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gether we started a consultancy business called
Gren & Karlsson Firmware AB and sold graph-
ics cards to Luxor and communication solutions
to Diab. In 1984 we started Axis together with
Keith Bloodworth, who was a salesman and the
brain behind the Axis business model.
You have created all your jobs yourself.
Yes, apart from summer jobs all my jobs have
been self-created. This was also during a time
when running your own company was seen as
being a failure, and only for those who werenīt
good enough to work for someone else. This
was the general opinion in the seventies and
eighties. Luckily this has changed a lot.
How have you noticed that?
I often present lectures for universities and
schools about business and entrepreneurship.
The attitude is so much better now. Thatīs
great and I think it will be even better in the
future.
Is there a secret to being a good entrepre
neur? If a product or service is launched at
the right time doesn't it have a lot to do with
coincidence.
Thatīs correct. Itīs about coincidences and
luck. The network camera started with mr Alm
making a system for network video confer-
ences. I didnīt really believe in it, and even if
it would work it wouldnīt be salable through
Axis channels. I proposed that we should make
a camera instead and Carl-Axel thought that
was a good idea. Our timing was perhaps a
stroke of luck, but there was also a certain
amount of skill involved. We saw that the
market for surveillance cameras was entirely
analogue and understood that it had to be
digital some day.
How do you feel about venture capital?
Often, what a new entrepreneur needs first
is not money. He might think that he needs
money, but what he really needs is knowledge.
The most important thing when starting a
business is to start with the customers. If you
start with a bag of money you will become
good at asking for more money, and then more
money, and so it continues. Entrepreneurship
is about solving a problem and if you succeed
and the solution is good enough to create value
the money part will automatically be solved
for you.
You recently celebrated your 50th birthday
and have worked with Axis for more than
half of your lifetime, what motivates you?
Having fun! There is nothing better than
working with Axis and I plan to continue
with that.
I feel a lot more like an entrepreneur. Even if
I and Carl-Axel Alm designed the first network
camera that wasnīt the hard part. The tricky
bit was to bring it to the market. I have always
had a great interest in business and I started
trading stocks as a teenager, which wasnīt
common back then.
You were already an entrepreneur
in your teens.
Yes, I was fourteen years old. Back then I
sold disco lights that flashed spotlights to mu-
sic. It was an electrical product that was used a
lot in discos. I made them and had class mates
as resellers, and I learned a lot. That business
financed my interest in electronics, but at
the age of eleven I had already decided that I
wanted to have my own business.
What kind of electronics were
you interested in?
Building hardware, and later on microcom-
puters which I built from scratch. I mainly did
it for the fun of it. This was also how I got to
know Mikael Karlsson, co-founder of Axis and
CEO for sixteen years. He found out that I was
good at designing things that would sell. To-
Congratulations on the number one posi
tion and the award, how does it feel?
It is of course a great honour. It's great to
see that network camera technology has been
broadly accepted and this award clarifies that
even more.
You could actually have won in any year,
why do you think it happened 2012?
2012 was the year Axis became the biggest
player in the world when it comes to surveil-
lance cameras, not just network cameras. That
is the ultimate evidence that network cameras
have won as we donīt make analogue cameras.
What makes a good entrepreneur?
The ability to really be enthusiastic about
something and invent products that meet
the right customer demand at the right time.
Although our network camera was launched
before the market was truly ready and with
inadequate frame rate it quickly became better
as time went by.
You are probably seen as an innovator by
many. Do you feel like an entrepreneur or an
innovator?
the interview
MartinGren,co-founderofAxisandtheSecurityEntrepreneuroftheYear:
"The security industry is very conservative"
At the age of 14 he started making and selling disco lights and when
he was 22 he started Axis with Mikael Karlsson and Keith Bloodworth.
Today, Martin Gren, 50, is ranked as the most influential person in the
security industry by Ifsec Global and last autumn he was awarded the
prize of "Security entrepreneur of the Year" by the Scandinavian edition
of detektor magazine.
Martin Gren,
co-founder of Axis.