Edward Cederlund

@itsalfredw @sequoia @ListenLabs @Microsoft @canva LISTEN

AI writes your code. Now it talks to your users. We raised $27M from @Sequoia to build @ListenLabs. Listen runs thousands of interviews to uncover what users want, why they churn, and what makes them convert. See how @Microsoft and @canva use it:

Here’s a story about the time I spent a summer selling speakers in Ibiza with one of the wildest entrepreneurs in the world. In 2015 I was about to fly out to India to start an internship with CodersTrust and reached out to the CEO to arrange a meeting before I left. On the day we were supposed to meet, he cancelled. So I reached out to the chairman. The chairman was @ML. We’d never met before, but I sent a cold email, saying that I’d love to meet. He replied within 30 minutes. ‘Come to my house’, he said. We talked for hours. He was insightful, sharp and unconventional. I could see why people described him as a visionary. We stayed in touch, and after months at CodersTrust, I decided to move on and try something new. I knew Morten was out in Ibiza, and since Catalan is my mother tongue I felt I could make something happen there. I called him and said I was going to come to Ibiza to work for him. He laughed, agreed, and said if I didn’t get there in the next 3 days I could go f**k myself. I bought a one-way plane ticket and flew out with only 150€ in my bank account. When I landed that evening Morten greeted me at his place, handed me the keys to his car and said tomorrow I could drive him to his meetings. That night I slept outside on a sunbed next to the pool. After a few days of driving Morten around, I overheard him talking about an idea he’d had to sell freshly pressed orange juice to the big villas every morning. That week, while he was busy in meetings, I drove to villages, chatted to locals, found out who owned the biggest orange grove on the island, visited the owner and persuaded him to let us press his oranges. When I next saw Morten I told him I’d set it up. After that our relationship shifted. I guess he saw I was someone who would get things done, who wasn’t afraid to go for it. I went from being the driver to helping run his business operations in Ibiza. Morten then told me about SOUNDBOKS, who’d run the most successful Kickstarter campaign of all time with their portable speakers, which he'd helped fund. We asked them to send us some speakers so that we could try to sell them on the island. That night we went to a party and within one hour I’d sold three speakers to a guest - one for his boat, two for his house. 900€ each. I spent the rest of the summer selling speakers, making good money, meeting amazing people, learning as much as I could. The network of business connections I made there inspired me to strike out on my own, and soon after I started up my own branding & storytelling agency, working with an amazing roster of clients — from Premier League footballers to Swiss bankers. Three things I took from that summer: 1. If you don’t ask, you don’t get 2. Be humble enough to start at the bottom 3. Jump at opportunities and don’t be afraid to fail And most importantly, I found a great friend and mentor in Morten. That summer (and year) changed my life. Here's us pressing oranges.

I arrived in Delhi at age 24, taking up an internship with CodersTrust, a company providing education and micro loans to students in developing countries so that they could improve their coding skills and earn 10$/hour in the freelance market instead of 1$/day. I didn’t know it then, but this would become one of the most formative and influential experiences of my life. CodersTrust started as a pilot project in the biggest slum in Dhaka, Bangladesh, backed by the Danish development fund DANIDA. The pilot was a success - students started getting jobs on freelancing platforms like Upwork - so CodersTrust started expanding to new markets backed by Grameen Foundation and the World Bank: Nepal, Bhutan, India, Malaysia, Kenya, Somaliland and Kosovo. One of the biggest barriers to technology-based economic development in developing countries is the relatively high cost and generally poor quality of education. CodersTrust was established to bridge the gap between traditional education and the global demand for digital skills. Its mission was to make IT skills accessible to everyone and provide applied education at an affordable cost. It was an incredible initiative, and one of the greatest adventures of my life. Travelling to rural sites to onboard people into our tech courses where the whole village came out to greet you. Meeting with high government officials to roll out our programs nationally. Going to Pune and meeting with MIT. Visiting Dhaka, where everything had started. I went from being an intern to becoming a core part of the team expanding CodersTrust in India, working there for nearly a year. Living and working in a country as beautiful and vibrant as India was a total privilege. Seeing first-hand the exceptionality of the local people we worked with. The fire, the drive, the passion that they put into everything they did. I didn’t know then that in many of my future ventures I would go on to leverage the power of global talent, and that the inspiration I took from the people I met in India would influence so many of the paths I took going forward. What’s my takeaway from all of this? It can be easy to think that throwing yourself into the unknown is something you only do early on in your career - when you’re young and hungry and willing to move to India for an internship at the drop of a hat. But being open to new things, to the challenge of feeling out of your depth, is something we should embrace at any stage of our lives. Don’t be afraid to start over. A baptism of fire can be a good thing. And if you don’t succeed? You’ll still have learned. And all learning is invaluable.

In 2014, I arrived in Sweden to visit family and realised I felt totally lost. I was 23 and had been working in hospitality around the world since the age of 16. After travelling extensively, I had almost no money, no plans and no roadmap for the future. I heard there was a tech conference taking place in Stockholm. With no way I could afford to buy a ticket, I made myself look as confident as possible, acted like I belonged, and managed to walk straight in. Inside were Spotify’s @eldsjal, iZettle’s @jacobdegeer and Delivery Hero’s @niklasoestberg. They shared stories and insights about how their curiosity and creativity had led them to create businesses that scratched their own itch or solved problems they had experienced themselves. How they’d built something valuable for the world by following their instinct. Their words set off fireworks in my head. I had always been creative. Always building stuff. Endlessly curious. I remember feeling this enormous sense of possibility. “I want to do that”, I said to myself. It felt like the perfect fit. I found work managing a few restaurants in Stockholm to pay rent and started looking for opportunities in tech. A few months later I came across CodersTrust, a Danish company that was teaching young people in developing countries how to code and then helping them to set up on their own as freelancers. They were just getting going. I reached out to them, had three interviews, and got offered an unpaid internship in India with living expenses covered. I was so excited. It was a start. Two weeks later I landed in Delhi at 3am, almost crashed into a cow on the highway and was greeted by the country manager. My thoughts were racing. Was I going to be able to do this? Where to start? I’d never even used a spreadsheet before. Was I totally out of my depth? Part 2 tomorrow. Check back to see whether I sank or swam…

This is me at 12 years old, starting my first business. I grew up in the “Valley of the Oranges” in Fornalutx, Mallorca. My neighbour had a ton of orange trees he did nothing with, so one day I asked him if I could come and pick them. “Sure, you’d be doing me a favour”, he said. I picked the oranges and sold them to tourists passing in front of my house for 0.5€ each. They were way overpriced. But the tourists bought them. Why? You’re walking in the mountains under the scorching sun. You’re hot and thirsty. You turn the corner and there’s a smiling kid offering you a juicy orange, fresh from the tree. Are you buying an orange? Hell yeah you’re buying an orange. You’re buying three oranges! I realised that what the tourists were buying was an experience. It was part of their holiday story. This was an authentic Mallorcan orange, sold to them by a local Mallorcan kid. I raised my prices to 1€ for an orange, and 2€ for an orange juice. The money poured in. I enjoyed my profits with my friends on the beach, a citrus baron sipping on soda without a care in the world. I learned two things from this. 1. People invest in stories. Whether it’s their own or somebody else’s - the pull of a good narrative is irresistible. 2. Something that feels genuine is much more likely to connect. Almost all of us probably recognise these principles, but how many of us are putting them into practice in the businesses we create and the projects we work on? Thinking back to this moment in my childhood made me realise that what makes me feel most engaged and motivated is being part of that initial spark: the creative alchemy of transforming an idea from potential into reality and helping other people and businesses do the same. Over the next few months I’ll be sharing stories and learnings from the parts of my life and career that taught me the importance of owning your narrative and playing to your strengths, as well as digging into what I’ve been working on lately. Remember - if you ever feel stuck, go back to basics. The best ideas emerge when we take inspiration from our own unique backgrounds and experiences. Think about what used to make you tick, what gave you a buzz. Think about what makes you, you.

Essential reading for anyone looking to demystify and refine their understanding of AI. I’m honoured to have contributed to this excellent project and team. @chamath & Social Capital recently launched ‘Learn With Me’. 1/3

@chamath @socialcapital I’ve loved supporting the team to structure and visualize their content. Their latest deep dive on AI is clear, logical and thorough — a great resource for unpicking a topic that can seem overwhelming. You can check it out by subscribing on chamath.substack.com 3/3

@chamath @socialcapital Every month, they publish deep dives into sectors that are significant to our understanding of the world today. They consist of five themes: 1. Deep Tech 2. Energy Transition 3. Healthcare & Life Sciences 4. Economic Analysis 5. Socio-Political Trends. 2/3