January 28, 2019 – Riga, Latvia. Pedersen & Partners, a leading international Executive Search firm with 57 wholly owned offices in 53 countries, has announced that Eva Alberte has been promoted to the position of Country Manager for Latvia. Evita Lune has been leading the Latvian office since its establishment in 2004 and will now be taking on a more international role focusing on leading the firm’s FinTech practice.

Eva Alberte joined Pedersen & Partners in 2012 with an impressive track record of senior leadership experience in Human Resources, having served as the HR Director for EY Baltics, Head of HR at Parex and HR and Administration Director at Aldaris, Carlsberg Group. Over the past seven years in the firm, Ms. Alberte has developed a solid client portfolio through the successful implementation of search assignments and has established long-term relationships and strong networks within Finance, FMCG, Telecom, Automotive, Logistics, and Pharmaceutical sectors.

While Eva Alberte leads the Latvia office, Evita Lune, Partner who drives the firm’s Global Digital Economy will be focusing her efforts in three areas: further strengthening of the regional offices in Poland, the Baltics and Belarus; leading Pedersen & Partners’ FinTech practice and strategic participation in the global Pedersen & Partners’ Board. 

“We have been working together with Eva for almost a decade and I have full confidence in her ability to lead our Latvian team and maintain the level of trust and quality to which our clients are accustomed. This is a well-deserved promotion due to Eva’s focus on our clients’ goals, thorough project management and execution, and team leadership abilities. As for myself, I will be able to focus on strategic issues, such as developing our regional presence in the Baltics, Poland and Belarus, and further advancing our Global Digital Economy and, in particular, our FinTech practice,” announced Evita Lune, Partner at Pedersen & Partners.

“In my years with the company, it has been exciting to witness its strength and growth across the globe and see how Pedersen & Partners is valued by clients and partners. It is an honor to continue my contribution to the firm in this new role, and I’m committed to making sure that the Latvian office remains the top choice partner in executive search for international and local businesses in Latvia,” said Eva Alberte, Country Manager for Latvia at Pedersen & Partners.

Pedersen & Partners is a leading international Executive Search firm. We operate 57 wholly owned offices in 53 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia & the Americas. Our values Trust, Relationship and Professionalism apply to our interaction with clients as well as executives.

If you would like to conduct an interview with a representative of Pedersen & Partners, or have other media-related requests, please contact: Anastasia Alpaticova, Marketing and Communications Manager at: anastasia.alpaticova@pedersenandpartners.com

Riga, Latvia – Evita Lune – Partner at Pedersen & Partners commented on the market trends and employment opportunities in Latvia in 2019 for Dienas Bizness.

2019 presents many opportunities for employees, therefore, companies plan to invest more resources in retaining programs; top talents who express a wish to change job or leave can expect to receive an offer of a substantial salary increase.

Employers will face many challenges because labour market trends will remain similar to last year: the unemployment rate continues to gradually decrease so the demand for labour grows, making the recruitment process more complicated and time-consuming. 

“Employer becomes more pleading, while employee – more demanding”

“Similar to 2018, this year will be good for employees. There is a shortage of specialists in the majority of functions, therefore high-level professionals and executives have the luxury to choose which company they want to join. Managers and owners of many companies also consider inviting foreign employees” says Partner Evita Lune of Pedersen & Partners.

Employers are more and more concerned with attracting, engaging and retaining employees, while the latter enjoy the increase in demand and are ready to consider new job opportunities. Wages are expected to rise 2-4% worldwide in 2019, in Latvia – around 3%. Media publications on average salary levels and labor shortage have contributed to the salary increase, thus employers are forced to think of making offers to guest workers and raising issues of work efficiency in general. The largest salary increase is expected in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector.

Many companies had also planned certain budget allocations for employee retention. In cases when employees announce their intention to leave, company makes a counter-offer. Top talents would eventually receive an increase of 30–50%.

“Candidates are becoming more selective and prudent when it comes to decision to change their job; not only remuneration level matters, but also other factors such as company's reputation, long-term goals and career growth opportunities,” -  added Evita.

Read the Latvian version Here.

I believe in doing something you are passionate about and this is what we do at Tespack, creating the #FutureOfEnergy. Everyone seeks happiness, but there is a misconception on achieving this through money or fitting society’s expectations, like getting awards, receiving titles or pursuing something that is considered to be success in the eyes of others, but the truth of happiness is reaching your full potential and doing what you truly love, without trying to fit into society’s expectations (otherwise I wouldn’t be in the tech industry according to stereotypes).

Ieva Riekstina is a Consultant at Pedersen & Partners, based in Riga, Latvia. Ms. Riekstina is an HR management and recruitment professional with over twenty years of experience in the Technology, Telecommunications, Banking, Insurance, Finance, Plant production, and FMCG sectors across the Baltics. She has placed C-suite, management, functional, and operational executives across these industries. During her extensive career in the MTM industry, she collaborated with several local and international IT companies where she worked as HR and Administrative Manager, Senior Consultant, and IT recruiter and was in charge of HR strategy, recruitment, policy development, process redesign, and talent transformation. Prior to joining Pedersen & Partners, she served as an IT Recruiter for the Latvian branch of Accenture, the biggest IT company in Latvia, where she supported the corporation’s expansion to over 10 countries through highly-specialised IT positions recruitment, training, and integration.

56 wholly owned offices  opened since 2001 - Poul Pedersen and Evita Lune talk to the Latvian magazine Klubs about the focus, drive and professional team that lead to the creation of Pedersen & Partners - a  leading international Executive Search company.

In the interview Poul praises Evita (Partner and Country Manager for Latvia) and her team for their success in the Baltics and also for how she has built a world class global Fintech Practice.

Poul Pedersen also states that leaders aren't born, they are made. One has to have a high level of energy, drive and certain degree of intelligence, but most importantly is to constantly learn and develop. While the interview took place, Pedersen & Partners announced the opening of its 56th office - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In 2018 the firm opened offices in four locations - Switzerland, Malaysia, Norway and Italy.

Pedersen & Partners is a leading international Executive Search firm. We operate 57 wholly owned offices in 53 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia & the Americas. Our values Trust, Relationship and Professionalism apply to our interaction with clients as well as executives.

If you would like to conduct an interview with a representative of Pedersen & Partners, or have other media-related requests, please contact Anastasia Alpaticova, Marketing and Communications Manager at:  anastasia.alpaticova@pedersenandpartners.com

Riga, Latvia – Evita Lune, Partner for Global Digital Economy at Pedersen & Partners interviewed Meeri Rebane, Co-Founder and CEO of INZMO. INZMO Ltd is an insurtech start-up established in September 2015 in Germany by the Estonian founders Meeri Rebane and Risto Klausen. The company focuses on providing an end-to-end innovative technological solutions to insurers, corporate partners and end customers to improve sales, customer relationships, claims handling and risk management. In 2016, the company received a boost in San Francisco from the largest start-up investor in the world — 500Startups. In May 2017, INZMO was named the best fintech company in Europe by the StartUp Europe Awards run by the European Commission. In December 2017, Helvetia Venture Fund — a Swiss insurer, has acquired a holding in INZMO and has invested a single-digit million amount in INZMO.

Evita: Funding is probably the most crucial challenge for startup entrepreneurs. What was your route to getting the company well financed? I read your interview after Parnu conference where you said that one must meet more than 200 investors to attract the attention of two. Also, I read that you have spent significant time in an US accelerator to get prepared for fundraising. How much have your travelled and how much has been the effort to get investors’ interest?

Meeri: When it comes to traveling, for the last three years when we established INZMO, I have not lived permanently anywhere. If somebody asked where my home was during the last three years, it was not very certain. In 2015 we moved to Berlin and participated in Startup Bootcamp, which was the first accelerator where we participated. It was extremely important for us to get out of Estonia. Because, if you have been living and working in Estonia for all your life, then you need some “kick in the butt” or this dramatic change of environment to understand that there is a way different culture to do business, to get funding and to sell services of your company. If you want to do international business, you have to think as an international businessman.

We were in Berlin for seven months, we found three German investors, they were angel investors, and they co-invested with our Estonian angel investors. This is where we got our first round of funding. After Berlin we were few months in Estonia, then I moved to the US, because we got funded by 500Startups in San Francisco. I spent six months in San Francisco establishing contacts with insurance companies, pitching to investors and meeting investors. It was a great learning about promoting your company the US style, because this style is very different to pitching your idea in Europe or in Estonia. Estonians are great engineers, but they are not well prepared to pitch their ideas.

After San Francisco I came back to Estonia for a few months, then we raised another round of 400 thousand from one Austrian insurance company. Then we moved to Austria and built our team there, we spent there a few months, and then we moved to Zurich, because we raised quite a significant funding from venture fund of insurance company Helvetia. Helvetia operates all over Europe, but they have a head office in Switzerland. To get the cooperation going and speed it up, we had to be close to our large investor and client Helvetia.

Now we were for a few months in Estonia and are getting ready to move to Berlin, because we are building a sales team in Germany. Over three years we have spent a significant time to build up technology and now it’s time to sell our services and scale the business up. We are now putting together a team of five people in Berlin.

Regarding fundraising, yes, it is similar to a sales process like any other. You pick up a hundred potential investors or potential customers and eventually 1–3% will invest or buy from you. It’s the same logic, for one investor you pick up around a hundred contacts. It’s definitely a full time job to raise funds. I really admire people who are able to work on product development and fundraising at the same time, because I know what a great effort it is. If somebody says “I have not been able to fundraise”, I always ask “how many contacts did you cover, what is your pipeline”, and if the answer is twenty — thirty, I know that this is not a real fundraising. This is something the founders have to acknowledge, it is part of the process and it is the same everywhere. It is the same in the US, the same in Europe. To pick up one — two investors, you should cover a hundred contacts.

Evita: How do you keep your determination and focus if you have to accept so many rejections? You mentioned 3–4 investors, which means that you have contacted over 300, 400. How to keep your confidence, when you receive so many rejections, which is a norm?

Meeri: First of all, you have to acknowledge that this is a process. You cannot expect that the first investor will say “hey, this is a great idea!” and will invest in your company. You have to acknowledge that this is how it goes that 99 will say “No” and one will say “Yes”. Then psychologically you are fine with that. When investors say “No”, you have to understand why. In some situations your pitch does not match their investment criteria, which is then absolutely fine. But in some cases you will learn that your product or focus is not right, and then you can start adjusting it and creating a better story. Sometimes you have a great product, but your story is not appealing enough. Investment is also an emotional process, investors should have an interest to be involved with you for the next 7–10 years. Over time, the more you speak, the more you understand what is the story investors want to hear, and you become better in creating value proposition for investors and for your customers, also you get more confident that your offering has a value and that you are doing a great thing.

Read the whole interview here.

Pedersen & Partners is a leading international Executive Search firm. We operate 56 wholly owned offices in 52 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia & the Americas. Our values Trust, Relationship and Professionalism apply to our interaction with clients as well as executives.

If you would like to conduct an interview with a representative of Pedersen & Partners, or have other media-related requests, please contact: Anastasia Alpaticova, Marketing and Communications Manager at: anastasia.alpaticova@pedersenandpartners.com

Riga, Latvia – Established in February 1998, scanservice a.s. is the largest document digitization company in the Czech Republic. Since its establishment, scanservice has been the leader in providing document processing services through outsourcing, as well as designing customized document management solutions for leading Czech and international companies, including state and local governments. scanservice has been listed in the prestigious “Czech Top 100” business index since 2003, taking 30th place in 2015.

Evita: What made you decide to become an entrepreneur?

Renata: I did not study any technical subject at an academic level. But my engagement with the technology field happened by a chance when I started to work for Eastman Kodak (for the Czech and Polish market it was a joint venture Kodak Eastbridge) about 25 years ago. They were looking for a sales person, so it happened to be my first job — partly business, but partly technical oriented position.

Together with another colleague, who is now both my friend and business partner, we decided to educate ourselves by attending any kind of exhibitions, workshops, and conferences. We travelled around the world as much as possible, because self-education at that time was not that easy as nowadays, as we did not have access to any online resources.

I came up with an idea to establish a company to focus on services and business process outsourcing. We did not have any investments to establish our own company, so I made a deal with the majority owner of joint venture Kodak Eastbridge to establish scanservice. He gave me 10 % and kept the majority of 90 % to himself because of investments. We continued like this for a couple of years, and then — about 12 years ago — I made management buyout of that company together with my friend.

Еvita: Even though you owned only 10 % of the business, have you been the CEO since the start?

Renata: Yes, I’ve been the CEO, the majority shareholder was more oriented to retail business and trusted me to focus on the technology business. He allowed me to go and play my game for a couple of years and he would wait to see what will happen.

Evita: You started your company already 20 years ago, and you have reached the major heights during this time. You are the owner and CEO of a large company, a leader in the Czech market in your field. But how did the company grow?

Renata: First of all, it is a project-oriented business. Every or every second year we get a new important client, and it helps us to increase our turnover and earnings.

The second reason for our successful growth is our employees. Some of our people started working with us during the joint venture — we do have some very long-term employees. We are also devoted to developing our people and their skills, educating them and offering career growth.

Read the whole interview here.

Pedersen & Partners is a leading international Executive Search firm. We operate 56 wholly owned offices in 52 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia & the Americas. Our values Trust, Relationship and Professionalism apply to our interaction with clients as well as executives.

If you would like to conduct an interview with a representative of Pedersen & Partners, or have other media-related requests, please contact: Anastasia Alpaticova, Marketing and Communications Manager at: anastasia.alpaticova@pedersenandpartners.com

Riga, Latvia – Iveta Bruvele is the CEO and founder of Wandoo Finance Group — a Riga-based FinTech start-up focusing on consumer lending with operations spanning five markets. With more than eleven years of experience in a range of financial services companies and an educational background in IT Iveta is set to take on the big names in the lending industry.

Evita: Iveta, please tell us what Wandoo finance is?

Iveta: Wandoo Finance started as an idea two years ago to create a better lending product for the Georgian market. At the time the market was saturated with overcomplicated look alike products that offered an overall poor user experience. Everyone thought I was a bit crazy to enter this market with so many companies doing similar things. But in the end, we prevailed and succeeded to carve out a share in this crowded market. From then on, that share has grown to include operations in Spain, Poland, Denmark and Russia.

The other part of Wandoo is our loan marketplace platform Swaper. Swaper allows investors from all over Europe to invest in loans and earn from 12% a year. To date we have more than 1000 active investors on the platform with cumulative investment volume reaching 26 million euros.

Evita: Can you tell a bit more about technology behind your business processes? There are many companies issuing loans, but they are not FinTech firms.

Iveta: I think the word “FinTech” is a bit overused nowadays and sometimes forces us to think of financial services as either being these old dinosaurs or these young and agile FinTechs. The, perhaps, sometimes forgotten truth is that every one of these big legacy banks or insurers runs on financial technology. Without it, our daily lives would be quite impossible.

I think what separates us and similar companies from the dinosaurs is speed, agility and the ability to adopt new technology quickly. We are not bogged down by legacy IT systems, bureaucratic governance models or hierarchical management.

Specifically, talking about Wandoo our core advantage is our ability to accumulate, analyse and use data to evaluate or, as we in the industry call it, “score” borrowers to make lending decisions. All lending companies have scoring systems, but these are usually based on linear models that rely on historical data. The idea is that with enough historic data you can with a certain degree of accuracy predict how a specific category of consumers will behave. The problem with this model is that you need a lot of historic data. When you enter a new market, you do not have this data and you can only acquire it by trying, failing and constantly adjusting the model. At Wandoo we employ something called a machine learning model that, as the name suggests, learns as new data points are being added to the system. The more data we can feed into the system the better the model becomes. To make this work we employ a team of talented developers and data wizards to constantly tune the system.

Evita: How did you design it? How did you start?

Iveta: The key thing for our success has been finding the right people. While our goal is to automate as much of the credit scoring as possible, someone needs to build the models, to build the systems and to understand the data coming out of these systems. Artificial intelligence (which is really all about automation) may be the future, but it cannot replace human creativity.

Read the full article here.

Evita Lune is a Partner who drives the firm’s Global Digital Economy. She has completed over 50 senior level assignments in 29 countries within this practice, out of her total portfolio of over 600 assignments. Ms. Lune works extensively with FinTech clients from the Baltic sea region (Scandinavia, Baltics, Poland) and supports their global expansion plans in all continents by providing effective executive search solutions. As a team leader and regional director, she manages Pedersen & Partners teams in Poland, Baltics and Belarus. Her previous experience includes three years with the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga as the Executive MBA Program Director and six years with Shell in international and regional marketing management functions in Riga, Budapest, and Brussels.

Pedersen & Partners is a leading international Executive Search firm. We operate 56 wholly owned offices in 52 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia & the Americas. Our values Trust, Relationship and Professionalism apply to our interaction with clients as well as executives.

If you would like to conduct an interview with a representative of Pedersen & Partners, or have other media-related requests, please contact: Anastasia Alpaticova, Marketing and Communications Manager at: anastasia.alpaticova@pedersenandpartners.com

Riga, Latvia – Kaidi is a former CEO of Nasdaq Tallinn Stock Exchange and of the Central Securities Depository, Co-Founder of Estonian Service Industry Association, and a Member of the Startup Europe Advisory Board at European Commission. A lawyer by education, she co-authored the Estonian Digital Signatures Act of 2000 — landmark legislation act that enables secure digital identities and, in turn, the country’s booming electronic economy. Now she has created Funderbeam, fuelling the companies of the future with one blockchain-powered exchange.

Funderbeam introduces tradable private investments to the world. The platform allows investors to access fast, standardised deals in highly curated companies that can be instantly traded. Founders can raise funds to fuel their growth from both retail and professional investors in more than 100 countries. Furthermore, Funderbeam provides a free to use data intelligence tool, giving valuable insights for both founders and investors.

Evita: You were in the top executive position in Estonia — CEO of Nasdaq OMX Tallinn — and you decided to leave it to establish your own company. How did you make this decision?

Kaidi: I was on the maternity leave with my second child, walking with the baby carriage, when the entrepreneurial “animal” inside me broke out, and I realised that I am not going back to the corporate world. To do something professionally meaningful I had 3 choices — to have another 10 years at an international corporation, to go abroad or to build my own company. I choose the latter. My thinking was — if I don’t do it now I will regret it for the rest of my life.

Evita: Funderbeam has a unique business model — you are calling it a baby of Bloomberg, Angellistings and Nasdaq. How did you come up with such an idea?

Kaidi: Initially, our idea was to develop a stock trading game for youngsters and teenagers, so that they could do all the mistakes in the game, but not on the main markets, and lose lots of money. So, we thought that investing in startups (virtually) would be a good start. While analysing the market pains and needs, however, we discovered, that we are going to build a real trading platform, not a game. And so, we developed a global stock exchange for startups.

Evita: When it comes to a global value or mission of Funderbeam — are you disrupting any of the existing intermediates in stock financing business? Or even more — are you facilitating growth of economy by enabling more free financing of companies?

Kaidi: There is a large gap of accessing capital all around the world. As we are more and more globally connected, also the business ideas and capital should be connected globally. The other problem is “liquidity” for investors — once you have private investments in your portfolio, how do you get out? So, getting an access for global capital with liquidity is the pain we solve for investors and startups.

We saw too many inefficiencies in the process of money moving from investor to enterprise with the traditional stock exchange system. Moreover, the stock exchanges are moving more for exiting rather than raising money for the business growth. With the Blockchain technology it is possible to significantly shorten the number of steps from investor to company, plus it is possible to ensure the liquidity in startup funding.

And one more value — we are giving an opportunity for the coolest and craziest business ideas to get funded, which would otherwise be overlooked by venture capitalists. Our platform allows a free flow of capital from and to any place. For example, you as a Latvian can have investments in Africa, if you wish.

Follow the link under the article to read the full version.

Evita Lune is a Partner who drives the firm’s Global Digital Economy. She has completed over 50 senior level assignments in 29 countries within this practice, out of her total portfolio of over 600 assignments. Ms. Lune works extensively with FinTech clients from the Baltic sea region (Scandinavia, Baltics, Poland) and supports their global expansion plans in all continents by providing effective executive search solutions. As a team leader and regional director, she manages Pedersen & Partners teams in Poland, Baltics and Belarus. Her previous experience includes three years with the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga as the Executive MBA Program Director and six years with Shell in international and regional marketing management functions in Riga, Budapest, and Brussels.

Pedersen & Partners is a leading international Executive Search firm. We operate 56 wholly owned offices in 52 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia & the Americas. Our values Trust, Relationship and Professionalism apply to our interaction with clients as well as executives. More information about Pedersen & Partners is available at www.pedersenandpartners.com

If you would like to conduct an interview with a representative of Pedersen & Partners, or have other media-related requests, please contact: Anastasia Alpaticova, Marketing and Communications Manager at: anastasia.alpaticova@pedersenandpartners.com