Finn Persson
”Real skiers don’t have real jobs”
This was the motto among our group of young ski guides in Chamonix-Mont Blanc, in the early 1990s. I like to think I have stayed true to it ever since.
Being a management consultant and partner at McKinsey & Co in the telecoms, IT and Media sector throughout the formative years of the mobile and internet revolution was surreal. I started out with the launch of the first digital mobile network and a colleague mentioning “Have you seen this thing Mosaic…?”. Almost 10 years later, it was the early days of the mobile internet. This was a unique period that will be remembered in the history records. I am humbly proud to have served companies who thrived on the transformative changes and successfully grew their business into industry leadership positions that they still retain.
Next, went into the world of the young, new, and innovative technology companies. I got an opportunity to manage a venture portfolio that offered a diverse experience – closing down or divesting a number of companies that couldn’t make it; supporting some great ventures that still failed to make it, for good and bad reasons; and being a part of some real successes. Marratech has a particular place in my heart, with a great technology team and a product far ahead of its time. The team and the investors really struggled for a number of years, but the company ended up being acquired by Google and continues to have an impact today as the Google Meet platform and the WebRTC standard.
However, I saw very exciting opportunities in the Nordic market and was keen to build a new early-stage venture portfolio. I was lucky to find Erik and Mats, and together we began our journey with Spintop.
I am an engineer by training and have a particular appetite for communications technology and enterprise software. My keen interest in practicing endurance sports has helped me recognize the time and effort required to build a successful early- stage technology company.
The team members at Spintop have quite different backgrounds and personalities, while at the same time being like-minded and like-hearted. I am very excited about what we do at Spintop; certainly anything but a real job.
And what about the skiing part? I spend as much of my leisure time as I can in the mountains going off-piste with my kids, ski-touring faraway summits and trail- running throughout the spring-to-fall season. Very pleased to be without a “real job” and in spirit still a “real skier”.
Education: MSc Engineering Physics, Lund Institute of Technology.