Our Operational Team

We bring all of our strengths into every venture. We believe that we as a group bring something really valuable to every company we work with. Together we are stronger!

Ulf Söderström

Ulf Söderström

"Stay curious" Ulf Söderström

I have over 20 years of experience working with internationally successful companies like Scania, Boliden, SCA/Essity and Autoliv/Veoneer. This has given me a strong knowledge of different industries, markets, positions and insight from working with people from different cultural backgrounds. Independent of industry, size or geography all great businesses have one thing in common; You need great people to succeed.

Great people are not necessary overachievers with the best education. To me great people are and remain curious. They want to learn from others and to understand better. They want to innovate and develop, to try new things and new ways and to learn from different cultures. Meeting all these fantastic and curious entrepreneurs on a daily basis is truly living my dream. Our shared knowledge and curiosity to learn from each other will help us create tomorrow’s most successful companies.

Nalle Söderström

Nalle Söderström

"The mental game behind successful execution is the biggest challenge." Nalle Söderström

New York, 2007. I was about to start Mediaplanet from scratch in one of the most competitive markets in the world. I thought I knew exactly what to do and how to do it. What became my biggest challenge was handling the stream of small failures and successes. Keeping the drive, focus and hope for me, for a newly recruited organization, for my family and for everyone else was a daunting task.

Starting a new business is like a twelve-round boxing match but with a new fighter to face in every round. Failures and setbacks will give you new opportunities and new chances to succeed. We became cash flow positive within a year, quickly grew revenue and opened six offices in North America. My family and I ended up staying in the U.S. for ten years.

What I admire most about entrepreneurs isn’t their ability to come up with great ideas, but the mental strength and tenacity to execute them. It is a mental game that requires exceptional strength. In order to succeed you must learn to fail successfully.

Elias Jacobson

Elias Jacobson

"Just do it" Elias Jacobson

I grew up working on our family farm. In the beginning I was watching, studying and learning what the older farmers were doing. When I was old enough my father and his foreman let me try different tasks on my own. They started by showing us, then supervising us and teaching us what was important or dangerous. Eventually I knew the farm and the work by heart, finding my own ways to improve on it.

I apply the same philosophy to our portfolio companies. We know how to help companies in an early stage take the next step. We know what is important and the dangers when you scale a company. A young company will not get the help they need from a couple of hours with an industrial advisor. Discussing IPR and next round strategies is not enough.

From my experience a company needs someone to just do it, so they can see, learn and experience what the next step is all about.

Working this way gives me a sense of fulfilment, helping others take the next step and grow, in what becomes our common journey.

Then and now; 16 investments, two IPOs and three +100 MEUR companies later…

Thomas Karlsson

Thomas Karlsson

"We are in this together" Thomas Karlsson

I am a long-time investment banker but also an entrepreneur. I love numbers and I know the financial markets. But my passion has always been entrepreneurship. Meeting with and talking to successful entrepreneurs, discussing business models and development opportunities is what makes my job fun.

I find myself in the middle and I get enormous satisfaction in being able to translate between entrepreneurs and financiers. When these two worlds meet it gets really exciting.

Many entrepreneurs spend too much time chasing cash, keeping investors happy or trying to secure the next round of financing. This contributes close to nothing when it comes to developing the business, often in a critical phase where every hour of the day, every sales call or R&D meeting can make a difference.

As an investor, byWiT does not invest and disappear, hoping for success and a possible future equity round at a higher valuation. We are in this together with the entrepreneurs. We love to share responsibilities and work loads, making sure that we use all resources where they are most needed and set a long-term financing plan. Every journey will have its ups and downs and working through it together we can secure a strong partnership and reduce stress. We are fully committed to every investment and only by rolling up our sleeves can we secure a higher success rate.

Johan Gorecki

Johan Gorecki

"Innovations and relations" Johan Gorecki

Something magical happens when you connect the right people with the right idea. I have dedicated a great deal of my life and career in search of these innovative ideas. Through my work I have been able to help turn good ideas into great ones. This happens when you find the right partners and the right investors.

I have helped facilitate big deals and worked with fund raising activities on an international level. I have also played an active part in post-investment activities aimed at supporting new businesses by providing base investment and entering non-domestic markets. I have experience working with Fraser, MTG, Bonnier, SEAF, META Group and RNB.

With a long experience I have developed my own set of specialities: Investments, ICT, IT and related industries, transportation, green technology, sustainable innovations, open innovations, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding. My work with byWiT allows me to do what I really love: to use my skills to help grow businesses and ideas.

Ardavan Sahebkar

Ardavan Sahebkar

All about the numbers Ardavan Sahebkar

September 2001, a few months after graduating from high school I decided to start a job and turn my hobby into 9 to 5 by designing interactive websites and multimedia products in the early days of web 2.0. Without prior knowledge and experience, I had to meet with founders and business owners and transform their requirements into tangible, viable digital products in the age of TV and magazines. Shortly after, I began freelancing and changed to complete projects 24/7, also introduced mini CDs to my product offering in order to maximize the profit. But only a year later I faced a big challenge, there were only 24 hours in a day! I spent so many physical hours at work and my lack of experience prevented me from understanding that way of working was not scalable anymore.

Fast forward 20+ years later. After co-founding a startup with an exit and helping 10 different startups with their growth journey, I learned growth has many layers. It starts with the foundation for any business, which is normally about achieving the product and service-market fit. But while building the foundation you should already plan to add the next layers to achieve long term sustainable growth.

I truly believe that you can not hack your way into growth because it is a scientific and measurable approach that is highly data-driven. At byWit we work together with our portfolio companies to implement a customer-centric growth process that test hypothesis, discovers insights, produces results, and increase sales. It’s all about the numbers!

Karl Litterfeldt

Karl Litterfeldt

With good tech, high-performing individuals, people-first culture, and data-driven intelligence, anything is possible. Karl Litterfeldt

When I was 21, I got my dream job as a systems engineer and robot technician at the Karolinska Institutet BioBank. Fresh out of school, young and hungry, I met a super intelligent man on a mission to end mortality from breast cancer by deploying AI to detect early-stage tumors in mammography images. This man inspired me as I saw him thinking outside the box, trying to leverage technology to save lives and make a real impact.

I set out to make myself useful and to support him on his journey. However, I soon realized that my lack of knowledge and experience blocked me, and I subsequently spent years learning with a mission to become a master of technology. While I succeeded in mastering almost every facet of modern tech, unfortunately, I never got the chance to work with him again. Still, my strong commitment to leverage my tech knowledge to solve complex problems and improve people’s lives has been a red thread throughout my career. That, in turn, has allowed me to meet and become friends with other hyper-intelligent and inspiring people, like the man I met early on.

If my journey through life has taught me anything, it is that everything starts and ends with people. If we put human values and people center stage, tech can be the magical enabler of driving positive change and making an impact that matters.

My people-first approach, combined with my interest in AI, machine learning, data, and big tech, has given me the opportunity to work with large and challenging projects like integrating DNA sequencing robots at Karolinska, building global conversion and distribution platforms within video/audio as well as pushing through full-scale machine learning-driven digitization for organizations of all shapes and sizes.

My mantra is that anything is possible with good tech, high-performing individuals, people-first culture, and data-driven intelligence!

Ps. If you want to get me talking, ask about my cats.

Frida Lönnqvist

Frida Lönnqvist

Focus on profitable growth Frida Lönnqvist

In the early days, I was driven to explore the inner workings of companies, analyzing their mechanics from an investor’s perspective. This journey led me to Private Equity, particularly with Segulah Advisor. I dove into deal generation, building business cases, several platform and add-on acquisitions, exits and strategic work with seven portfolio companies. These experiences spanned an array of industries and business scenarios, building a foundation of knowledge.

However, a parallel aspiration emerged – a desire to contribute to long-term growth and profitability from the other perspective, within the operational core of the company in the management team. This led me to the role as CFO at Interflora. During my five years with the company, my focus areas included establishing meticulous profitability analysis, shaping comprehensive business plans, cost optimization, renegotiating key agreements, and reimagining the accounting department. And the hard work payed off, taking Interflora from a 300 msek company to 700+ msek with good profitability. We even achieved the milestone of becoming the first 100-year-old DI Gaselle company and successfully selling the business.

At byWiT, I will continue my focus on profitable growth by blending the insights from the Private Equity sector with my hands-on operational knowledge from my CFO years, channeling my experience in buying and selling companies. I will leverage this combined experience to build and prepare byWiT for a future IPO. Additionally, I am thrilled to operationally work together with all inspiring entrepreneurs in digital growth companies with global potential and economies of scale, to guide them towards profitable growth.

Let’s join forces to transform innovative business concepts into thriving, profit-generating companies.