Lars Johan Magnus Staël von Holstein is a Swedish entrepreneur, venture capitalist and author who co-founded dot-com companies such as :sv:Icon Medialab|Icon Medialab and LetsBuyIt during the early dot-com boom in Sweden.
Early life
Staël von Holstein studied information technology at Lund University, in the south of Sweden. In 1989, at the age of 25, he began studies at the Stockholm School of Business, Stockholm University in Sweden, where he majored in marketing management. He also attended a summer session at Harvard Business School, taking two MBA course units, "International Business" and "Doing Business with Pacific Rim Countries", and spent a semester at Lynn University in Florida.
Career
He began his career at media and finance conglomerate the Kinnevik Group as apprentice to Jan Hugo Stenbeck. Staël von Holstein worked his way up to his first CEO position at start up ITV, having been a marketing director of Z-TV, the Kinnevik Group's flagship TV channel for young people. He grew InTV to become the largest teletext company in Europe with offices in six countries. Staël von Holstein was vice president of Inlux, in Luxemburg, and then went on to become responsible for Banque Invik's sales and credit card operations. At the end of 1995, Staël von Holstein left the Kinnevik Group to found website-design company :sv:Icon Medialab|Icon Medialab together with Jesper Jos Olsson, Erik Wickström, and Magnus Lindahl. He moved back to Stockholm in 2004 to start IQube, which quickly grew into one of the largest private business incubators in Europe with a portfolio of more than 100 companies. IQube was recognized as a value creator and major investors included Investor, the Nordic region's largest industrial holding company, as well as Sjätte AP-Fonden, a Swedish pension fund. Staël von Holstein during this time was recognized as a Global Leader of Tomorrow by Chief Executive magazine and elected as one of ten board members on the Swedish Government's Cultural Board, a government agency with the task of implementing national cultural policy. He was an independent, right-wing columnist for the Stockholm-edition of the newspaper Metro until 2000 and is now back.
Entrepreneurship
Icon Media Lab CEO (first two years)
At the end of 1995, Staël von Holstein left the Kinnevik Group to found Icon Medialab together with Jesper Jos Olsson, Erik Wickström, and Magnus Lindahl.. The company went public in 1999 and continued rapid expansion with a US$70 million investment into the Asian market in 2000. At its peak the company had over 3,000 employees in 32 offices in cities around the globe. In 2001 its shares plunged more than 98% from their early 2000 peak and it axed around 500 jobs. In December 2001 shares of the debt-ridden company were suspended from the Stockholm stock exchange. The company was merged with rival Dutch web company Lost Boys in a reverse takeover to form a new Dutch-based company under CEO Rens Buchwaldt, and re-capitalized through a £12.4 million rights issue.
LetsBuyIt.com chairman and founder
In 1998 Staël von Holstein founded LetsBuyIt, an online price comparison platform that enabled its users to share, compare, and buy various products. LetsBuyIt floated on Germany's :de:Neuer Markt|Neuer Markt in July 2000, raising about US$60 million from a planned target of US$180 million in its initial public offering. It sought protection under the Dutch Bankruptcy Code in December of the same year. After deferring bankruptcy through 2001, on 4 March 2002 it declared bankruptcy. Its staff had been reduced from 450 to 25.
IQube founder and CEO
In 2004, Staël von Holstein started IQube, which quickly grew into one of the largest private incubators in Europe with a portfolio of more than 100 companies. IQube was wound-up in 2009.
MyCube founder, chairman and CEO
Staël von Holstein founded MyCube in 2008, a digital life management tool for exchanging, sharing and selling content. MyCube was the first decentralized social exchange that prioritized privacy, ownership, and user freedom to monetize on their own creativity in contrast to centralized networks as Facebook etc. MyCube raised over US$8 million in funds in May 2011, then in August 2012 filed for voluntary liquidation.
Crowd1, CEO
Staël von Holstein was CEO of this company in 2019. Crowd1 is a multi-level marketing company that aims, ostensibly, to develop an online entertainment industry. The company is based in Spain where it trades as Impact Crowd Technology S.L. In November 2019, Norway's gaming and foundation authority, :no:Lotteri- og stiftelsestilsynet|Lotteri- og stiftelsestilsynet, determined that Crowd1 operates with a pyramid structure to generate revenue. In January 2020, in Burundi's largest city Bujumbura, Crowd1 was raided and over 300 people arrested, 17 of whom were placed in custody for promoting Crowd1, described as a Ponzi scheme. In Paraguay on 6 February 2020 the Comisión Nacional de Valores issued a securities fraud warning against Crowd1, advising against investment. CNV identifies Crowd1 as an unregistered securities offering. Promoters of Crowd1 in Paraguay face up to three years imprisonment or a fine. On 21 February 2020 the Bank of Namibia declared Crowd1 a pyramid scheme and warned the promoters to stop their activities immediately. The bank stated "Crowd1 does not sell tangible products or render any service of essential value, but the primary source of income for Crowd1 is the sale of membership packages to new members". On 12 May 2020 the Philippines Securities and Exchange Commission directed Crowd1 Asia Pacific to immediately stop its “fraudulent” investing-taking activities. On 5 June 2020 the New Zealand Financial Markets Authority added Crowd1 and Impact Crowd Technology to its warning list due to concerns they may be involved in or operating a scam.
