2022 has been a rollercoaster ride for the tech industry. Although no official recession has been announced yet, between the crypto crash, soaring interest rates and massive layoffs, the tech market seems to be in free fall. As Google CEO Sundar Pichai put it in his layoff announcement: “We hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today.” What we should bear in mind though, is that this is not the first time the tech industry is taking a significant tumble. Examples include the dot.com crash in 2000 and the Lehman collapse some years later, which marked the beginning of the 2008 financial crisis. So, what is different this time around? Or is the new crisis just another shake-up of an industry which has grown out of control, with too much greed in the wake?
On 22 March, SwedCham has invited four high-profile Swedish business leaders and investors in Singapore from different fields of the tech industry on our stage to give their views on the current market situation and what their take is on 2023. Let’s hear from:
- Andreas Ehn, angel investor; Spotify’s first employee / CTO responsible for the product and platform architecture as the company took off
- Magnus Ekbom, Managing Director of Nordic Light, which advises institutional investors and governments on strategy, business management & policy and partners growth companies with global ambitions. Co-founder of Lazada
- Nellie Wartoft, Founder and CEO of Tigerhall, a social learning platform which last year had a record breaking year of 559% growth and now boasts 17% of the world’s Fortune100 companies as clients
- Dušan Stojanović, EBAN Angel of the Year in 2013 after three successful exits in 10 days; an early successful investor in the Metaverse NFT gaming space whose focus right now is on AI. Dušan will be the moderator of this session.
Topics which will be covered include, for example, macroeconomic scenarios and impact in SEA, Nordics and Northern Europe; where do you place your bets from an investment point of view; impact of ChatGPT and AI in Web2/Web3. The speakers will also give their view on both Sweden’s and Singapore’s future as tech nations and what it takes today to stay ahead. Given the speed of industry developments, the focus of the talk will without doubt be updated before the event is held…
AGENDA
SPEAKERS
Andreas Ehn
Partner at Approach
Mr Andreas Ehn, Founding CTO of Spotify, Investor, Industrial Advisor at EQT and Partner at Approach. As the first employee and CTO at Spotify, he brought together the world-class tech team that designed and built the platform and product for the music service. Before that he worked for the Swedish online-gaming company Stardoll. Andreas is a board member and angel investor in several companies, and he is frequently hired as an advisor.
Magnus Ekbom
Managing Director of Nordic Light
Mr Magnus Ekbom is the newly appointed Managing Director of Nordic Light. In 2012 he Co-founded the Lazada Group, the leading eCommerce platform in Southeast Asia. With the largest logistics and payment networks in the region, Lazada aims to serve 300 million shoppers by 2030. Since 2016, Lazada has been the Southeast Asia flagship platform of the Alibaba Group, powered by its cutting-edge technology infrastructure. At Lazada, Mr Ekbom has held the roles of Chief Strategy Officer and the CEO of Malaysia Market.
Before founding Lazada, Mr Ekbom held roles such as the Global Venture Development Manager at Rocket, one of the world’s largest and most successful venture capital firms and incubators for online and eCommerce companies. Mr Ekbom graduated with a B.Sc. in Business & Economics from the Stockholm School of Economics.
Dušan Stojanović
Founding Partner of True Global Ventures
A “citizen of the world” with a Swedish passport, Mr Dušan Stojanović was awarded Business Angel of the Year in Europe in 2013 by EBAN (European Business Angel Network)
after having three positive exits within a week, which was previously unheard of in the global angel history.
He was also nominated as one of four Business Angels of the Year in Europe 2009 by EBAN and announced as among FINTECH ASIA 100 Leaders In Asian Fintech in 2016 after moving
in 2014 to Asia.
Solid track record with 15 out of 21 investments fully or partly exited. Now with TGV4+, together with his global investment partners, he is building an Equity fund across 30 cities
investing in 4 main verticals: Technology Infrastructure, Financial Services, AI, Entertainment.
Nellie Wartoft
Founder & CEO of Tigerhall
Nellie Wartoft started as a young entrepreneur in her early teen years in Sweden. After winning several trophies in skeet shooting, Nellie turned her attention to educating the elderly on the internet and digital literacy to improve their qualities of life. This social enterprise was more than a passion and purpose for her – it sowed the seeds of her journey in Social Learning.
At the age of 18, Nellie booked a single ticket to Singapore, to build her career and business in what she refers to as “the most buzzing and happening part of the world”. In her first foray into the corporate world at Michael Page, Nellie rose through the ranks and was the youngest executive in the company to be appointed Practice Lead and become a Top Biller at age 23. She’s placed over 150 executives into Sales and Marketing roles in Fortune 500 companies within the financial, legal, consulting, technology and media sectors.
It was during her time as a recruiter that she spotted a stark skills gap that she was determined to fix. She saw that there was a need to refresh the way business professionals levelled up through actionable insights from industry experts. This led to the launch of Tigerhall in March 2019, a mobile Saas platform for social learning, revolutionizing how professionals learn from one another.
Nellie challenges mass education formats that fail to prepare future leaders for success in the real world. Her vision and execution are taking the corporate world by storm. Tigerhall’s clients include HP, New Relic and BNY Mellon. She’s raised over $10 million in funding from visionary investors such as Monk’s Hill Ventures, Sequoia Capital and the XA Network.
Fuelled by the mission, “where you come from should never get in the way you want to go,” Nellie continues to lead Tigerhall in Fundraising, Sales and BD while scaling the team across
APAC and the U.S.
