1) Looking back on my "career" with @TheNordicWeb over the last 5 years, in retrospect it's easy for me to join up the dots and make sense of the journey:

#cphftw #sthlmtech #helyes 🇩🇰🇫🇮🇮🇸🇳🇴🇸🇪

2)

- Join & start community initiatives to meet people
- Learn from these people about how special the Nordic tech scene is
- Share this with the world through The Nordic Web
- Realise the real value is in the data, particularly in building network
- Use network to raise a fund
3) In fact, it looks all very strategic, but the reality is anything but.

My lack of vision and goals during this 5 year period was _criminal_

Any movement from one step to the next was never pre-planned and was instinctive, or worse, accidental.
4) While I am embarrassed to think of my headless chicken self, there's also part of me that thinks that none of this would have turned out where it did if I had of been deliberate and strategic about this.
5) In fact, I think my genuine love for the Nordics and the ecosystem is the MAIN reason to explain how I raised my fund & managed to move from step to step.

My story is a good example of how passion can be more powerful than strategy in the early stage of an idea/company.
6) However, the biggest issue with passion is that it is often leads to unsustainable situations over time.

(And apparently headlines calling you a "broke blogger" 😝)

https://t.co/62sti8qxRs
7) So, my first-hand, very raw learning on Passion vs. Strategy is this:

Passion works up until a point in the early days, but then strategy NEEDS to take over with the former as its fuel.

(Preferably about 10x faster than 5 years... 🙃)
8) I'm (finally) now at that point & happy to say that I've never had more clarity on what I want to achieve in the next 5 years, a stark contrast to the previous 5.

With my passion stronger than ever, I'm excited to see what I can achieve with both direction and fuel. 💪🏻

More from Tech

The 12 most important pieces of information and concepts I wish I knew about equity, as a software engineer.

A thread.

1. Equity is something Big Tech and high-growth companies award to software engineers at all levels. The more senior you are, the bigger the ratio can be:


2. Vesting, cliffs, refreshers, and sign-on clawbacks.

If you get awarded equity, you'll want to understand vesting and cliffs. A 1-year cliff is pretty common in most places that award equity.

Read more in this blog post I wrote:
https://t.co/WxQ9pQh2mY


3. Stock options / ESOPs.

The most common form of equity compensation at early-stage startups that are high-growth.

And there are *so* many pitfalls you'll want to be aware of. You need to do your research on this: I can't do justice in a tweet.

https://t.co/cudLn3ngqi


4. RSUs (Restricted Stock Units)

A common form of equity compensation for publicly traded companies and Big Tech. One of the easier types of equity to understand: https://t.co/a5xU1H9IHP

5. Double-trigger RSUs. Typically RSUs for pre-IPO companies. I got these at Uber.


6. ESPP: a (typically) amazing employee perk at publicly traded companies. There's always risk, but this plan can typically offer good upsides.

7. Phantom shares. An interesting setup similar to RSUs... but you don't own stocks. Not frequent, but e.g. Adyen goes with this plan.

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