Tattletech Hot Seat with Ola Forsstrom, CEO, Ludesi

Twitter can be great, just great. It can also be a pain in the ass to keep up with. But sometimes it brings a lot of joy to our lives when we meet people we normally would never get to meet because this big blue marble we live on is pretty big. It brings us closer to people who share the same values that we have and we find ourselves drawn to the philosophy they subscribe to. We find their tweets to be informational, inspirational, positive and downright savvy. This happened when we met Ola Forsstrom through his insight on being a sportsmen turned entrepreneur. We look forward to seeing what he is working on. We anticipate his insight on health, sports and using technology to facilitate better healthcare. So we give you Mr. Ola Forsstrom, CEO, Ludesi. You can follow him on Twitter here and become happy like we did.

Tattletech: I see you recently Tweeted the Marine Core Fitness challenge, what is your best on that and   how often do you do that?

Ola Forsstrom: Ha ha! There are several different physical tests for Marines, but the one you refer to is probably the sequence of pull-ups, crunches and a 3-mile run. You do the exercises one after the other, in the order mentioned. The maximum score is 100 points and that requires that you do 20 pull-ups, 100 crunches and run three miles in 18 minutes. I can do that, so yes, my score would be 100. I work out regularly, but I don’t take this particular test very often. After a while it’s not that challenging anymore.

TT: As a former professional athlete turned entrepreneur, what made you decide to go into bio tech rather than the fun-loving Web track?

OO: A mere coincidence – I had a friend who was working in this field and we set out to solve certain problems he was facing in his research. At the time I was on rehab from a knee injury, so I had some time over. Before I knew it we had won a business plan competition and I decided on a career shift.

TT: Morten Lund in Denmark is also former professional handball player turned entrepreneur, why do you think guys like you are driven to entrepreneurship?

OO: No idea. Guess there are also lots of handball players who never go into entrepreneurship, so the correlation is in fact probably quite weak. But in regards to who starts companies… I think there are certain traits displayed by the few who “do” compared to the many who “talk”. One of those traits is confidence, another is willingness to create your own reality. A third is taking responsibility, for one’s life, and for the outcomes one is generating. I am convinced professional competitive sports have been of much greater benefit to me than any other education. It’s all about the beliefs, attitudes and inner dialogue you have when dealing with the realities of running a startup.

TT: Why is handball so popular in Scandanavia, are you weekend warrior?

OO: I guess we have tradition here… Sweden was dominating world handball in the 90s. But now countries like France, Spain, or Germany have taken over a bit more. I’m not following it very much unfortunately. And no, I’m not a weekend warrior… I believe an active lifestyle is a key component in my life and not a side-kick.

TT: Your current company is Ludesi develops 2D gel image analysis solutions for proteomics. Now, proteomics is the large-scale study of proteins – so what sort of protein analysis does the RedFin product accomplish?

OO: The REDFIN system allows proteomics researchers to perform analysis of images from two-dimensional gel electrophoresis in a very easy way. The system has won a price as Emerging Technology of the Year on the global proteomics market, and it is the best way to work with this particular type of analysis. Our customers work with the most varying things. Some study cancer, some study environmental effects in salmon. Some work on developing better crops and plants for the future. Others study brain trauma in soldiers. Yet others develop better yoghurts… So, protein analysis technologies are used across a very wide spectrum of disciplines.

TT: Biotechnology and genetic engineering - those seem to be the types of scientists around the world that are using Ludesi’s analysis solutions, how will your product further their research and facilitate future discoveries?

OO: Primarily by increasing the reliability and depth of the results. We have developed a metric for quality control of this type of data that can be used to vastly improve the reliability of the results. And at the end of the day, that’s what pushes science forward: results.

TT: You were in the Top 20 list of Web Entrepreneurs in Sweden this year, why do you think you made that list?

OO: I can only guess. We have penetrated a very competitive high-tech, niche market in biotech/bioinformatics that, traditionally, has been dominated by global multi-billion dollar companies. We have presented a new type of technology and a new business model that has now started to change this market. I guess that is quite impressive for a small Swedish startup. Maybe that’s why.

TT: As the population in the western world ages and the median age rises, what role does proteomics play in making their lives better or longer?

OO: So far proteomics hasn’t played such a significant role in this, but it has great potential to do so. Very simplistically you could say that you can get a snapshot of a person’s health state by looking at his/her protein content. Whilst a person’s genes are static over the lifetime, the proteins constantly change depending on stimuli. So it is in theory possible to monitor a person’s state of health quite accurately by looking at proteins, long before that person has developed any classical symptoms of disease. At the same time, this is a great tool for behavioral changes, as any lifestyle changes will be reflected in the protein composition in the body. So all in all, certain types of proteomics could come to play a major role in prevention and keeping people healthy. One thing is for sure, the paradigm of treating people when they get ill will have to change to a paradigm that says “keeping people healthy”. We can’t afford the alternative. The only beneficiaries of having a population that is chronically ill are the pharmaceutical companies whose ideal customer is a chronically ill young person. But for the rest of us, it makes more sense to keep people healthy.

TT: So we really like @maydbs, we saw you at a concert with her on Twitter – what’s she really like in person?

OO: Maisa is a tremendously energetic and outgoing person, just as positive and driven in person as she comes across over Twitter or other social media! She knows a lot of people everywhere and has always something going on. She’s just fun to be around. Last night she had a private little war with some wasps at an outdoor restaurant here in Malmo, it was quite entertaining! And I know she will kick my ass big time for saying this!

Tags: Entrepreneur, Ludesi, Morten Lund, Ola Forsstrom, Proteomics

Super cool – on the spot disease detection – with a cell phone!

Wow! What a story today in Wired Magazine — using a cell phone to do on the spot disease detection! Scientists at UCLA who must love their job in a McGyver like project – used only an LED, plastic light filter and some wires have modded a cellphone into a portable blood tester capable of detecting HIV, malaria and other illnesses.

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European Venture Summit comes to an end, sadly

e-Unlimited proved again that it is serious about bringing together the venture and entrepreneurs of Europe at this two day event. Completely focused on letting VCs, angel investors and start ups in biotech, ICT, clean tech  intensely mingle and discuss the possibility of investment and the dream of having their company make it big. The Summit was a constant hive of activity and even Tattletech barely had time for a cup of coffee bouncing from meeting to meeting.

Despite the statistics and the mood of markets, there was no lack of entrepreneurial spirit and positive outlook at this event. Even from two start ups who were just looking for seed money to the Swedish mobile language learning tool seeking 10 million, both VCs and start ups were talking business.

Some highlights included the amazingly and oddly interesting commentary by the keynote  Dr. Thomas Meyer an Economist for Deutsche Bank Research who, despite his youthful looks, talked about an aspect of economics that held everyone’s attention – the economic benefit of start ups to this particular economy in terms of keeping a fire burning in the business cycle – making the market more flexible and rich in diversity.

Charles Van Costenobel, Director Eurecan and Ester Palomar, Eurecan Cataluna

The Summit also had a large contingency of Spanish start ups as part of the work with Eurocan – led by the dynamic duo Charles Van Costenobel and Ester Palomar.  OK  first we have to just point out that they are with Caja Navarra which is Civic Banking – yes you heard right – Civic Banking a new and truly pioneering concept in banking.

CEO Davorin Gurnick and COO Dennis Gurnick, Intera

Tattletech’s favorites at the Summit were the Slovenian Intera rolling out software as a service for the Enterprise in the emerging Central European markets as well as German markets. Their competitive advantage lies in their business model and approach to market as well as the platform focusing on social media tools for the enterprise. We also liked IRL, led by a young and dynamic team out of Amsterdam. They had the business model right when it came to location based social networking because they also had a platform for corporations as well. (video to come!) They were passionate about their product but also extremely realistic and cautious about investment and how to use that money to correctly roll to market. Also, Yasmo LIve which is a mobile application for networking at conferences – in other words lets you know who is there so you can get some business done and provides a revenue producing opportunity for conference organizers and promotional options for sponsors. The company was led by the only female entrepreneur at the event, Areti Kampyli.

As we said before, Spain seemed to dominate and three other favorite Spanish start ups were Intelliglass which improves energy efficiency of buildings; La Cupula Music,  founded by another Dutchman, is focused on the digital distribution of music for the Spanish and Latin America markets; Zentym led by the one of the most dynamic CFO’s we have ever met – Jaime Pont who is going to revolutionize and make profitable (he claims) advertising models, distribution and relevancy for MobileTV, and then of course Tattletech’s personal favorite, nuubo. So many reasons we like nuubo – because they have taken smart materials and combined them with  innovative software & wireless communication systems in order to make bio monitoring clothes or equipment to improve health or save lives. Sure that is one of them. Because he went along with a little semantic joke, or  because they had one of the best presentations for a start up that we have ever seen, because they are already working with Telefonica Mobiles to bring this to market or because their General Manager Rodrigo Miranda Beltran is just the most charming, deeply intelligent and ultimate gentleman on the planet universe.

Arican Wegter, Internet Entrepreneur & Angel Investor and Dorte Wiene, Regional Director, e-Unlimited and bGrand Advisory Board

We also found that angel investors like Internet Entrepreneur and Angel Investor Arican Wegter, former founder of Lovefilm (Europe’s NetFlix) but he embraces the true spirit of the entrepreneur – providing funding, business support and direction to help them get off the ground successfully with the right business model and foundation for growth.

This week we will post a series of video interviews with many covered in this post. So stay tuned.

Tags: Arican Wegter, Caja Navarra, Civic Banking, e-Unlimited, Intera, IRLConnect, La Cupula, Lovefilm, nuubo, Zentym