An EAA contestant pays us a visit

We caught up with Tor Blomdell and asked him to share his experience with the EAA with you. Here's what he had to say:

Tor Blomdell

My name is Tor Blomdell and together with a friend from Lund University, participated in the first EAA competition (2010) with our application Commutity. The purpose of Commutity was to enable mobile intelligent ridesharing in order to reduce costs and CO₂ emissions for individuals, organizations and the society.

Building a new business comes with great challenges from a technical, financial, as well as a market perspective. Our start-up, Commutity, was just getting off the ground when entered the 2010 Ericsson Application Awards. Through the EAA, we were able to get early feedback and market validation from real customers. We got exposure to not only vendors and investors, but also some great PR for our business. All of this lowered the time to market and provided us with some great data points for pivoting our business. Developing our business through the EAA was truly a fun experience where we got to compete with other strong entrepreneurs, something that was both inspirational and exciting.

Commutity finished fifth place in the 2010 edition of EAA, and my colleague and I decided not to pursue the opportunity further. This might not sound very promising, but the story doesn’t end here.

My friend moved over to the valley (Silicon Valley, that is) and I got a place in the global graduate program at Ericsson. During the program, I was exposed to the entire telecom business; from organizational development in India, market research for support solutions for operators (some 40% of the world’s telecom traffic goes through Ericsson networks), to a small rendezvous with my friend in the valley for development of new internet services for an American operator. Now, after graduating from the program, I’ve been offered the opportunity to work with mergers & acquisitions which is an area where I can explore both the business as well as the technology side of the industry.

All in all, EAA is a fun experience to explore your passion for entrepreneurship. The telecom industry is up for some major disruption, something that I think that both Ericsson and entrepreneurs can have a great impact on.

-- Tor