Why this blog came about. First an
intro to Optimalprint and our team. Optimalprint was founded in June 2006, providing printing services with online design templates and highly cost-efficient printing solutions. I had worked 7 years within TELE2 (www.tele2.com), a telecommunication company. For three years as the CEO of TELE2 Norway, a Telco roughly 500 million US Dollars in turnover for 2006. Tele2 was great fun but you worked without feelings related to shareholder ownership.
A collegue of mine Pål, aat that time responsible for all BILLING operations at Tele2 in Sweden, Denmark and Norway, had been working with billing related issues for ten years and was on his way out. Pål decided to leave TELE2 and join Optimalprint.
During 2002 I had worked with an top-notch programmer at TELE2, Mike from Estonia with Russain family. I presented our idea to Mike (still working at SKYPE) and also he decided to join the Optimalprint team.
We are now in August 2006 and the workload is starting to build up. We are primarily trying to figure out which part of the value chain within online printing service should be our primary target and how would that affect our Internet platform and product offerings. So August to October is dedicated to identify softwares, suppliers within both digitial printing services and offset printing services, design agents, font suppliers, and lawyers to assist in writing contracts, distribution partners and logistical partners.
In November I meet an old friend from Canada, Jean-Pierre (JP). JP was an exchange student at Stockholm School of Economics from McGill in Montreal, Canada. JP impress me with his strong focus on delivery and broad international experience and knowledge. JP lives in Canada but speaks Arabic, English and French fluently. November 2006 JP and I meet in Stockholm. JP was then working many hard hours at Deloitte Consulting in New York. JP wanted to go into a startup company by owning a part of the company. I presented to JP the Optimalprint idea with an online digital printing solution that we could easily spread geographically, meaning that Canada could quickly become an interesting market for us. JP decided to leave Deloitte Consulting in New York. JP came to Optimalprint in end of January 2007.
WHY OPTIMALPRINT'S BLOG CAME ABOUTDuring the first 12 months we have
learned a lot related to many challenges and opportunities for a startup company like Optimalprint. I would like to share learnings and experiences from Optimalprint - Startup Company with primary customer target being the global user community, be it a private consumer or a business customer. I hope that this blog will generate true value to other startup companies, entrepreneurs as well as more established companies. I made many mistakes both at Tele2 and Optimalprint but I also made many things right -
I will share most of our experience and learnings with you as we go along. Please contact me at henrik@optimalprint.com if you want to comment, ask question or guide me in any way.
I will touch upon issues such as
- How Optimalprint implement marketing activities. What mistakes have we done in terms of marketing both online and direct mail marketing? What successful decisions were taken within marketing and what is driving traffic growth?
- How we work or why we do not work with suppliers within for example Search Engine Optimization (SEO), online marketing media service, traditional print advertisement, direct mail marketing etc.
- How have we dealt with investor related issues such as - board members, when we have been approached by investors etc
- Expansion plans and all issues related to that - why did we decide to launch in a certain country, learnings from a geographical expansion etc. Some of the more strategic issues will be post-presented but hopefully then even more filled with valuable learnings.
- I will also extend this blog by presenting interviews with interesting people in the business community with knowledge and experiences of importance to Optimalprint and hopefully your company as well.
These blogs should add true value - if not tell me.
//Henrik
