Tom Palenius

I am an experienced business coach, mentor and a leader with a proven track of performance in a wide range of positions from corporate level to startups as well as the public sector.

My strengths are in health, wellbeing and life science sectors but I work smoothly also with other business and technology areas. As a leader my style is very inclusive and participative, which reflects also to coaching and sparring. I get inspired by the challenge of building new starts and enjoy working with new concepts to find their market match – but always customer & business first!

My background is in natural science, which I have complemented with financial training and exams, e.g. HHJ Certified Board Member and HAB Certified Advisory Board Member. I have worked both at international corporate level and public sector as well as built early-stage startups to business positive companies. As an example, growing a laboratory diagnostics company from 1.5 FTEs to 10 persons and zero to 1Meur, turning technology to a novel product portfolio, organizing operations, production, quality system and certifiacion, and building a sales & distributor network in +10 European countries.

I have also raised VC capital and successfully applied for R&D grants and loans – and also seen the other side of the “money table” when scouting for investment targets for Karolinska Development fund and acting as an evaluator of EU Framework program project applications for more than 20 years. Altogether, I am well familiarized with both domestic and European public funding instruments for SMEs.

My background and experience put me in a good position to provide business development insight from the very early phase to growth and international market entry, e.g.
- conceptualize the idea
- define customer targets and segments
- find alternative commercialization paths & business models
- define the must-haves for success (funding, resources, regulatories etc)
- develop scaleup, growth and expansion strategies
- create business and operational plan
- support VC raising and applying grants & other public funding

To wrap up - innovation always starts with an idea or an invention but the idea remains an idea and the invention an invention unless someone is willing to pay for it – happy to help you find your path to success!