{"id":36486,"date":"2023-10-20T14:44:24","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:44:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/building-the-worlds-biggest-small-software-company-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T14:44:24","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:44:24","slug":"building-the-worlds-biggest-small-software-company-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/building-the-worlds-biggest-small-software-company-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Building the world’s biggest small software company – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Blown away by the internet, Meltwater founder Jorn Lyseggen planned to build the world’s smallest software company. Things turned out differently.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe next day I quit my job. I remember walking home that night and thinking I felt incredibly privileged to be living right at this point and I was going to see has the internet would unfold,<\/b>\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Lyseggen, the founder and CEO of media monitoring service Meltwater, was describing his first encounter with Netscape 2.0 in 1995 while working on artificial intelligence at the Norwegian Computer Centre.<\/p>\n

Today, Meltwater has 1100 employees in 41 cities across 21 counties and Jorn spoke to Decoding the New Economy in the company\u2019s San Francisco head office last week.<\/p>\n

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Having quit his job as a researcher, Jorn became what he describes as \u2018an internet evangelist\u2019 in the early days of the Norwegian web and founded a series of online businesses including Norway\u2019s first web mall.<\/p>\n

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The fourth business Jorn set up was Meltwater which they originally operated out of a shed in a disused shipyard, Shack 15.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe got free office space from one of my former clients,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n

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The old customer also gave them 25 old computers which they patched together to become the company\u2019s first server farm.<\/p>\n

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Building the world\u2019s smallest software company<\/b><\/p>\n

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\u201cOur aspiration originally was to create the world\u2019s smallest software company,\u201d recalls Jorn.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe wanted to be four engineers creating the most sophisticated technology in our industry then we would sign up re-sellers then sit back and watch our revenue go through the roof.\u201d<\/p>\n

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At the time media monitoring was largely made up of clipping services that would hire armies of contractors to physically cut and paste newspaper articles.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhat we wanted to do was build software that could keep track of everything that was published online,\u201d Jorn explains.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhen news started to come onto the internet then you could start to analyse it automatically. We thought there would be a better way to do this with algorithms and software.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The best laid plans<\/b><\/p>\n

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It turned out however the plans to have a small software company didn\u2019t work out.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe poured our heart into our technology for the first year and then we got really excited when we signed up two really respected re-sellers in the Norwegian market,” Jorn says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThey presented to 1500 companies, which is a really big number in Norway, and the results were devastating with 1499 \u2018no\u2019s and one maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n

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For Meltwater\u2019s founders it was a time for re-evaluating the idea.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThat was a pivotal point in the company as we had to ask \u2018is this a business?\u2019. What we realised was that we were too focused on the technology and what clients are really worried about at the end of the day are the pain points.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cOnce we did that switch we started to get business and then we grew very quickly so instead of being the smallest software company in the world we set out to become the biggest in our industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Going global<\/b><\/p>\n


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From there the spread across Northern Europe and the UK, \u201cevery time you start up in a new country it\u2019s like starting a new company,\u201d Jorn says.<\/p>\n

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Strangely it was Germany that proved to be the most difficult to break into.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s counterintuitive, you\u2019d think the shared culture would make it easy for a Norwegian company. It wasn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The big move though was the United States, on the basis that any company with global aspirations has to be in the world\u2019s biggest market.<\/p>\n

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\u201cNorway is a small country, we used to joke there are bus stops in New York with a bigger population than Norway.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Jorn was surprised to find the US was an easier market to break into than the United Kingdom or Germany.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI love their open-mindedness and the welcoming factor of the US culture,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThey are very open-minded in the US, it\u2019s a strength in their culture. In the US if you present something interesting to them they\u2019ll accept it. The flip side is if they are open-minded to you then they\u2019ll be open-minded to your competitors.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Hiring as a key factor<\/b><\/p>\n

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Choosing the right people is the key to business success Jorn believes, with local hires being essential when expanding into foreign markets, \u201cYou need some local credibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

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More importantly though is the importance of getting the right people early in the life of a startup business.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s all about culture. Make the first five to ten people the base for your platform.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Having the right people also made it easier for his management team to delegate as executives focused on the international expansion.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe\u2019ve got really smart young people working here, they don\u2019t miss me when I\u2019m not around,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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Romanticising startups<\/b><\/p>\n

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\u201cBack in the day it was considered you started a company because you couldn\u2019t get a job,\u201d Jorn laughs.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI\u2019m the first to encourage entrepreneurship but it worries me when it becomes trendy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important that entrepreneurship doesn\u2019t become too romanticised. Because it\u2019s really hard work and most startups fail and most people have to work for years while barely getting by financially and it\u2019s high stress.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never saw myself as a business person. I had a healthy scepticism to the commercial world, that\u2019s why I became a research scientist because I thought it was a better use of my time.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Becoming an entrepreneur<\/b><\/p>\n


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However, the revelation of Netscape 2.0 changed all that, \u201cit really blew my mind,\u201d he grins as he recalls how he decided \u201cthe best way to be part of this was to be in my own business.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Building your own business though is not an easy process and there\u2019s tough decisions to be made.<\/p>\n

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Jorn though believes that the hardest times running your own business are not when cash is tight but when the tough decisions have to be made, \u201csometimes you have to make calls that are challenging.\u201d<\/p>\n

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For Jorn, he only sees more exciting times ahead as the internet evolves, \u201csocial is still in its early stage. A lot of companies struggle and worry that they haven\u2019t figured it out, but the truth is most people haven\u2019t figured it out.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Paul travelled to San Francisco as a guest of Oracle<\/i><\/p>\n


<\/i><\/p>\n

Paul Wallbank<\/a> is the publisher of Networked Globe<\/a>, his personal blog Decoding The New Economy<\/a> charts how our society is changing in the connected century.<\/i><\/p>\n

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This article originally appeared on SmartCompany<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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