Lars Nordwall joins Creandum as Venture Partner

Lars will strengthen the best-in-class support function for Creandum’s portfolio, focusing on ‘Go-to-Market’ for B2B software companies

When we started Creandum in 2003, we wanted to build a best-in-class platform for our founders — in certain critical areas to scale such as talent, design, product and other functions. All with the goal to help our portfolio companies grow and become global leaders in their respective categories.

This is why we are excited to announce a new addition to our team, Lars Nordwall, who joins as Venture Partner. Lars is our Go-to-Market (‘GTM’) expert, and was most recently COO / President at the Creandum funds’ portfolio company Neo4j.

Lars will support our portfolio companies as they build out their ‘GTM’ strategy and organization, from the first ICP to 3 digit million in ARR and beyond. He will also help Creandum to invest in new Enterprise Software companies.

Lars joins a number of Entrepreneurs in Residence and Venture Partners supporting our portfolio companies, including Peter Ramsay (Product Expert) and Felix Haas (Design).

For you to get to know Lars better, we asked him a few questions.

You joined Neo4j with < 10 employees — now Neo4j has close to 800 employees and with significant ARR. What were the key moments in changing your G2M approach?

1. We started our sales organisation with inside, enterprise and channel sales all at the same time. We were able to grow ARR in all sales functions early but the amount of distraction accelerated quickly with various sales motions. A few years later we decided to go all in with Enterprise Sales with a dedicated focus. It meant that we had to drop our inside sales function entirely. As a result, we were able to grow ARR from the Enterprise segment in a much more efficient way with repeatable buying patterns.
2. We created a new database category, graph databases. Our pricing model had to change a number of times to support customers who were used to purchasing databases by CPU and those used to cloud pricing. Initially, we were concerned about getting pricing adjusted; but over time we learned that customers are flexible as long as you communicate changes in a timely manner.
3. Neo4j was initially headquartered in Sweden. We decided to flip the entity to the US, moving the headquarters from Malmo to San Francisco and focusing on US sales early. Usually it is easier to grow ARR for a B2B business in the US with fewer cultural differences, especially as you ramp up the organization.

What would be your top level G2M advice for companies?

1. Your first 50 employees will dictate the culture, performance, and overall growth of the company for many years. Hire a few leaders that are exceptional and pay the premium to get the best talent in the market.
2. It is all about the product in the early days. Seek a volume of customers to use it, collect feedback, adjust and improve the usability, and then build out the sales and marketing functions. Be careful about ramping up OPEX too quickly if product fit is yet to be figured out. Pay attention to your burn rate and agree on operational triggers for when to raise it.
3. Create a goal and metrics oriented culture. For example, focus religiously on your ARR targets early and create a spirit where such targets will / must always be achieved. Work hard, play hard!
4. Understand the various phases of the company growth cycle. As a company leader, you will get lots of feedback, advice and criticism and it is important to understand when and how to address it. My experience is that often advice provided is brilliant but the timing of when to apply it is off. As the operational leader, it is you that must figure it out, as outsiders would not have such a feeling.

What were your motivations for taking on this position at Creandum?

Creandum has a world class investment team. Every 6th investment in the past decade has turned into a unicorn. Many more will get there. Having the opportunity to join such a team part time and to be able to build out the post investment function is quite unique.

In addition, the opportunity to work as a Venture Partner with some of the brightest entrepreneurs in the world is super exciting and rewarding.

What do you like doing outside of work?

I love spending time on the ski hill. My latest passion is ski touring in remote locations.

We are proud and glad Lars is joining Creandum and we are so looking forward to working together in the years to come. Welcome, Lars!