Web Slinger

Morten Lund is an entrepreneur turned media mogul, now revitalising the newspaper business.Barry Mansfield reports

In May 2001, when then prime minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen announced his ambition to transform Denmark into “the world’s number one IT nation”, he was running out of time. By December of that year the rival Venstre party had booted him from office, and his call-to-technology speech was already forgotten by most people. Most, but not all. A daring young tech investor called Morten Lund, who was at the top of Rasmussen’s invitation list for FutureCamp, the industry taskforce, was hatching his own “viral and non-political movement”. Lund, who first came to the nation’s attention in 2000, when he sold his web design agency NeoIdeo to media giant Leo Burnett, has since propelled Scandinavia to the vanguard of tech start-ups with VoIP pioneer Skype, which eBay bought for €1.7bn in 2005, antivirus firm Bullguard and the zero-commission stockbroker Zecco.

The Dane risked €33,230 for a 1% stake in Skype, two years before it hit paydirt, and has since teamed up with advertising veteran Soren Kenner to launch advisory firm LundKenner. He has also kick-started three funds – one for Chinese property, another centred on Indian technology ventures and a Middle Eastern clean tech equity fund – before setting up his own investment vehicle, called Lundxy. There is also HelloGroup, the full-service advertising agency in Copenhagen, with 65 staff. Now he is set to turn media baron after swooping for a majority stake in the national free newspaper Nyhedsavisen.

For somebody so well-schooled in the advantages of the web versus printed media, Lund’s move in January to purchase the loss-making paper from Icelandic group Baugur has raised more than a few eyebrows. Although the free daily enjoys a higher circulation (over 600,000 copies) than its national rivals Jyllands-Posten and Politiken, that penetration has come at a price – the firm is haemorrhaging around €66,000 per day.

Lund’s decision to enter Denmark’s “newspaper wars” has come at a critical time in the industry. Since 2006, the dominant players have vied to take on Nyhedsavisen, shifting papers in the street for free. One by one, however, they are leaving the race. Free weekly SøndagsAvisen lost 33% of its market capitalisation last October by adjusting profit down from €14m to €2.5m.

He’ll be looking to cash in on Nyhedsavisen’s credibility as a distribution service – the paper is delivered straight to the doorstep, meaning that additional advertising literature, including brochures or leaflets, can bring in extra income. And who better to facilitate this than Lund’s own advertising firm?

Today the entrepreneur has turned up at the Lundxy office with his six-year-old son Linus. Unshaven and casually dressed, Lund explains that he has just returned from a conference in San Francisco. He doesn’t like to stay still for too long. Piling everyone into his wife’s car he decides to drive over to HelloGroup for a site inspection instead.

Lund puts his success down to practice. Just as footballers train regularly, he says, entrepreneurs need to hone their skills, and the Dane was just 19 when he set up his first company. Growing up in the countryside outside Roskilde “with farmers all over”, he began a Masters degree in economics at Odense University, but dropped out when he realised that he preferred the real thing to theory. Since then, he admits, good fortune has helped him – as the title of his blog proclaims, “It’s all about luck.”

But he is notoriously fast-moving and well known for what he has described as his “psycho-aggressive investment style”. Lund acts just after thinking, “without caring about spelling”, and believes in action more than words.