that closeness to family and friends is the number one priority. Followed by salary, closeness to nature, comfortable working hours, working environment and “the feeling that the work makes a positive change for the world”. Nothing groundbreaking (to be honest) but still good to have statistics on. 

Even though these things were the main factors, there were ways to get around them. One way is good infrastructure and easy commuting. Something Norrbotten and Västerbotten lack right now, but have great future aspects of. The other way was a hybrid format. Being able to work from home makes a huge difference, and is something that more and more companies are beginning to offer. Personally, this is something I would appreciate!

Another important lesson learnt is how to get people to stay in the cities. The most efficient way was said to be to capture the students studying at universities. Currently there’s no problem getting people to study in for example Umeå and Luleå but if they don’t get offered internships during their studies, they will most likely move somewhere else after graduation. The internships should not only be offered from big companies, but also from the small local start-ups and businesses, so that all parts of the local clusters thrive. 

In about five years, cities like Skellefteå are expected to be independent. Some workers from Northvolt will probably have created their own start-ups, built families or in some other way contributed to the city becoming self-sufficient. Peter Larsson estimated that when there are 100 000 residents in Skellefteå the city will work for itself, but before reaching such a number, it is required to market and target people to convince them living there is worth it. 

I think we all know, by now, that there are many factors to consider when starting a company. Seemingly, there has to be a balance between what the companies are willing to pay and do for their employees for moving, as well as the benefits for the company to choose that place. We’ve learnt a lot from doing the marketplace simulation for these last quarter, however these factors have not really been discussed. Perhaps the skill supply to new geographical locations could even have been a relevant factor to include in the Human resource management in the simulation. What do you guys think? Feel free to leave a comment! 

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Yesterday, I went to an event that completely re-evaluted student-company meetups for me. Organized by Drivhuset, the gathering brought together Uppsala’s most innovative start-ups was with students and alumni.

The event was called “TeamUp 2022” and it took place here:

It took place on a web-based platform called Gather Town – an online world where each attendant participated virtually through controlling a little pixelated character. It looked like games like Habbo and Blipville. When signing into the platform I could customize the appearance of my character and its clothes. I tried to make him look like me but added a pair of oculus rift goggles, because why not.

Then in the world I could walk around as my character approaching other people’s characters, which was interesting. When my character was next to another character our live videos and microphones was shared between each other in order mimic a real person to person talk. We could talk and see each other like in face-2-face. This was cool.

At this event there was a ton of startups looking for talents like software developers, data scientists, UX-designers, marketing, business developer as well as engineers and they offered everything from thesis work to co-founder positions. This made me realize that there is a lot of opportunities for us industrial engineering and management students out there – we just have to look up a bit from our studies.

As I virtually strolled around in the hustle and bustle, I came across my fellow classmate @Alexander Sundquist who was also astounded by this computer-generated meetup.

Together, we talked to Brandon who is doing his thesis work at the startup NitroCapt. NitroCapt adress the agriculture challenge of Artificial nitrogen fertilizer production today accounting for close to 2% of global CO2 emissions, and being a major emission source of agriculture. Their solution is a 100% fossil-free and emission-free nitrogen fixation where air and water are the only raw materials. They were looking for competencies like business developers and industrial engineers to expand their business and production – an impressive journey ahead.

So, let’s round up this post with two key takeaways from my experience at the event:

  • this was an interesting and innovative way of meeting up online. I’m curious to see how the meetup event solutions evolve in the future
  • there is a colossal amount of innovative startup ideas out there. If you want to try working in a startup now during the studies, I would really recommend looking into startups in Uppsala. Reach out to Drivhuset or UIC for more info.

To summarize, this was a great event with lots of interesting companies and students. I’m glad I went and think I’ll go next year again.

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For the last four summers, I’ve worked as a sailing instructor at KSSS. It is a challenging work in many ways, both physically and mentally, and demands constant reflection of one’s role as a leader and co-worker. Last weekend, I attended a two-day course KSSS hosted about leadership, mental health and self-realization.

Starting Saturday at 8:45, we met at Klubbarnas Klubb at Beckholmen. We talked about summer coming up, what weeks all of us will be working and the plans we had for Valborg. After mingling and a presentation by Stefan Rahm (Club Director at KSSS, board member of the Swedish Olympic Committee), we began talking about ourselves as leaders. What kind of leader am I? How do I actually want to be perceived by my subordinates? The presenter of the hour, Thomas Gross (rhetorician, leadership consultant and sailor), claimed that the answers to those questions are as many as there are leaders. Because each and every one of us is different, our roles as leaders are and should be unique. I, for one, prefer bosses with a great ability to listen and negotiate with its employees. Some of my peers may like more hierarchical and determined leaders. The thing that every leader should have in common though, according to Thomas Gross, is the skill to be personal without being private. Getting to know the way your colleagues want to operate, their preferences and personalities as well as mediating your own is the key to successful leadership. If you’re able to master this, you can provide exactly what your organization need both individually and as a group.

Later on, we had discussions about mental health. During my years with KSSS, I’ve worked with colleagues suffering and also met countless of children with special needs and mental health issues in different forms. It is a huge burden to carry when someone confides in you with personal information like that, and it is easy to take on too much responsibility for their sake. I’m not educated in any way about mental health, so I can’t and shouldn’t rely on my ability to heal or help someone suffering. That is something I will try to remember, and remind myself that the only thing I actually can do is to listen, comfort and encourage them to seek help. We also talked about things that improve one’s own mental health. Some of those things were already known to me, like exercising regularly and sleeping enough. One thing I will try to implement more in my everyday life though is to lower the expectations I set on myself. I need to prioritize my life better and accept that not everything can be done perfectly.

After a good night’s sleep, I returned on Sunday. This day was spent discussing improvements we could do to our organization and how certain situations need to be handled. The majority of the day though was spent discussing and planning exercises to do during summer to further improve our leadership skills. Like, what do I as a boss do when one of my subordinates is slacking? The right answer to that depends on what kind of leader you’re asking, but one of the suggestions was to improve your own presence around that person to nudge them into the right direction subconsciously.

This course taught be very much about myself, personally and professionally, and my fellow coworkers. It broadened my understanding of the meaning of being a leader and gave my a lot to think about. Reflecting about what kind of leader I want to be, and how exactly I become that person, is something I will do while preparing for this summer’s work.

RS Quest
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Today, countless tech-startups are focused on building digital platforms and solutions and at the center stage of these ventures are algorithms. These algorithms facilitate millions or even billions of decisions every day – ranging from search-engine algorithms deciding what shows up on your Google-search to personal-preference algorithms giving suggestions on what clothes you should buy. In this way, they make life a lot easier for you. But many people still have a negative association to algorithms and in this blog post, I will explore the reasons behind this distrust and what is being done to prevent it.

Before I continue, it’s important to highlight that this blog post is largely based on the tech-startup Wolt’s “Algorithmic Transparency Report” (Wolt, 2022). It sparked my interest and gave me the idea to write this blog post.

Back to the point, the distrust of algorithms is mainly due to their lack of transparency (which is stated in the report mentioned above). People are generally unaware of how algorithms work and what role they play in the daily workings of today’s companies. For some, the idea that an algorithm can tell what your favorite type of food is or what concert you are most likely to go to this summer is seen as scary. It’s almost as if someone else is deciding these things for you, isn’t it?

This is why it’s important to talk about and promote algorithmic transparency, so that people can understand what algorithms are and how they are implemented by the majority of today’s companies. In the report by Wolt, there is a reference to a draft on digital rights by the European Commission, stating that:

Everyone should be empowered to
benefit from the advantages of artificial
intelligence by making their own, informed
choices
in the digital environment, while
being protected against risks and harm
to one’s health, safety and fundamental
rights.”

I put “making their own, informed choices” in bold because it relates to algorithmic transparency and the whole essence of this blog post. The only way we can reassure people of the safety and benefits of algorithms is by being transparent. Explaining why we use algorithms, when they are used and also when they aren’t used. It’s really as important to know that when an algorithm is suggesting the best search result for you, the same algorithm is also hiding other results from you.

In the end, the only way we can build an equal, fair and democratic digital environment is when people are aware of algorithms and their role in facilitating countless decisions every day. Only by being informed can people understand their own presence in the digital world and how algorithms use your activity to infer things about you.

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This evening me and Emilia Björnfot attended The UK Startup Conference 2022, this was a 2-hour event with 22 different speakers all talking about startups.

The event talked a lot about the UK startup scene which was very interesting since I’ve mostly read about the Swedish start up scene. They mentioned the big government support for the startups in UK following the pandemic, they went on to mention that this is something that all major startup areas today have one thing in common: they all had large government support.

Another interesting thing they mentioned was how hard it is for startups to find their first funding and the need of the first investment. This was interesting since we had a visit from Emma Buratovic from Hidden Dreams this week who works with these types of investments and talked in more detail about the process of choosing which ideas to invest in.

Finally they also mention how important it is that opening a bank account is relatively easy which was interesting since I was what Serdar shared on LinkedIn, regarding how hard it is to open a bank account in Sweden. 

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Today I attended the UK Startup Conference 2022 along with Svea Fredriksson. The event was held via zoom, therefore we decided to attend together to enable a discussion in order to gain a deeper understanding.

The funding has increased for startups and there are million startups in the UK at the moment. They started off by talking a bit about why the UK is such a good place for startups. According to the speakers the UK offers a benign environment that supports startups with good networks that give support to startups. They have a good regulating framework especially around data and so on, which guide the startups. It is also very easy to open bank accounts. I wanted to compare this to Sweden where it is apparently (according to Serdar) quite hard for foreigners to open bank accounts. The process of actually registering a business on the other hand is, according to Drivhuset, relatively simple.  

Lastly it is also a very ”mixed” or diverse country where many different perspectives meet and mix. This is a very important point, as different perspectives, I belive, can find different hidden possibilities.

When asked about interesting sectors to look out for is fintech as well as lawtech. They referred to the excellent and world-class Universities which help strengthen that platform in the UK. This is really interesting, showing how the whole society acts as the basis for how the startup market will look like and how important it is to not only work with investment opportunities, but also have a well functioning society.

Next, Valeria Vahorovska talked a bit about one of the challenges about startups. She talked about priorities and balancing the group. This I believe resonates very well with the challenges we are facing in class. Our group works very well, but everyone has quite a big workload and trying to prioritize can always be difficult. 

Some other founders also talked about scalability. They talk about very early understanding the customers in order to attain the reach they want through the optimal value proposition. They also talked about always iterating and always improving. My main takeaways from this is that you are never done, you constantly have to convince your customers 

All in all, the conference was very insightful and there were an abundance of speakers who all shared their views. I’m happy I attended!

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Hi everyone!

Yesterday I participated in an event at a company that mainly operates within the niche of digital management consultancy. In less ambiguous terms, this means that they primarily help companies grow their digital presence as well as their online sales success. Practically, this includes work such as UI/UX tweaks to increase conversion rates and order volume, SEO, increasing the amount of visitors through Google Ads and similar services, etc. 

This particular event was centered around digital growth strategies and providing a general overview of the primary areas within that. While this perhaps isn’t strictly within the realms of startup and entrepreneurship, I thought that I’d share a summary of what was presented as developing these skills and understanding the area better may still be highly relevant and applicable when trying to develop and grow a small company or startup dependent on an online presence. Within this text I’ve bolded some key words, highlighting their significance within a digital growth strategy.

To begin with, a digital growth strategy is commonly divided into smaller and more tangible parts by describing transactions through a simple equation:

Offering + Traffic + Conversion = Transactions

The three first parts make up the main topics that I’ve written about below. By choosing to improve one, or several, of these, the transaction volume should increase, meaning higher revenue. 

Offering

The most essential part of a company’s offering is developing a well-thought out value proposition. A value proposition should be a statement summarizing why a customer should choose your product or service, instead of that of a competitor. Initial development of a value proposition can be through an outside-in view, where potential customers are first identified, then their needs are mapped to support a hypothesis on how to create value by addressing these customer needs. By using an inside-out view instead, the analysis is inverted and starts with value creation.

Following this, customer groups should be segmented based on common attributes that define a need for a different type of customer-company relationship. It should also be known what customer group is the most important, as well as if other stakeholders need to be adressed. 

The information from this customer mapping process should then be used to identify how your company creates value by addressing the customer needs. In markets with heavy competition, core value drivers and differentiating aspects should also be thought-out in order to coordinate these with the correct customer groups.

The single most important point of the offering and above paragraphs is making sure that the company’s value offering is aligned with actual customer needs.

Traffic Acquisition

Traffic can be divided into two main categories, organic or paid. Organic traffic is composed of people visiting the site through non-paid sources, e.g. a “normal” Google search or visiting the website url directly. Paid traffic contains website traffic from paid sources such as ads, or placements on other websites. 

Increasing the organic traffic is usually done through what’s referred to as SEO, Search Engine Optimization. Primarily, SEO focuses on improving the actual website content, the foundation and UX, as well as external links. Some perks of using SEO is that it usually brings good ROI as well as organic traffic being the majority of web traffic. 

The customer journey is usually divided into four stages, with the primary internal goals below.

  1. See
  • Create brand awareness, create broad and emotional connection
  1. Think
  • Engage and drive relevant traffic
  1. Do
  • Generate action and profit (conversions)
  1. Care
  • Re-engage customers (create loyalty)

When tasked with improving this part of the digital experience within a project, this company usually work in the order of:

  1. Current state analysis
    1. Define a starting point using available metrics
  2. Identify improvement areas
    1. Simultaneously, identify quick wins that can be implemented immediately
  3. Formulate a tactical growth plan
  4. Implementation support

In the beginning, work also centers around the key question “How can client X increase traffic and conversions through channel Y?”.

Finally, it’s important to note that using marketing channels can be divided into push or pull activities, depending on the platform and type of ad.

  • Push marketing
    • Try to create an interest in your brand/product
    • E.g. platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook etc.
  • Pull marketing
    • Try to “catch” customers that are already interested in your product/a similar one
    • E.g. specific search terms ads (Google, Yahoo, etc.), customized embedded ads.

Conversions

This company usually works with another company that specializes in CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) that usually assists in projects needing this type of work. Basically, they focus on tracking digital footprints in order to investigate customer behaviour and where they “bounce” (choose to exit the website), convert, and do other things of interest. Using this data they detail a funnel from how a potentially interested person leads to a fulfilled order, identify which part has the highest bounce rate, and then start addressing that specific section of the website responsible. 

The data supporting their analysis usually stems from Google Analytics, click maps, scroll maps, user session replays, etc. Sometimes, exit intent polls are implemented on a website in order to ask users bouncing how their experience could’ve been improved.

A final thing mentioned on this part was that Cialdini’s 6 Principles of Persuasion can be used very effectively when implemented in website design and CRO. These principles may seem basic and somewhat obvious, but actually implementing them in a skillful way commonly yields highly noticeable results in terms of increasing conversion rates.

Unfortunately I didn’t get any good pictures from this event due to me sitting somewhat far back in the room.

I hope you found my post insightful, thank you for reading!

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Hello guys,

Last Tuesday I attended The Nordic Startups Conference 2022, a webinar with a bunch of speakers with different backgrounds in startups, scaleups and venture capital. It was indeed an interesting event, and I would therefore like to share some key takeaways from the event, below. Please feel free to discuss and share your thoughts.

  • Startups are really on a rise in Finland. There are a lot of angel investors and venture capital looking for scalable tech-driven startups in the Finnish region in particular.
  • When evaluating potential investments and startup fundings, it often boils down to market, team and traction. I will evaluate further:
    • Market size is an important aspect and consists of the total adressable market, other players (competition and synergies) and if there is an opportunity to grow and win market shares.
    • The team is an important factor when making an investment decision. This is because entrepreneurship and execution come down to the people, and their competencies and ability to accomplish things. People aren’t an organization’s most important asset, but the right people are.
    • Traction is the first thing that are taken into consideration when evaluating a business from an investor’s perspective. A solid business idea should not “need” capital, since they have found a product-market fit. In that case, the business is scalable, profitable and has recurring revenues.
  • Traction triumphs product. A great product is great, but without a demand, it won’t be for much use. Therefore, a startup founder must put demand first, and product second, and start building product after finding product-market fit.
  • As well as business in general, a startup need to articulate a clear and concise mission, that clarifies its value proposition and answer the question “how is the product useful for people, and is it a game changer?”

I enjoyed attending the conference, and I hope that you can find great value in the points listed above. Take care!

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The 12th of april was an active day. For one, I attended a zoom-event, hosted by Drivhuset, about how to start a business. The speaker gave some “soft” tips on how to start your business, like how to find a direction, how to come up with an ide etc. But there were also a lot of practical tips on how to actually register at Skatteverket or how to actually externalize your passion or idea. I found the early stages most interesting and will be going through some of what I learned during this event. 





The event was very linear and brought the listener along for the journey of starting a business and it started with the idea. One thing that was mentioned and underlined was effectuation and starting with what you have – a concept we have previously studied. The concept of the opportunity map was explained and they also pressed that you have to be agile and not expect it to go smoth and as expected – things change. 

Picture from a event by Drivhuset on how to start your business.

The steps that followed were finding a target group, learning from them and loop! They discussed the importance of connecting and receiving feedback from target groups very early so as to not waste time and money on developing an idea that no one wants nor needs. The next step was prototyping and again, this has to be done early in order to avoid extra costs. They also talked about using a lean map.

Some pictures from Drivhuset event. These are screenshots from their power point, and the designs are by them.

Then they went into specifics on registering and taxes etc. 

My take away from this event was that I had already heard this from my teachers and I already knew this. I did however feel that this event put it in a more tangible way whereas in lectures I haven’t felt that this is information I may use myself rather than something that others have used. 

Right after this zoom-event, I went to Accigos office in Stockholm with I-sektionen. They had organized an interesting night where we got to learn more about Accigo and mingle with the cofounder and some coworkers. I found it interesting listening to the cofounder briefly talk about his journey wanting to be a CEO but not really wanting to take a huge risk and start something completely new. Accigo was founded when the sister company Centigo already existed. The founder also talked a bit about how he stepped back as vice CEO, wanting to eradicate the traditional organizational structure of having a distinct management team and giving more responsibility to the employees. 

It was nice listening to Drivhuset and learning tips on how to start your own business and then hearing someone talk about their actual journey. 

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On Friday 15th of November the competition “Cre8 the future” took place at Jernkontoret’s facilities in Kungsträdgården, Stockholm. Jernkontoret is the branch organization of the Swedish steel industry and they announce each year the “Framtidsstipendium” where three teams out of eight get to share a huge price sum. The attending teams are given a case in which the students are to work with for three hours and then pitch the solution for five minutes towards a panel of judges from the steel industry.

Loggor Cre8, Jernkontoret, KAU

This year it was Höganäs that presented a case that they wanted a creative solution for. The problem is that Höganäs has the ambition to produce steel in a more sustainable way but that the subtractors don’t find it incentive enough to buy sustainable steel that is more expensive but does the same job. How are we going to create value for sustainable steel? Value in this context didn’t have to be economical, but could also be social or environmental e.g.

Bildresultat för höganäs logo

My team and I were deployed in the CEO’s office (the fanciest office I have ever seen) where we struggled with the case for three hours. It was so much fun that we totally lost the perception of time and in the end, we did not have time to practice the pitch even once. All we had time to do was to divide the pitch into topics and just freestyle the rest. The minutes before the pitch was some of the worst that I have ever experienced, and suddenly we were standing in front of the judges and a camera. Five minutes went by and suddenly we were standing out in the waiting hall again. I couldn’t tell whether the pitch was any good or if the judges liked it or not. All we could do now was wait for the winner announcement.

A screenshot from the pitch that was live-streamed.

The third place was announced and then the second, and all we wanted to do was to leave and take a drink somewhere. One of the judges then started to read the motivation for the first place position and I reluctantly started to recognize them. And then it happened, our team name popped up on the screen and we had won. It was completely unbelievable.

When I eventually came to my senses the first thing I thought about was how grateful I was for the School of Entrepreneurship (or the School of Serdar) that first of all encouraged me to sign up for this competition, but also taught me and my teammates to think in the way of entrepreneurs and how to approach problems like this, and maybe most of all how to present a good pitch. Good times.

XOXO
Team Future Industeels

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