Ken Villum Klausen

Spotify is shuffling its leadership playlist. Founder Daniel Ek is stepping down as CEO of the music streaming giant after 19 years. Instead, he will become executive chair of the company. Alex Norstrom and Gustav Söderström will step up to fill his position, as co-CEOs – a leadership duo replacing the solo artist. Ek has said the change “simply matches titles to how we already operate”. It’s never easy for the founder to relinquish the CEO title, even if Ek says he will remain “deeply involved”, working on long-term strategy. On the one hand, Ek must be tired. Over the course of nearly two decades he has fought to build his global, billion-dollar business. He had to do it in the face of stiff competition from Apple. It was believed it had a near-monopoly on music streaming through iTunes. He waged a long campaign to challenge that assumption. It paid huge dividends. The final test of a great founder and leader, in many ways, is to choose his or her successor. Ben Francis MBE hired his replacement as CEO at Gymshark in 2015 after 3 years. I waited at Homeserve for 8 years before replacing myself as UK CEO. My success at Homeserve came from hiring great CEOs for each of our 10 countries and a great CEO for them to work for, when I ended up with too many direct reports. Founders are great at creating businesses, copying and pivoting until they get the right model and start growing. (Exactly what Ek did. Music streaming platforms were not a completely original idea. But he managed to make a standout product and executed it brilliantly.) My advice in these succession situations, when the founder steps away, is to hire a proven CEO with the right cultural fit to work with the founder to achieve exponential growth with fewer mistakes. It looks like Ek has built the right leadership playlist to do this. And he’s been CEO at the company he created for nearly two decades – few pop stars can sustain a career that long!

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Norway’s $1.8T sovereign wealth fund is saving 213,000 hours every year with AI. How? They tapped into their enterprise data on Snowflake, integrated Anthropic’s Claude, and made AI proficiency non-negotiable—backed by real training, enablement, and leadership conviction. This is what enterprise AI looks like in action. 👉 https://lnkd.in/gtFrcScv

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First instinct is to look at VC or PE to raise capital. But there is another path → Family Offices And Denmark’s ecosystem is quite unique. It's home to Maersk, the world’s second-largest shipping company. Founded in 1904 and still family-controlled today. A living example of how Danish business culture values generational thinking and operational depth. So some of the most interesting conversations we’ve had in the Nordics weren’t with fund managers. They were with families who built shipping companies, clean energy platforms, or industrial tech. And now they want to back the next generation of entrepreneurs. But here’s the nuance: → Danish family offices often move slower than institutional capital → They care more about trust and relationship than your pitch deck → And they often want strategic proximity to the business they invest in Good news if you’re building in B2B tech, sustainability, industrial automation, or logistics… You might be closer to deep and patient capital than you think. Of course, you'll have to speak their language. They care less about multiples. And more about: Durability, efficiency, and long-term value creation. The upside is that they bring more to the table than just capital. ✔ Long time horizons (with no fund cycles) ✔ Deep operational experience ✔ Cross-border industrial roots Looking for a partner to secure strategic capital? Feel free to reach out: https://t2m.io/i5invest 𝐖𝐡𝐨 𝐢𝐬 i5invest: We are a corporate development firm with access to 150K+ top decision-makers in Strategy, Business Development, and M&A. We provide innovative tech founders with insights, expertise, and access to our network to take their companies to the next level. #growth #tech #strategy #startups #artificialintelligence Sources: Dealroom.co, LinkedIn Company Pages, and Public Data

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If I had to start a new business tomorrow, I’d still choose a Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) model even with rising ad costs and platform fees. Why? Because it’s still the fastest way to prove demand, build a loyal customer base, and control your brand narrative without burning millions upfront. When done right, D2C can take you from £0 to £500k in 12 months and I’ve seen brands hit £5M+ in 3 years just by nailing one hero product and owning their customer journey. Here’s what makes it powerful: ✅ Lower setup cost, faster learning curve You can launch lean, test pricing, creatives, and messaging directly with customers, and pivot instantly based on real feedback. ✅ Full control of the brand experience From ads to unboxing, every touchpoint screams you. That’s how brands create loyalty that can push repeat purchase rates above 40%. ✅ Goldmine of customer data You know exactly who buys, why they buy, and when they come back. That data isn’t just for ads; it shapes product development and inventory planning. ✅ Retail becomes an option, not a gamble Many D2C founders expand into retail only after proving demand which means stronger negotiations and higher margins. The real play? Use D2C to hit your first £1M–£2M in revenue, perfect your product-market fit, then scale into retail or wholesale once you’ve built a brand customers already love. If I were starting fresh, this would be my blueprint for success: Start D2C. Move fast. Learn faster. Build a brand customers can’t stop talking about. #d2c #startup

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Furry Family went from a -5.8M SEK loss to +360K profit in 12 months. Their product didn't change. Their creative system did. When they came to us, they were stuck in the same trap most DTC brands fall into: One internal marketer trying to do everything — Meta, Google, creative direction, execution. They were launching maybe 3-5 static ads per month. Ad fatigue was killing performance. Growth had flatlined. Here's what we did: We took full ownership of their creative production and built them a system designed for volume, diversity, and speed. → Launching 50+ net-new ads every month → Tested across UGC, statics, and high-production video → Mapped every creative to awareness stages (problem-aware to most-aware) → Built a feedback loop: insights → creative briefs → execution → data → repeat We didn't just make more. We made smarter. Every ad was guided by customer research, pain points we uncovered in reviews, and angles that hadn't been explored yet. We killed losers fast and doubled down on what worked. On top of that, we restructured their Google Ads to focus on high-intent, net-new customers — excluding brand traffic and pushing high-margin SKUs through optimized product feeds. The results? +35% more customers at the same CPA +18% revenue growth (31.2M → 36.8M SEK) From -5.8M loss to profitability Many thanks to building a creative engine that could keep up with demand — and feed the algorithm what it needs to scale. Most brands think they need a bigger budget. What they actually need is a system that turns insights into ads, fast.

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🇫🇮 2025 has already brought several startup exits in Finland, showing that good stories don’t always need big numbers. From resale fashion apps to employee experience tools, Finnish founders are quietly delivering interesting wins across very different sectors. 👉 So far in 2025, Finland has recorded the following exits: • Zadaa (acquired by Bought) → acquired by Bought • Vibemetrics → acquired by Innolink • Axitare Oy → acquired by Vaaka Partners • netflea → acquired by Bought 📊 For comparison, Estonia and Lithuania each celebrated 9 exits this year. Finland’s list is shorter, but it tells its own story: fewer deals, yes - but all four acquisitions were made by Finnish buyers. That’s an interesting signal of strong local appetite and confidence in homegrown innovation. 👏 Congrats to the founders behind these exits. Every milestone matters, and together they show that Finland continues to produce companies that buyers value and want to invest in. 🚀 At Superhero Capital, we see these wins as signs of an ecosystem maturing in its own rhythm - steady, creative, and resilient. And as always, the most exciting stories may still be the ones yet to come.

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