Oskar Söderström is the latest addition to an exclusive crowd of advisors, experts, and ambassadors to Warp Institute and Warp News.
Among others, there is the double doctor, brain researcher, entrepreneur, and TV personality Mouna Esmaeilzadeh. The Finnish engineer, entrepreneur, and writer, Rune Westergård. The business leader and CEO of a billion-dollar company, Richard Maltsbarger. Future astronaut and CEO of Spaceport Sweden, Karin Nilsdotter. Astronaut Christer Fuglesang. And others.
Interview with Oskar Söderström
Oskar Söderstörm is a forward-thinking entrepreneur who was early in understanding the latest novel sensations, such as e-commerce and blockchain. Oskar will help us grow, among other things by creating partnerships with future-oriented, optimistic companies.
What is your background, Oskar?
I am a 44-year-old Scanian who has always laid on rooftops during late nights and gazed into the universe. Almost half my life ago, in 2002, I moved to the capital of Sweden. I was greeted by a Stockholm still recovering from the aftermath of the dot-com crash. It was in this fantastic environment that I realized that the future really belongs to the optimists.
My career has been characterized by getting early into industries that have had a low level of maturity. I started working with the internet in 2002, e-commerce in 2008, and cryptocurrencies and blockchain in 2018.
It suits me because I love to simplify and popularize complex technologies and translate them into services that reach a wide audience.
What are you doing now?
Right now I'm a member of a couple of boards and have invested in some companies in health and tech. I also run my own company, but will soon enter into a larger context.
How does your future look?
Besides a long life, I think I will fill it with meaning. Now that the world is put together in a completely different way and will do so even more with future technologies, improving applications can spread globally overnight.
I am not naive, but very optimistic about the future.
Why are you involved with Warp?
I buy into the concept and want to use my skill set to do what I can to increase Warp's growth rate.
Why is fact-based optimism important?
During my time as a publicist, I realized quite quickly that today's news flow, consciously or subconsciously, exploits people's primal mechanisms. Negative news receives a disproportionately large share of the bombardment we today call the feed. This is because they are the ones that simply engage more, but I would argue that optimistic news inspires and engages, and negative news creates reactions and short-term fire-fighting that leads to an evolutionary impasse.
I believe that just as we on an individual level (micro) are the creators of our own success, and where attitude and perspective are a cornerstone in our work with ourselves, we as humanity (macro) are also in need of optimism.
The younger people own the future and the older ones have enormous resources. If we can increase the confidence of both young and old, we can shape our global human culture into something that moves from reacting to acting.
Now we all have the chance to do that, and I firmly believe that Warp News is part of that effort!
Do you know a rich pessimist?
No.
