STOCKHOLM, Sweden — For two days, some 3,000 odd persons from entrepreneurs-to- leadership gathered for the annual Sime Conference in Stockholm, Sweden. This year those in attendance  had the option to choose between keynotes on the main stage, 12 Industry Summits, and their new  matchmaking service – with 114+ speakers for the largest tech conference in the nordics.

Back for her sixth consecutive year, CNN Senior Tech Correspondent Laurie Siegall (University of Michigan) joined Co-Founder Ola Ahlvarsson on stage as host for this years event which took place at Cirkus and the Epicenter located in the heart of the capital city.

Day 1 kicked off with messages from Angry Birds and (startup company) as always, it dove deep into the darkside of media and tech, discussing “Cyber Security” and the “#meetoo” campaign which focused on sexual harrassment in the workplace.

Day 2 moved over to the newly urban landscape of the Epicenter continude with its high quality level of inspirational and educational speeches – along with the movers and shakers of the world of innovation.

Why Attend SIME?
Year-after-year,Ola Ahlvarsson and the Sime team gather some of the most sought out experts and leaders for two full days of information sharing, networking and a great party! Its a magical atmosphere that must be experienced. Highly educational, inspirational, organized and did I mention, You’ll Have Great Fun! And if you are across the Atlantic, he also leads SIME Miami. Ola and Co-Owner Christoffer Granfelt took over Sime after it was shut down nearly ten years ago and have made its previous owners happy enough to sign over ownership to them.  He 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. He has also  been advisor to some of the worlds leading global organizations like Google, Ericsson, Samsung, Microsoft, Schibsted, Deutsche Telecom, Telenor and many more.

Social media star & entrepreneur @lowengrip: “Focus on building brands, not channels. Brands can live longer than channels can”. #Sime17 pic.twitter.com/01MaCg7M5Z

— Sime Conference (@simeblog) 16 november 2017

Inspirational Story Telling
Isabella, a mother of two blew the crowd away with her rise to success as an entrpreneur. At the age of 14, the child business prodigy started her very first venture as a blogger Blondinbella , which now has the attention of 1.5 million weekly readers.

“I had no clue what I was doing or if it would amount to anything said,” Isabella Löwengrip from the stage Epicenter during Day two of Sime.

She’d go on to become one of Sweden’s first major social influences. Isabella wouldn’t stop there. By age 16,  she had founded her first company, Blondinbella AB, followed by joining media programs, both host and guest.

With all of her success, life dealt her a blow as she would seperate from her marriage only to be left with a depleted bank account and the mother of two kids.

“You know life sort of happened and I just kept going and going. It’s the only way that I knew how to pull myself together,” said Isabella at Sime.

Today, at the age of 27,  she has started and operated a dozen companies, four of them active today and earning several million kronor. In 2012, she founded Löwengrip Care & Color together with the business partner Pingis Hadenius. The company is Sweden’s fastest growing beauty company. With an assortment of over 50 products, and more than 1,000 retailers, the company had sales in 2016 of over 35 million.

DID YOU KNOW! 
In 1997, Jeff Bezos of Amazon attended Sime. He thought his then startup company Amazon had enough steam to collaborate with Boxman. However,  Ola co-creator of Sime thought otherwise during a meeting at Vasamuseet – now this is a symbolic folk tale in the tech industry who looks at it as a humble lesson.

Written by Andrew Mitchell for Woodlawn Post