From a commission-only sales job in Stockholm to a hillside above Marbella
I'm Martin. Swedish, living in Marbella since 2018, and I have spent most of the last twenty years starting, scaling and selling companies. I co-founded Mediapilot in Stockholm and grew it for seven years — more than a hundred jobs created, no external capital, two Gazelle awards. After it merged with Whispr and sold in 2018, I worked on the commercial side of software, advised founders at Antler, and invested in early companies like P.F.C., Movesta and Kim Denzler.
Today I am Chief Growth Officer at Happeo, helping enterprises become AI-ready by fixing their knowledge layer. I also co-founded Caterbee, The Pool Marbella and Soulhouse, and I spend a lot of time introducing people who should know each other. I still keep a written life plan, updated every January.
Career
- 1999 — 2000
Worked as a food server at Grodan Grev Ture in Stockholm. It taught me discipline, empathy, and how to read a room before speaking.
- Early 2000s
Studied in the United States. Came back to Sweden with no clear plan and a lot of confidence I had not yet earned.
- Mid 2000s
Aimed at purchasing because people said it had status. It was dull. Took a commission-only sales job at a PR agency instead.
- 2006
Met Fredrik Båge, who told me I would be good at sales when I was certain I would not be. He was right. We co-founded Mediapilot with no external capital and no debt.
- 2006 — 2013
Built Mediapilot from zero to a B2B SaaS insights business with 100+ clients — Coca-Cola, McDonald's, SCA, Atlas Copco, Volvo. Hired more than 100 people, built teams in Stockholm and Oslo, and won the Dagens Industri Gazelle high-growth award twice. In 2010 I opened the Oslo office from scratch and left it profitable.
- 2013
Mediapilot merged with Whispr. I stepped into Founder, CMO and CCO roles, working with H&M, Spotify, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, IKEA, Disney and Kate Spade. Whispr was sold in 2018.
- 2014 — 2016
Invested in and advised early-stage companies: Kim Denzler, Saffron, P.F.C. — and later Betalo. Most lessons were learned the expensive way.
- 2015
Led the launch of Klout in the Nordics, their first market outside the U.S.
- 2017
Co-founded Caterbee, a foodtech startup for business catering. Live since spring 2018, profitable from the start, and now past 5M EUR in turnover.
- 2018
Moved the family from Sweden to Marbella. We agreed on two years. We are still here. I also joined the commercial leadership of Happeo, selling a digital workplace into large enterprises like Randstad, Trimble and Bumble.
- 2019 — 2022
Advisor at Antler, helping founders find co-founders and build from day one. Investor and advisor at Movesta, the real-estate platform that lets you sell a home with a push of a button.
- 2022 — 2025
Co-founded The Pool Marbella, a private members' hub for founders, creatives and international operators. Founded Soultech as CEO to build a more convenient, modern e-commerce experience. Ran Future of Commerce, an exclusive invite-only e-commerce event series across Europe. Stepped back from Soultech in March 2025.
- 2023 — present
Co-founded Soulhouse, a boutique real-estate venture developing Scandinavian-designed luxury villas in the €3-9M range around Marbella.
- 2025 — present
Returned to Happeo as Chief Growth Officer on a remote contract, helping enterprises become AI-ready by structuring and governing their internal knowledge. Still building, still in Marbella.
What I believe
Be useful before being interesting
The fastest way to earn trust is to solve something small for someone without being asked, and then not mention it again.
Write the plan down
I have kept a life plan since around 2010 — five categories scored out of ten, updated every year. It is uncomfortable and it works.
Say the difficult thing early
Bad news does not improve with age. Almost every expensive mistake I have made was really about avoiding a conversation.
Long horizons, small steps
Almost every good outcome in my life came from doing an unremarkable thing consistently for longer than felt reasonable.
Lessons that actually stuck
Most of what I know I learned by getting it wrong first. I hired too fast at Mediapilot, I held on to a failing product at Soultech for longer than I should have, and I once let a partnership drift for eighteen months because the conversation would have been awkward.
The expensive mistakes were never strategic. They were almost always about avoiding a conversation.
The other lesson is about pace. I spent my thirties assuming speed was the only variable that mattered. The businesses of mine that survived — Caterbee, The Pool, Soulhouse — were the ones where I slowed down enough to be trusted by customers, by the team, and by the people who backed me.
These days I try to build things I would be happy to still be running in twenty years, in a place I would be happy to still be living in. I have also learned that the real moat is not the website, the deck, or the product. It is the disciplined act of documenting what you are doing, thinking, and getting wrong — so that trust compounds over time.