Ukrainska Chumak

By Mikael Palmstedt | Published: February 21, 2010

Rolig artikel på DI om Ukrainska Chumak, som grundades och drivs av två utflyttade Svenskar.

Oftast brukar det ju ses som negativt att Svenskar flyttar utomlands för att jobba eller starta bolag. Kan ju dock säga att det ganska naturligt faller sig att man i väldigt hög grad som svensk använder sig av svenska leverantörer. Den ekonomiska effekten är knappast negativ för Sverige totalt sett utan gynnar framförallt tjänsteexporten då många företag får in sin första fot på en ny marknad på det sättet.

Lite tvättäkta svensk attityd i kommentarerna på artikeln ovan i “True DI style” måste jag såklart infoga också:

4. Trevlig läsning!
2010-02-20 16:56

Hur många Svenskar skulle ha vågat det som dessa grabbar gjorde? Bara att gratulera till framgången!
xxx xxx

Betygsätt kommentaren
Läsarbetyg: 4,5
Anmäl kommentaren

5. Re #4
2010-02-20 16:59

Det är sant. Tänk dock på att bara för att man väldigt sällan hör om de som försöker och misslyckas totalt heller så finns de inte. Det är succehistorierna som det skrivs om – men det är nog vanligare att det går tvärtom.
xxx xxx

Posted in svenskt | Tagged | Comments closed

Fat Statement Round II

By Mikael Palmstedt | Published: February 17, 2010

Fat Statement is primarily known for being the nr1 custom button badge company in Sweden who later also started producing dog tags that the customer could design themselves as well as for the webserie Knappnytt.

fatstatement 

From the left; Knatten, Buttons, Dog tags

Fat Statement have yearly b2c sales of a bit over EUR100 000 and want to grow its international sales and especially being able to develop its software for external customers such as small to medium sized printers. Hence just before christmas FS issued new stocks and put in new shareholders; Bytelove, Dan, Nicolai (Bootstraplabs), and PeoplePath. I personally believe very much in the company and increased my share and some of the old shareholders also joined in.

I’m quite happy about the new setting since it feels like a fresh start with people involved that I like to work with. FS and Bytelove will start cooperating with the custom dog tag and button badges production so in the near future we will also send from Germany which will lower international shipping costs significantly. I will take a fairly active part in the administration of the company as well so FS will probably feel a bit closer to me.

Hopefully in 18 months we will have the coolest web2print system for printers out there and the world is busy wearing our stuff :D .

Posted in General, startup trivia, svenskt | Comments closed

It is alive

By Mikael Palmstedt | Published: February 16, 2010

After some fiddeling there’s some content going up here again. Frankly some fun stuff happened during the last week:

Linus and Peter released Flattr, a new way for bloggers to get paid … which caused something of a blog explosion in Sweden and actually also Germany and probably a few other countries I don’t read so much :) . Check the video:

ByLinus

Simple but briliant idea, would be just so funny if this worked for flattr and they take this positition when eg digg has been working on a way to earn money for years.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments closed

20 år efter murens fall

By Mikael Palmstedt | Published: November 10, 2009

Igår var det värsta trafikkaoset utanför kontoret pga alla avspärrningar i stan. 20 år sedan Berlinmurens fall och man kan förstå vilka minnen det väcker för många här. Den nyuppbyggda symboliska muren av stora dominobrickor som vältes igår tyckte jag var en skön symbolik.

Det är roligt och smått fascinerande att höra berättelser från min sambo och hennes familj kring känslan av att få åka över till andra sidan, ta emot en liten summa pengar (tror alla östtyskar fick 50dmark oavsett ålder), åka över i varje familjs stolthet Trabanten och shoppa upp deras första västtyska pengar. En barbiedocka och ett tetrisspel inhandlades och baserat på att jag får storstryk i tetris av min sambo så var det ett välanvänt spel.

Lite skrivet i övrigt om igår:

http://lars-ericksblogg.blogspot.com/2009/11/murens-fall-en-symbol-for-folkets.html

http://carlbildt.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/minns-historiska-9-november-minns-allt/

Posted in General, Social, svenskt | Comments closed

Value

By Mikael Palmstedt | Published: October 22, 2009

It feels like a thing built on lies and promises, but it works, somehow it does.

Not a quote from a “great thinker” but picked up from popular fiction writer Conn Iggulden when he’s trying to capture the feeling of how nomad tribe leader Ghengis Khan looks upon gold and how it powered the arab empire and its cities. Gold at that time must really have been the most useless piece of metal you could imagine its value only represented in the labour it took to dig it up.

Posted in General | Comments closed

Knatten gillar inte Israel

By Mikael Palmstedt | Published: August 30, 2009

Israel verkar inte gilla fri press och Knatten har lite tankar kring detta (nån minut in i inslaget).

Posted in geek humor | Tagged , , | Comments closed

Bytelove Inc alive

By Mikael Palmstedt | Published: August 29, 2009

 

image 

 image

A few hours ago the first customers picked out their packages from Bytelove Inc, the new US subsidiary of Bytelove AB. This would be the end (or beginning not sure) of a project we started a few months ago.

Bytelove Inc is not just a new shop under another judicial person but a whole new way of working for us that we will probably implement in part also for the EU in the coming months. Some points:

Magento Commerce: New e-commerce platform, yes we are leaving cubecart behind since it never really worked to run with a multistore/language setup anyway. The new store runs our first version of Magento (and no Magento is certainly far from bugfree).

Accounting: Going over to accrual basis accounting together with tighter integration of the Bytelove processes and our accounting program (quickbooks, 99USD hahaha) enables us to work faster and get more exact reporting plus minimizing errors.

Outsourced logistics: All fulfillment is done by an external partner, it is more expensive but it takes away much of the boring part of the business plus it actually force us to build better processes (so I actually think we save money in the long run). The fact that our partner has an excellent api also helps :) .

So far we’ve succesfully fulfilled a bit over 150 orders and counting :) … this was by far the funniest project I’ve done so far this year …

Posted in Development | Tagged , , , , | Comments closed

Spiegel Cover Nr. 33 – Netz

By Mikael Palmstedt | Published: August 13, 2009

spiegelcovernr33

After a certain trial the debate regarding a free vs controlled net has pretty much exploded here in Germany. Here the front cover from Der Spiegel nr 33.

Posted in Development, Social, economics | Tagged , , | Comments closed

WordPress based Atlas

By Mikael Palmstedt | Published: July 25, 2009

Neat Atlas mashup based on wordpress from Webpal. Great example of how to do much with little!

Posted in Development | Comments closed

Swedbank and cars …

By Mikael Palmstedt | Published: July 18, 2009

Swedbank apparently confiscated cars worth of SEK700 000 000 in the Baltic countries.

That’s kind of funny, I assume many of the cars was taken from businesses who will now have it even harder to make money and repay their loans. So now Swedbank is sitting with a bunch of cars which are less than easy to sell in the current market, not what I’d call a win win situation :D .

Posted in General | Comments closed