Meet the founder of StreamServe

We booked an online meeting with one of the founders of StreamServe: Per Einarsson and met a friendly face with an unmistakable “dalmål” accent.

Hi! Who are you?

I’m one of the six founders of StreamServe. Living in Ludvika now, where I’m working on digitizing receipts. 

So you’re a developer?

Noo. Not at all - I can’t write a line of code if I wanted to. The person who made the code happen when we started StreamServe was Curt Lestrup from Gothenburg. My skill was to be able to draw on a whiteboard what needed to happen. My title at StreamServe was head of product development.


The founders of StreamServe

Lars-Ove Axelsson
Magnus Einarsson
Per Einarsson
Curt Lestrup
Birger Lundgren
Hans Otterling


How did it all start?

In 1995-96 we where some friends who identified the problem ERPs had with adapting customer documents. It was a user nightmare to try to change the data in existing templates to fit customers needs or demands.

How did you solve the problem?

We built a document switch who could move data from one type of document to another. That was the start of StreamServe. You have to remember, at this time the main communication channels where post and fax machines. Email was just starting out.

So your solution was received with open arms then?

Yes and no. Many customers expected this functionality to be a part of the purchased software - why we had to argue before they understood the value.

What was the atmosphere like at StreamServe in the 90’s?

Well, it was kind of crazy. We had our first office in a big apartment at Sveavägen in Stockholm. We were all pretty young and eager. The StreamServe office was known for its parties and sometimes I think it was fun just to be on the sidelines watching what was happening. And off course, we had this fantastic product and a business that was growing. There was a sense of that we were going places.

We had our first real break through when we met Amerscan, a US/Norwegian VC company. At that time this kind of investment was rare in Sweden. These guys rated the company ten times more valuable than any other investor we had met. They made it possible for us to continue to develop the product.

Close to disaster.

StreamServe was very close to go on to the stock market on the 15th of June in 2000. After months of preparation they cancelled just 48 hours before the introduction. If they hadn’t, they probably wouldn’t have survived the dot-com crash.

What was the success factors for StreamServe?

It was really the close partnerships with the ERP vendors like Intentia, Baan, SAP who made us relevant as a part of their product offering, enabling us to scale and grow internationally. We started our partnership at different levels with SAP 1999, but it took us 10 years to be a part of the SAP packaging, called “SAP Document Presentment”.

We were on to E-invoices early due to our big investments in different output formats like XML .We actually met with Microsoft early on to discuss if they would use our product for what became the Biztalk product offering.

StreamServe enablers

The laser printer
E-invoices

Important innovations

Transpromo
Multichannel

What about StreamServe are you most proud of?

In the end we were 350 employees in 13 countries. I’m most proud of that people refer to the “StreamServe family” and the “StreamServe feeling” and that many of us are friends for life.

On the business side I enjoyed when we managed to get Swedish operator Tre as a customer and they stated “Christmas time twelve times a year now for our customers” with targeted messages for each individual thanks to StreamServe. That’s how much we changed their customer communication.

How was it to sell a company like that?

It wasn’t easy. But we had achieved so much and we had just reached one of our biggest goals: SAP reselling our product worldwide. It was a good time to move on.

So what’s up now?

I’m the CEO of Findity. We are trying to make all receipts digital. It’s a new challenge to approach the retail business, end consumers and mobile solutions. The dream is that you get the notification in your phone or watch, including both transaction and the real receipt enabling you to, with one click only, decide to store it for potential warranty purposes or expense it on behalf of your employment. One click and you never have to bother about the receipt again.

What would you like to say to the people using SteamServe/Exstream today?

I hope that they are still satisfied with the products and how OpenText have treated them as customers over the years. Tell them I still see them as friends for life. 

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