Value-driven companies want to develop and shape the future

– My vision was always clear: to start a company where I would like to work, strongly value-driven and with gender equality as a foundation from day one. You can’t deny that it is demanding, especially when it comes to recruiting. But it is extremely rewarding and valuable. To me, there is no other way, says Sofi Elfving, CEO and founder of Substorm.

In connection to LTUs digital gender equality conference on the 2nd of December 2021, Sofi Elfving spoke about the company’s strategic starting point and shared her experiences.

– Substorm was founded 2019. We are already 20 employees and have the goal of reaching 20 million SEK in turnover during 2021. To make this happen we need to work hard to recruit and to grow with an equal gender distribution, with our heart. So far we have succeeded with 50/50 when it comes to gender distribution in the company. We have made several difficult decisions on the way and I am convinced that there will be more to be made. We all need to dare to break stuructures if we want to change the world, says Sofi Elfving.

Tromb was founded in 2013 and today have approximately 80 employees. In it’s current financial year, the company expects to have a turnover of 100 million SEK. Trombs founders agreed from the start to create a company with a strong value-driven culture. With the company having it’s roots in tech and with a majority of the employees in system development, the gender equality aspect is a big challenge.

– Thanks to the LTU-project Gender Smart Arena, in which we have actively participated in for several years, Tromb has built up internal competence regarding gender equality. These are big structural challenges that takes time to overcome. With new knowledge comes new insights and we have created new tools that can help us to work in a more non-traditiontial maner, to find new ways of working and set requirements both internally and in dialog with our customers, says Karin Sjöö-Åkeblom, CEO of Tromb.

She continues:

– Going forward, we need to be even better at gender equal and inclusive reqruitment to build equal teams. We also want to get better at recruting at the universities, to get new expertise and find new ways of approaching problems For us it is really impotant finding the right co-workers that want to move in the same direction as us. This will act as the basis on which we develop solutions that are relevant for all individuals. I look forward to continuing to develop Tromb with sustainability in focus and to break new ground together with the other companies within Spin Growth, concludes Karin Sjöö-Åkeblom, CEO of Tromb.