Dear friends and A&D family,
2013 was a year of change for A&D. We had to go back and ask ourselves why we do what we do and figure out how we want our future to be. We think we’ve come a long way towards shaping our future.
A year back, we said we would focus on our companies. We did:
Phoniro expanded its installed base of mobile key locks to above 60,000, surpassing 250 million openings, and launched the Glue Home initiative to combat Stupid Doors
Trustly launched Direktbetalning, a direct bank payment service, with global leader in Classifieds Schibsted and grew its core business significantly
Gardio launched its social home alarm service, offering great value to consumers in Sweden, and gained momentum with a new generation of home owners
Proactive Health Partner launched Jepp — the fun way for employees to take small steps towards improving their well being — and for employers to help them do so
Calmark performed its first studies on newborn children in Vietnam with the hilda card, improving how we detect illness in a very important category of patients
hemCheck made significant progress in the design of and understanding of clinical needs for its hemolysis detection tool, helge
We are also proud of our former investee company, Fiomi Diagnostics. Fiomi launched its first cardiac diagnostics product, Meritas®, and the stock price of its parent, Trinity Biotech plc, on Nasdaq went above US$25 compared to US$10 when they took Fiomi over from us.
As we turn to 2014, we do it with anticipation. We have found new, exceptional, long term co-investors, together with which we have founded a new company called… Alfvén & Didrikson AB!
Together with our new partners we will continue to do investments that make our lives better. And we will tell you more in 2014. For now, it suffices to say that we are very humble and grateful for having been handed the chance to do what we do. A special thanks to Bengt Ågerup and his team at nxt2b who played a big role in taking us this far. And thanks to our new co-investors for your trust. Last and most importantly, a big thank you to all our entrepreneurs and their co-workers in our investee companies. We hope you will have a very inspiring holiday season!
In 2014 we vow to be cost conscious, to stay focused and to be fact based in our decisions. The Nobel Prize winner in economics, 2002, Daniel Kahneman, advise us to find more time to do the things we enjoy doing. We really enjoy working with you!
This holiday season we contribute to Lilla barnets fond, a charity supporting research on newborn infants, Situation Stockholm, a magazine sold by the homeless in Stockholm, and the Swedish foundation for Nature Conservation. For more info see www.lillabarnet.se, www.situationsthlm.se, www.naturskyddsforeningen.se.
Sincerely, Måns and Hjalmar
