Building a Mission-Driven Company from Sweden: Anders Ankarlid, CEO of A Good Company (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: In terms of customer acquisition, what is working for you?

Anders Ankarlid: We have a reward program. We have ambassadors that we don’t pay. If they like our products, they can get discounts. We are doing Google Ads and Facebook marketing. Facebook marketing has shifted a lot into being really competitive.

We are investing quite a lot into Facebook marketing. Our average order value is $50. Facebook is sold out. It’s getting more and more competitive. They are holding on releasing ads since they really see that they can cream the sponge, if you like, with the current levels.

We’re not doing any traditional marketing at all. We do a lot of PRs as well. We invest heavily into making research about things. We have one guy looking at how other people are transforming to being more climate cautious. We are also doing things that are not 100% related to our products.

Sramana Mitra: What about financing? What have you chosen?

Anders Ankarlid: It’s owned by me and two brothers. These two brothers come from a family company. They’ve been around for 65 years. They are solid financially. They own a majority of the stock. We can use them as a family office if you like.

We are not relying on any VC. We are not relying on any short-term debt. We have a credit line at the bank, but all cash comes from either me or these two brothers. VCs can be really good, but what they are good at are things that we don’t currently need. We don’t need more speed. We don’t need more execution power. We don’t need more cash at this moment to scale it up.

Our roadmap is different. After you become a customer, we basically stop selling. We can tell them about products. We have a monthly update. Then we educate them on how to think about flying. How do you do recycling? How do you do it? Maybe this is a thing our customers like.

Instead of overselling them new things, we are trying to bring them onto the journey which I have been through. A lot of other people are thinking about it. Everyone is somehow affected by climate change. We are trying to influence them in a neutral manner. We are not judging people for flying. We are offering options.

Sramana Mitra: Very interesting. You’re a mission-driven company. You’re not trying to grow at venture scale. You’ve been choosing alternative means of financing. You want to grow organically.

Anders Ankarlid: My intention with this company is that we should leave this in good hands to our kids. Then you take the perception of running this to 50 years. That is also interesting in terms of when you’re designing a new product.

This mobile case, we have been working on it for over a year. There’ve been constant setbacks. If you think about it, if you have 11 months of constant failures, you may give up and jump to another ball. If you put it into the perspective of running it for a longer time, you can afford to have 11 months of failures.

Sramana Mitra: Excellent. I hope things go the way you envision. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Building a Mission-Driven Company from Sweden: Anders Ankarlid, CEO of A Good Company
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