Interview with the CEO
I started my internship at WebHouse in the end of August 2017. Earlier I’ve introduced our intern team here on Medium, and through a short interview I will introduce you to our CEO Christian. If you are interested in reading about how ideas and passion turns into something bigger than an idea on a paper, this article is for you.
Ineta (I): Please introduce yourself.
Christian (C): My name is Christian Broberg, and I’m the founder and CEO of WebHouse and ODEUM Software.
I: Nice to meet you
C: Thanks
I: Can you describe yourself in one word?
C: (laughs) I am on a quest for passion in many parts of life, mostly in technology. I work best with what I am truly passionate about. I am a workaholic. And I believe a “thinker” is the best word to describe me.
I: Can you name a person who has had a tremendous impact on you as a leader? Maybe someone who has been a mentor to you? Why and how did this person impact your life?
C: My mom has been a very large part of my life. Primarily in terms of being a very thoughtful, kind and supporting person in our creation of WebHouse back in 1995. And she always believed in us and believed in our ideas. I have constantly a lot of ideas and not all of them are good, creating WebHouse was one of the better ones. She is a very good mentor.
On a personal business side, I do not look at myself as a leader, more as a mentor and innovative partner for my colleagues. To be a good leader you need to want to be a leader and work with leadership most of the time, and I do not want to work with that all the time. My thoughts on leadership for us at least: If you are truly passionate at what you do, people will follow you. I am very passionate and determined about what I do and how I do it.
I still look up to Steve Jobs from Apple. His thinking and vision and work ethic, I like that. I do not think of him as a particularly good leader, he was very hard and tough on other people and that side I am not attracted to, and I am the opposite. But his vision and the way he describes passion, working from passion and it doesn’t matter whether you want to be a garbage collector or a painter, a software developer, designer or a carpenter, as long as you are passionate about what you do. And the way that he has dealt with the problems that he wanted to solve through design and software has been a big inspiration to me.
I: In the past you were a software developer, right? How did you decide to start your own company?
C: In 1994 I was working for a company that sold personal computers, servers and Novell network systems, I launched their first customers on Microsoft Windows Server, that was pretty radical. The company had never touched that area before, and soon Windows Server became the go-to platform. I was a developer from school and a lot of what I knew about programming I learned at home before entering the university. I was self taught through big book series and manuals, Google did not exist (laughs) My job consisted of being both sales consultant and software developer.
And then the Internet started blossoming in a wider perspective but my boss wasn’t very visionary about the Internet so I started working on small web projects at home at night. The World Wide Web was still in it’s infancy at that point in time. There were no companies in Denmark that created web pages or anything, but I had this idea and I actually suggested it to my boss and told him that ”You have many customers and I have this idea of creating websites for all of them, do you want to be a part of that?”. He declined …
He did not believe in it (or me). Microsoft didn’t even believe in the web. In these early days of the WWW many believed that we would be connected in closed proprietary systems, Microsoft Network was born and other encapsulated platforms. I believed in something else, in the freedom and opportunities that web technology would bring all of us. I just had a feeling that the web would be a big thing. And it did didn’t it?
I was in love with the Web so I quit my job and launched WebHouse, and actually on that day I stopped being a software developer and became project manager, sales person, CEO and all the other tasks you are supposed to do in a Web Agency. Last year I picked up programming again with JavaScript, but that’s a story for another time …
I: Was it hard to get into a different kind of thinking?
C: Yes, it was hard. And it is always a challenge to launch a startup but I love what I do and it is amazing! Slowly picking up programming again is just for fun, it might get more serious one day, I have so many ideas. The hard part I think was launching the first Web Agency in Denmark and we knew absolutely nothing about sales and marketing. We were nerds, and we still are, we love designing software and creating solutions for the right reasons. Making software that actually solves problems. So the sales and marketing part was bit of a struggle in the beginning. But we were lucky in many ways, we received awards for our work and getting those stories in national news papers at that time when no one really knew much about the web was a serious boost. The phone just started ringing and it kept ringing. So 25% of Danish top twenty companies all called us and wanted us to create their first website. In pure handwritten HTML (laughs).
I: That was a great achievement. How do you think WebHouse will change in two years and what is your role in it?
C: We have been on a changing path for the last few years, moving more and more away from being a traditional Web Agency to focus on our ODEUM Software business designing and creating standard software in the area of Business Process Optimization and Automation. My personal contribution is a mix between working with product innovation, software technology/architecture and patterns, and being responsible for shipping the software. Talking with customers about their pain points and problems is still something I enjoy immensely, it keeps me on track and going to know that we keep solving real problems for businesses out there. In 2–3 years we will run a business of standard software products all build on our open source software platform created for designers and developers to build Web Apps and Mobile Apps in a fast and creative way. This platform is as you know ODEUM Code and we use it to build our own products and customised apps and solutions for our customers.
I: Tell me three things you love about your work and things you dislike.
C: Three things… hmmm. I first of all love when you encounter a problem and you start thinking: How can I solve this problem?. What do I put in the mix of standard software, standard components that we already have in ODEUM Code, or components that exists in the market, joined with software the customer already have, and how we through our LEGO mindset combine this into a user friendly and fast solution. That is the main drive, that we actually create software and solutions that makes daily tasks and processes for our customers smarter, faster, more lean or more data driven.
Then I love good interface design, design is one of the most important aspects of this whole industry and I can personally pixel-neck-nerd for days over the looks of even very small parts. This is growing from the idea that if you put love and passion into every tiny little aspect of your work and product, something amazing will come out of it. It takes a lot of time and effort but I love it and so do our customers. I believe it is good karma.
I am not particularly fond of people who do not live up to their own expectations. I think that is a waste of time. It is not about where your initial skill level is, because if you are truly passionate about what you do, you will always be able to rise to a higher level. As long as you want to do it, you will succeed. I am not too happy about working with people that can’t do stuff on their own, people whose hand you need to hold all the time, I need someone to take action and try to catch up with all my crazy ideas (laughs).
I: talking about personal things, what is your life goal?
C: My life goal? Oh that is a very big question. First of all I would like to grow old and have a chance to watch my kids grow old as well, before I leave this place. To be a dad is in the end more important than being a good business man or leader, but I still have so much I want to achieve with my business and software and the ideas just keep pouring in.
I look a lot to the future of technology and what we eventually will be able to do some day. Scientists and philosophers can’t find a psychological reason for us dying because there is nothing in our genome or our evolution that predicts a rule that our mind have to die. Only our bodies seem to be in decay. Why can’t you keep the mind going for ever? So the big end goal would be to transfer my all my knowledge and consciousness to a computer and live forever (big laugh), and that would make my first life goal come true as well. I think stuff like that will be possible some day. Probably not in my lifetime. But humanity are working on it…
I: That is a great life goal, hope it will soon become a reality. Thank you for your time Christian.
It was a great chance for me to get to know Christian and his company, how everything began and how he evolved into who he is now and the company he is working with so much passion for. I learned a lot from this interview and got even more fired up to try my own luck in the future. Cheers!
