The Stockholm School of Economics is a private business school located in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden,
SSE has been creating opportunities for its graduates for over 100 years.
Welcome to Episode 3 – Aspirations.
Hi. So you might know me from behind the camera for the last two episodes,
I'm Aidan, the co producer of this web series, and today I'd like to welcome you
to Episode three, which is aspirations.
We're going to talk to alumni from our school, current students, their aspirations, what they're
doing, and really find out like what people want to do in the future and
how they got there. I think it's going to be really exciting.
Hey, Aidan, nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you, I'm Anna.
So this is your office space.
And you're working with MedUniverse.
Exactly. So can you tell us a little bit about that?
Yes. MedUniverse is a digital platform that we sell to the pharmaceutical industry.
Pharmaceutical industry come with multiple new drugs and treatments that they need to get the
information out of the markets to the doctors who are going to prescribe these drugs.
And the way we've done it is that we build it through digital patient case scenarios.
So basically a fictitious patient cases that the doctors can practice on.
And once they do that, they also believe a lot of information and how they can help, how they treat
them and where the biggest knowledge gaps are.
So that's where they find out how to update their material that the pharmaceutical industry are always trying to get the right
information out. And obviously that's quite important for the patients as well, so that we if we do get sick, get the right
treatment. Yeah, absolutely.
That's so cool. So back in the day when you were studying your courses and so on, I know you all did
your Masters. What was the aspirations back then?
Like what were the kind of plans for the future and so on?
Well, that's a good question.
And actually, I thought I maybe would be working more in like, well, marketing,
sales and also maybe accounting.
I had many different ideas, but then Internet.
Well, that was a new thing.
when I graduated, so that was basically where I started.
And then after that, it kind of just, you know, I met Anna
or reconnected again and then it just kind of snowballed.
Which is amazing.
In fact, I mean, basically, for me, it's very important to work with with a product, with a meaning.
I think, some bigger meaning.
And and that is basically what I'm doing today now.
So I think that's really good.
The the overall overarching objective is ultimately to improve patient outcome with the
business that we have today.
And I think that's an important aspect for me.
And I've tried different things out and I'm not an entrepreneur, I would say, but
I've grown into it.
I get used to it.
And I think it's also important to to kind of, as I mentioned earlier, that we complement each other.
And sometimes I might be the one, you know, gearing a little bit and saying, OK, can we actually do this and,
you know, pick down a few ideas and turn that into something that could be realized or realisable.
But I think it's important for me to have, like, a vision and something
greater, greater good, in a sense. Aspirations back in the
days of school. Yeah, I did what I was thinking about it when you were asking Anna and Stina as well, because when I
was at school, I don't think many of the company presentations, many of the presentations in general, I didn't
really feel like they resonated that well with me.
But then when I was in SASSE, as you call it right, and the East Asian Association, I met with my
co-founder to the first company prior to MedUniverse, and that's when I really found, OK, this is what we
just built this association.
But then we continued out of the school and built a company.
So I think that's where I found my sort of entrepreneurial drive.
And I know today the school has a lot of entrepreneurship courses and things, but that didn't really exist when we
were there. So it's a different, different setting today.
But yeah, I think it worked out really well.
I met so many interesting people and not to say the least, my colleagues, but also other people like investors,
inspiration from other companies that have done other things.
So it's a great network today.
After meeting with some past alumni and seeing how much they've achieved and how they got to their position, I
thought I need to learn more about what's going on with students currently in school.
I decided to meet with Natalie and she took me to her headquarters to see what she's up to.
So why don't you tell us a little bit about what you did before SSE what you're doing now,
like what's what's going on with you?
Absolutely. What's up with me?
Well, actually, when I graduated high school, I thought I wanted to become a corporate lawyer.
So I decided to take a gap year and I wanted to pursue that.
But then I was offered to help a startup, what we call now VOI.
And so it's an E-Scooter start up.
And the plan was to stay there for a month.
And I stayed a lot longer.
So I've been working there for two and a half years now.
So during my gap year.
I helped expand the company in Europe and I decided to start studying at SSE
because it's a great opportunity to continue with my passion for startups and business.
And today and now, well, where we have a student consulting firm that we offer
SSE students as consultants to companies.
And I'm doing a bit of everything and I'm still at work right now.
That's very cool. So you're doing so many different things and I think it's very, very exciting.
So why don't you tell us a bit then, like, what are your aspirations?
What do you what do you want to do in the future then?
What's your plan? Well, my plan that's a difficult question.
I get so many new ideas every day what I want to do.
So I've decided my plan is to create a life where I can do all the things I do.
I want to be able to change direction.
So whether that means to create more time or even resources to be able to enable that.
So my days after graduation, I want to work in a big corporation, possibly finance, investment banking.
You know, I'm young and I want to you know, I have the energy, but then I do really enjoy startups.
So my plans may be to go back to startups later.
And in the end, when I'm older and wiser, hopefully I can go into politics.
Um, so I wanted to be able to do many things.
Well, that's so cool and really ambitious and it's
like a vibe I get from quite a lot of students at school and so on.
It's just so exciting to be energy like all the time.
So it's really cool to see it first hand from you.
And yeah, that's amazing.
After talking to Natalie, I was inspired and motivated.
It's amazing what people can do when they're determined enough.
The school has given determined students these opportunities for the last hundred years, within which SSE Business Lab
has operated for the last 20 years.
I had to know more.
You know, maybe it'd be good to see what our current students are up to as well.
So I decided that maybe we should go to Business Lab and meet the CEO, Julia, to
find out a bit more about what's going on here.
So can you maybe tell us eventually about Business Lab and what it
is as though the business lab is the startup incubator of SSE and we work with helping
founding teams that consists of at least one SSE alumni, students
or faculty to start their businesses.
And we do everything from coaching very early stage ideas where there is just a team and an
idea, maybe a pitch deck, you know, to scaling startups that already have a prototype and a few
customers and really helping them to scale up and internationalize.
So what is it that you look for in companies that you're looking to
maybe house in business lab?
We look for so many different things, but of course, our values are a passion for
community partly so you need to have a strong passion for helping others, but also,
you know, being able to take on the resources that we can help you with.
We work with diversity and inclusion.
So we're really making sure that you have a diverse team and that you're always striving to could come in with these different
perspectives and innovation, because we know that research shows that this is so important to be successful
and also courage to be bold.
So looking for companies who are willing to sort of step out of their comfort zone and and work towards
goals that seem a bit scary, perhaps, but really have that potential of
succeeding and becoming scalable businesses.
Yeah, cool.
And one last question.
So what kind of programs do all to these new companies that you bring in?
As we have three different programs, the first one is called Ideate, and there we help students
mostly who are interested in entrepreneurship, but then they don't have an idea or team yet, maybe.
We help them partly just finding a team and partly actually finding an
idea to work with.
And that's a 10 week program.
And then we have Activate, which is our first venture building program, and that's only eight
weeks. But we help you as a team and an idea to go from sort of that first
step to creating a prototype and validating it towards the market.
And once you have that validation of some sort, you know, testing it a bit, you can apply to our third
program, which is called Incubate, and then you have the chance to sit with us for 18 months, actually.
And we really take you from that position of just starting to get the few customers to
international scaling.
Well. That's insane and very, very cool.
Well, thank you so much, Julia.
And I guess for the audience, I hope this is kind of showing you
all the resources and network that we have in this university and how it can lead to
such great things and different paths.
And realistically, the only limitation you have when your here is your own
dreams, I guess.