The Tailsweep management team consists of the three founders, which bring key competence and substantial industry knowledge to the company. Read more

Tailsweep’s board of directors provides the company with competitive market insight and a strong foundation for future expansion. Read more

Tailsweep is backed by several private investors including a VC investor based in the UK. Read more

 

Management Team

Joachim Lerulf, CEO and co-founder

Joachim has a degree in International Marketing as well as a Master in Management. He has studied in Sweden and at universities in Europe.

Joachim has worked with the Internet and digital media solutions since 1995 and has more than 10 years of management experience. From the mid-nineties he worked at the world’s leading IT publications company IDG, International Data Group. In his role as Director of Sales at IDG he identified the potential of the Internet as a media channel at an early stage. After several years at IDG Joachim chose to continue his career at Scandinavia Online, an Internet venture originally founded by Schibsted, one of Scandinavia’s leading media groups, and later acquired by Eniro. At Scandinavia Online Joachim gained more online media experience in his role as Business Manager and Marketing Director in charge of the largest site for PC-, TV-, console- and online games in Scandinavia at the time.

At the end of the nineties Joachim headed up the sales operations at Spray as Director of Sales. During his time at the company he was initially involved in building up the Swedish Internet portal and later as an International Strategy and Business Development Director he took an intricate part in building up Spray to become one of the leading Internet portals in Europe.

Since the turn of the century Joachim has among other places worked at Orange, one of the leading mobile operators in world. At Orange he was responsible for the global operations unit Orange Lab with focus on building 3G multimedia services for Orange’s global 3G service offering. Thereafter Joachim was the Managing Director of a Swedish media agency, specialised in the Internet as a digital media platform, with several clients with well-known brands.

Joachim’s latest endeavour, prior to launching Tailsweep as one of the founders, was Head of International Operations at WGP, one of the world's most important players in the lead generation markets. WGP is a key partner for some of the industry leaders providing hands-on execution of search engine positioning and maximising lead generation.

Joachim’s motto is: it’s not what you do, it’s what you get done.

Mikael Svärdh, VP Business Development and co-founder

After his Master of Engineering studies at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm Mikael started working with Internet services full-time. Mikael’s first employment was at the Schibsted Internet venture Scandinavia Online. Mikael worked in several challenging positions at Scandinavia Online, among others as Editor-in-Chief at the largest site for PC-, TV-, console- and online games in Scandinavia at the time, Portal Manager at Passagen.se and as Production Manager in charge of all web production. Mikael was also a member in the company’s management team.

Prior to launching Tailsweep as one of the founders Mikael worked at Eniro as Managing Director at the subsidiary Leta.se, and in addition to that he was in charge of the development of the company’s different online search services in the Nordic region, for example Gula Sidorna, Eniro.fi, Eniro.dk and Eniro.se.

Mikael also runs one of Sweden’s leading blogs, Fosfor Gadgets.

Mikael’s motto is: "Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right."

Marcus Herou, CTO and co-founder

Marcus has a Bachelors degree in Electrotechnics from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

Marcus began his career as a developer in the programming language C in 1996. After his studies at the Royal Institute of Technology he started working as a system developer at Eniro. Marcus’s main focus at Eniro was development and performance optimisation. In addition to that he worked part-time as system architect and lead developer.

In 2006 Marcus started working as a consultant at Dynabyte. Prior to launching Tailsweep as one of the founders Marcus was a Project Manager and infrastructure architect in charge of one of the largest Linux system migrations in modern time.

Marcus’s motto is: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act it's a habit."

Board of Directors

Mathias Plank, Chairman of the Board
Mathias has a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the School of Business, Economics and Law in Karlstad.

Mathias is an Internet entrepreneur with an extensive experience from the Internet industry dating back to the nineties. Mathias is currently running his company Sidewalk Express, a leading chain of Internet Points in Northern Europe, which he founded in 2001.

During his career he has been involved in building up Passagen/Scandinavia Online, Schibsted’s previous Internet venture, and he was one of the founders to Dressmart.com.

Mathias has also taken an active part in establishing Schibsted Mobile, www.inpoc.se, and the mobile operator Orange in Sweden.

Simon Merchant, Member of the Board
Simon has a Bachelor of Arts (hons. in Modern History) from Oxford University.

Simon has a comprehensive background within the finance sector as well as a proven successful track record as an entrepreneur. Simon was Head of European Technology M&A at Morgan Stanley and worked on a number of transactions throughout his 9 year career at Morgan Stanley. Selected clients included SEB, Adobe, Mattel, Lockheed Martin, Wellcome plc, British Telecom, Forte Hotels, Lastminute.com, Pharmacia AB, Electrolux and Morgan Stanley (as principal).

After leaving Morgan Stanley in 2000 Simon co-founded StreamVPN limited with Erik Wästlund in February 2000. The company successfully created research performance measurement software for institutional investment professionals (hedge funds and long only managers) in Europe, North America and Asia. Simon was the CEO of StreamVPN. StreamVPN was sold to FactSet in September 2005, after which Simon was responsible for FactSet's AlphaMetrics business globally. FactSet Research is a leading provider of financial data and analytics to thousands of investment professionals around the world. FactSet is listed on the NYSE.

In October 2006 Simon co-founded New Street Capital with Erik Wästlund. Apart from being New Street's representative on the boards of Tailsweep, he is also on the board of another Swedish company, Compricer. Simon recently advised New Street's portfolio company Sidewalk Express on its latest capital raising successfully bringing in Reitan Servicehandel (Norway) as a major strategic investor.

Johan Nylund, Member of the Board
Johan has a Bachelor of Science in Business and Finance from City University in London.

Johan has spent the last 12 Years working in the London Financial district. The major part was spent with JPMorgan/Chase where he was marketing Fixed Income Derivatives to Swedish Financial Institutions.

After 7 Years with JPMorgan he went on to BNPPARIBAS to head up the Nordic Fixed income sales team.

In the spring of 2007 he left BNPPARIBAS to focus on Private Venture Capital Investments.

Investors

Tailsweep is backed by several private investors including New Street Capital, a VC investor based in the UK.

New Street is an active investor in entrepreneurial businesses where the partners of New Street can bring operational, strategic and financial resources to support entrepreneurs in their ventures. New Street's fundamental principle is to sit on the same side of the table as the entrepreneurs and focus on building value for all shareholders. All the capital in New Street is provided by the two founding partners.

New Street's portfolio today consists of investments in Zoomvision, Sidewalk Express, Tailsweep, HR North and Compricer.