Hi, I'm Rikard πŸ‘‹

I found my home in product community of Oslo, at the intersection of technology, design, and sustainable energy. After I joined Otovo in 2016 as one of their first employees, I've helped grow the company to where we are today: Hundreds of employees, precence in 13 markets and tens of thousands of homes with solar panels on their roofs (and we're not done yet).

I'm fortunate enough to have been given more opportunities than most, but I also believe in making my own luck. I've come to understand that both historic progress and life is only as linear as the stories we tell. So with that in mind, here's mine:

While studying informatics at NTNU in Trondheim, Siri and I spent a year as exchange students at UCT in Cape Town. If you're ever able to go there, you should - it was an amazing 12 months. When we weren’t in the computer lab, visiting vinyards or at the beach, I was working remote for CosyTech, a Norwegian startup. This was my first real experience building things outside of an academic context. I was introduced to the startup scene and the world of product – working directly with potential users, and learning their needs. Although the company won a few (vanity) competitions, CosyTech never found product-market fit. No paying customers meant no revenue, so we decided to close shop ~12 months later.

After this, my long term friend, Andrroy and I decided to freelance together for the remainder of our formal studies. Through random encounters and our respective networks, we attracted a wide range of different (paying!) clients:

This was the first time I've ever gotten paid (real money) to program, and it felt quite good. We had no idea what we were doing back then, but our complimentary skillsets was enough for people to pay us to build, learn, play and start honing our craft.

Fast forward a few years, and I was on my way pursuing a master's degree in software development. My thesis would be about information systems at hospitals, lack of interoperability, and how web technology and open standards could play a role in monitoring ambulatory heart patients. I was shocked learning how extremely complicated, slow moving and overall "behind" this whole sector is. To this day, I still believe there's an opportunity for me (and a lot of others!) to make a meaningful impact here.

Professionally though, I had my eyes set on a different path. Like every other student at NTNU, I was alluded by the big consultancies that "the best career choice" for a young student wasn't to freelance or start working at a small company, but rather join a big consultancy doing massive projects. With little understanding for what this meant in practice, I signed a contract with BEKK and was looking forward to join as soon as my master's was done.

However, through an unexpected turn of events, things weren't going to be as straight forward as I first envisioned. You see, DNB, Norway's largest bank, held a hackathon in 2016 that went surprisingly well. We didn't win, but the bank's CIO offered the four of us full time positions on the spot, after seeing our presentation.

Reluctant at first (we all had consultancy jobs waiting for us), the hackathon team consisting of Hanna, Camilla, Siri and I spent a few weeks at DNB that summer to evauate and get a feel for working in such a large organization. My impression was actually quite good – we were given enough freedom and trust to get started on a developer portal, which would eventually morph into their Open Banking platform. This experience led me to veer away from the consultant path and resign from my upcoming job at BEKK.

But the twists and turns wouldn't end there.

At what was supposed to be my first job at the bank, the large organisation had forgot I was starting! This gave me a few days extra to reflect, while they figured out the logistics. In the interim, I walked back into the office of a client Andrroy and I had been working with for the past 6 months – the newly founded solar startup, Otovo. We had been helping them with setting up a prototype backend and some internal tools for streamlining what was then, a scrappy platform for selling and installing residential solar panels.

Beliving they had "lost" me to the bank, Andreas and Simen were surprised to see me. Their surprise quickly turned into excitement when I asked if I could join full time. An hour later the contract was drafted and signed, and I sent my resignation to DNB, again without ever having started. 2016 was a crazy year.

Since then, I contributed to building nearly every product and I've taken part in all of the 13 market launches Otovo has done.

I've always had a knack for design, so my first few years were naturally spent on front-end and customer facing experiences. However, one of the benefits of being in a small team you get to cover a lot of ground. I now look back at nearly a decade of front-end, back-end and mobile development, product development, UX and visual design, and even some marketing and sales.

This "all over the place"-attitude was kind of addictive, so as the organization grew, product management was a natural next step for me. I did that for a few years, pre and during Covid-19, where my team focused on setting our platform up for market expansion. First in Brazil, as a white labling effort for Holu, then later launching Otovo in Italy, Poland and Germany.

In 2022, my team transitioned into working on partnerships and growth. As of late 2023, around 25% of our sales came through these channlels, using the tools and systems we built.

While this was a lot of fun and rewarding, but I also started to grow weary of spending too much of my time in meetings, away from the day-to-day trenches of hands-on building: Which is what I really enjoy.

Today, I lead Otovo's marketplace team as engineering manager. We're responsible for building and maintaining the core mechanics of our platform. It's been a roller coaster, but I'm still having fun chasing the sun together with Otovo β˜€οΈ

I never worked a day in my life, I just laid back and let the big beat lead me

Fatboy Slim - Because I Got It Like That (remix)

As you might figure, these experiences were never strategic career moves for me. However, I learned some important lessons in:

  1. Navigating uncertainty.
  2. The importance of having fun.
  3. Placing bets on who to surround yourself with.

I guess if you've already read this far, I might as well shed some light on other parts of my life. Here are some in rapid succession:

  1. πŸ§‘β€πŸ³ I like to cook. Ideally for larger crowds. Since 2019 I've been spending my summers cooking for the kids at Feriekolonien. The rest of the year, I enjoy cooking for my (rather) large family.

  2. 🐢 We've had three Belgian shepherds since 2007: Sam & Tiva and most recently Yoda 🫢. I view dogs as a constant source of unconditional love, and a daily reminder that patience, commitment and consistency go a long way.

  3. 🎢 Life is better with music, which is why you'll always find me listening to it.

  4. πŸƒβ€β™‚οΈ I'm not as consistent with my runs as I am with walking dogs, but it's still my favourite way of working out.

In all areas of life, I have fun when I can be curious, have attention to detail, do just enoughβ„’ planning and focus on playful execution.

That should do it for now. If you still haven't gotten enough, here's some content from my old site that still haven't been ported.

Cheers, Rix1 ✌️