Ola Ahlvarsson is a Swedish entrepreneur and athlete based out of Stockholm. He has since the mid 90’s been at the cutting edge of digital entrepreneurship as an entrepreneur, investor, thought leader and advisor.
Ola has received numerous recognitions and awards including
Wired Magazines top technology thinkers 2015
Elected Global Leader of Tomorrow at World Economic Forum in Davos and
Top ten leading European internet entrepreneurs 1999 by Wall Street Journal during over 20 years of building companies.
“Ola has been at the forefront since the beginning of the industry and on top of that always runs a good show"
- Daniel Ek, founder of Spotify
“Great speaker, great moderator"
- Salim Ismail, Singularity University
"There are many “Superstars” in the world of professional speaking, and I have meet quite a few of them and learnt a lot from them – but today I met something even more impressive. Today I met with Ola Ahlvarsson, – he is a “Superman”"
-Fredrik Härén - founder of professionalspeeking.com
Ola Speaking at World Economic Forum
Ola with Sweden’s Prime Minister
Speaker and Moderator
Ola is one of Sweden’s most popular international speakers and moderator. He has been chosen to host and lead discussions in some of the world’s most prestigious events, amongst them at the World Economic Forum, DLD in Munich, World Knowledge Forum in Seoul and Le Web in Paris. Ola is also the co-creator, host and moderator of SIME, a thought leader summit held in Stockholm every year hosting 2000 leaders from the Swedish and the International economy. As a moderator he has interviewed heads of states, global top executives, pop stars, super entrepreneurs, hackers, opinionated kids and brilliant academics. As a speaker, Ola has an amazing ability to engage and combine personal experience with the latest trends and learnings and a unique way of combining in-depth domain expertise with excellent stage performance, always sprinkled with passionate curiosity.
Some of Ola’s Clients
A history of growth
Ola has been working with and managing leading internet ventures ever since the early days with Spray, Boxman, Blocket, Letsbuyit, SIME to later ventures like FON, Best Secret, Blocket, Epicenter and many more. As a specialist on innovation and internationalization Ola has been advisor to world leading organizations like Google, Ericsson, Samsung, Microsoft, Schibsted, Deutsche Telecom, Telenor and many more.
A serial entrepreneur
Being the founder of over 20 companies, his current portfolio exists of international expansion and innovations advisors Result, Swedish media house Keynote Media Group, owning and selling portals, magazines, events and online ventures, Star Stable, the world’s largest game for girls passionate for horses, Sellbranch, a leading Nordic advertising technology agency (managing Twitter and Yahoo in Scandinavia), Epicenter, a 30 000 m2 innovation house, and Ahlvar Gallery a fashion brand cousing on timeless elegance and silk blouses. In addition he holds a portfolio of angel investments select range of companies from psychology clinics to castles.
Three time world champion in three different sports
Ola has a unique background in martial arts with a World Championship and European Championship gold in Goju Ryu Karate, a bronze in Taekwondo World Championships and a World Championship in Kick-Boxing.
He combines the experience from the martial arts world with his 25 year experience in the field of entrepreneurship fuelled by a relentless passion to create. Ola holds an MBA from the University of Stockholm, has guest lectured at Harvard Business School and wa also the course director for the Executive MBA program E-Strategy at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga.
Ola combines unique hands on experience of building entrepreneurial businesses with a mission to convey knowledge and a belief that every organization can and should be entrepreneurial.
"I asked Ola to do an Inspiration Chat (Electrolux version of TedTalks) about digital disruption. Ola guided the audience on a journey in industry transformation, the exponential technologies that drive change and illustrate with the perspective of both the disrupted and the disruptor. He shared also ideas on how a company like Electrolux can embrace these technologies and the mindset of leading transformers to capture the full potential of the future digital arena.
The feedback from the audience regarding the chat were mind blowing. Some of the comments I received:
- Great speaker. Top man to listen to.
- Very interesting speaker. Hope many people take the time to watch.
- Amazing how the speaker managed to fit so much relevant content in such an appealing presentation!
- Incredibly inspiring speaker. Best inspiration chat ever.
So, it is with great confidence that I recommend Ola.
Joachim Rask, VP Innovation Operations, Electrolux
Contact
Use the contact form below if you would like to get in contact with Ola, book Ola as a speaker, moderator or producer for your event.