Gustav’s Mindshare

My name is Gustav Söderström

You can find me on:

LinkedIn
Twitter
Jaiku
Facebook

My Passions

I live and work in Stockholm, Sweden. My passion in both private and proffessional life is the Internet, specifically the mobile applications of the Internet (what used to be called the mobile Internet, which never made any sense) and the businesses and business models that emerge from these technologies, whether completely new or just better scaling versions of traditional off-line businesses.

My most important thing

Most important thing in life for me apart from my wife and son, is to never hear myself say “I don’t need that crap” about a new technology or phenomena.

My philosophy

My primary philosophy in life is that change always happens, it is not an event, it is a constant state, just hard to notice on a daily basis, easy to see over longer periods though. Humans (as a species) however, are notoriously bad at accepting this fact. Because change has, until fairly recently, happened over more than the span of a single generation, you couldn’t really “see it”, and using a fixed model of “how the world works today” has been a decent approximation to base your life’s decisions on. You didn’t really have to care about change or learn new things.

I think today you do, you will likely have to learn completely new technologies and paradigms during your lifetime (my parents had to struggle with computers and the Internet to keep up with society, I might have to struggle with my kids bioengineering their kids) as well as challenge our view of the world several times within our lifetime.

This fact is also an opportunity – The first one in a group to accept change and adapt always wins!

You just need to get over yourself and move on…

My professional life

In my professional career I’ve worked as an entrepreneur founding and heading up Swedish mobile social software company Kenet Works in 2003 (acquired by Yahoo! in 2006) and subsequently as director of product development and director of business development at Yahoo! Mobile. I now work as director of mobile solutions VP of Products at Music company Spotify.