From Creation to Capital Discipline. Working with startups is always about creation: new products, new markets, new teams. I spend a lot of time with founders exactly at this stage - where growth energy is at its peak. At the same time, I also worked with shareholders of mature businesses. And this experience led me to an important insight: “ growth and value creation are not the same thing.” Capital discipline becomes critical precisely when the business has already “survived.” And at...

Even though I’m a finance professional, I usually start modeling not with numbers, but with strategy . First comes direction — then the calculations. Planning doesn’t like chaos or improvisation. Many funding institutions, including #Innovasjon_Norge,  ask startups to complete a Business Model Canvas . I love this tool too - it allows you to see the entire business landscape at a glance, like a map. In one of our projects for a metallurgical company, we analyzed the impact of several crises...

The phrase “Cash is the King”  entered the business vocabulary after the liquidity crisis of the 1980s. It’s often attributed to Volvo’s CEO, Pehr G. Gyllenhammar (1988), who used it when commenting on the aftermath of the 1987 stock market crash. This phrase — and the experience behind it — highlights a simple truth: cash is the most important asset a company has . Businesses with strong liquidity reserves are the ones that not only survive difficult times but come out stronger. As my...