Category: In English

With those that have had discussion about management, I often say that I recommend reading “The Seven-day weekend”, a book about a Brazilian company that is radically democraticed. When I read that book, I went “wow, this is exactly what I have thought about running a business”. I have however not had the guts to push it all the way, but I still believe it is the right path. Now I saw that the author has done a TED talk, and just watched it. I recommend it, if you want an alternative look at how to live life, and run a company. It is not all gold. But I think it is a very interesting approach. I wish I could be more extreme myself in this.

And I just love a quote like this:

“If you are giving back, you took too much”

I have talked about community building before. Recently I gave a talk at Foo Café about my experience and observations from being part of, and creating, different communities. From volunteer organisations such as CreativeLab, to business communities such as Mindpark and E-commerce Park. But also wider and more organic ones, such as #cphftw, #malmostartups and YEoS. I draw on a lot of different experiences. Recommended for anyone who runs or is an important part of any community.

I was invited as a guest to the Internet Freedom Weekend ’15, held in Gothenburg, to talk about community building. I have never really made a public session about the topic, but it is something I have realized I have worked with a lot – both in my ‘own’ projects, such as Mindpark and CreativeLab, but also as a part of #cphftw and #malmostartups. And I have observed communities and their evolution from the inside, within a wide variety of circumstances, such as Young Entrepreneurs of Sweden, Burning Man and Round Table.

So I collected and distilled some wisdom from the last couple of years, into a presentation of 30 minutes. It was filmed, but is not online yet, but I will try to link to it once it is. I think it went OK – always hard to know the first time you present on a topic how to bring it across the best.

Some of the things I talked about where the difference of starting a community with a strong leader, in contrast to a community that has a large ‘buy-in’, not having one leader but many that believe in the same thing. Both are definitely options that can create good communities, but they require different strategies to prosper. A topic that is very interesting for me.

Last week I was invited to join a small group from the City of Helsingborg that explored inspiration for a new creative meeting spot in the city. The group made a trip to Berlin. As Joakim Jardenberg was a part of that group, a lunch was arranged with Eric Wahlfors from Soundcloud.

Together with Emma and Dimitrij we talked with Eric for an hour about Berlin as a startup city (even thou it probably was a question he had answered too many times already) as well as co-working, entrepreneurship and startup community.

One of the takeaways was the opinion that Rocket Internets and Zalandos IPOs had an unnecessary flaw – that the IPO only made the investors and the three owners rich. If instead key employees, or maybe even all employees, had owned shares, then Berlin would now have 100 or even 1000s of new business angels. Something that would have propelled the citys startup environment in unprecedented ways. A very interesting insight, that I think is important when reflecting about building good communities for startups.

It was also very inspiring to hear Erics opinion that he will make sure Soundcloud does not make a similar ‘mistake’. Great business angels, but even better, great entrepreneurs, are really what builds a community at it’s core.

And really nice for Eric to take the time, from his no doubt extremely busy schedule.