Hjalmar Winbladh joins Creandum
2011-05-16STOCKHOLM - (May 16, 2011) - Creandum, the Nordic venture firm for early stage and expansion investments, today announced that serial entrepreneur Hjalmar Winbladh is joining its team as a part time venture partner.
"Hjalmar brings exceptional entrepreneurial experience from the mobile and Internet industry, and will play a crucial roll in our efforts to build the leading venture capital firm in the region," said Johan Brenner, Creandum general partner.
During the 1990's Winbladh co-founded Sendit, the first mobile Internet company, where he served as CEO, and took it public in 1997, before being acquired by Microsoft for SEK 1,3 billion. Following the acquisition, Winbladh served as general manager of Microsoft's mobile Internet business before moving on in 2006 to found Rebtel, the world's largest independent mobile VoIP company, where he continues to serve as chairman. Today, Rebtel has customers from 52 countries and operates profitably on annual run rate revenues of more than $60 million USD. More recently Winbladh co-founded Epidemic Sound, the highly disruptive startup building and licensing a new library of music produced and used in audiovisual productions, such as television programs and movies.
As a venture partner at Creandum, Hjalmar will be responsible for helping source and manage new investments.
"As we build the leading venture firm of the Nordics we must have the absolutely best team of people who have done it before, have a killer network, and can immediately gain the trust of entrepreneurs," said Brenner. "Hjalmar was one of the top candidates on our shortlist. In our opinion Hjalmar is one of Europe's top entrepreneurs who knows how to build lasting companies from zero to mature businesses across international borders."
Added Winbladh: "The Nordic region may be a relatively small portion of global markets, but it represents one of the largest entrepreneurial ecosystems of world-class talent. I'm constantly impressed to see the number of the global successes that have come out of the Nordics. My passion is helping entrepreneurs build international businesses. Creandum, with its exciting portfolio of companies, including Spotify, Cint and Videoplaza, provides an ideal platform for me to do so."
FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
Johan Brenner, General Partner, Creandum Email: johan@creandum.com Mobile: +46 70 950 87 98
Hjalmar Winbladh, Venture Partner, Creandum Email: hjalmar@creandum.com Mobile: +46 70 832 32 86
About Creandum
Creandum is a Nordic venture capital firm investing in innovative and fast-growing technology companies within consumer, software and hardware industries. The firm has €120M under management and 15 portfolio companies like Spotify, Cint and Videoplaza ranging from early stage to expansion. All investment professionals at Creandum have started companies or been part of successful startups during their career. Creandum has as one of its corner investors the 6th Swedish National Pension Fund and is among other major international investors supported by the European Communities Growth and Employment Initiative, MAP - ETF Start-up Facility. For more information, please visit www.creandum.com