Talking with Pia Persson, most long-standing employee in the company

Pia, you are with Tradedoubler for almost 20 years and joined the company just a couple of months after it was founded. Congratulations! 20 years is an exceptional timeframe in our fast-paced industry!

Can you tell us how life was at Tradedoubler, when you joined?

I started in Stockholm in the year 2000 as Finance Director/Ekonomichef. At that time Tradedoubler was characterized by a startup and pioneer atmosphere. Everybody had bold and big plans and it felt like a bunch of friends working together. People were very motivated, confident and extremely talented. We were just a small group of people and everybody was working in very multitasking roles, in order to achieve our ambitious goals. Tradedoubler then quickly became the number one preferred partner within affiliate marketing in Europe, introducing a state of the art tracking technology with the aim of becoming the industry standard.

You have worked together with the founders, Martin Lorentzon and Felix Hagnö. How would you describe them and how did you experience working with them?

Martin and Felix were two young, very enthusiastic and driven pioneers who loved affiliate marketing and strongly believed in it being the future of performance based marketing. They wanted to grow Tradedoubler to become the number one in Europe and then expand in other parts of the world like Asia, South America and the US. Martin Lorentzon was the more creative person with lots of energy, working in the background and cheering for all others to achieve their goals. Felix Hagnö was more cautious, well organized and a gifted speaker. CEO in the beg, he stayed the longest in the Board of Directors of the Tradedoubler Group.

Tradedoubler’s management team in the year 2000. From the left to the right: the former CTO, Peter Sterky (CFO), Pia Persson (Finance Director), Felix Hagnö (CEO and Co-Founder), Håkan Borg and Martin Lorentzon (Co-Founder).

What was your most exciting experience at Tradedoubler?

Working with so young, driven and talented people and preparing for the IPO in 2005 was very exciting for me. I was a bit nervous meeting with the auditors from Stockholm Stock Exchange, but we made it…:-)

You are working with Tradedoubler for almost 20 years now. What made you stay, what do you like most about the company?

I always liked and enjoyed the international atmosphere and always thought of Tradedoubler´s business model as a win-win model. I enjoy working with young people from different countries and my role still remained multi-tasking: I am overseeing Controlling with policy work, being responsible for Compliance for 4 years and Legal for 3 years already. I led the GDPR project for a year, am planning and holding staff trainings, helping Finance with accounting, cash management and annual report matters, so my job never gets boring. 😉

And something that hardly anybody knows about us: Tradedoubler was the only company that George Soros invested in in Sweden – that was in the year 2000.

Thanks a lot for the interview, Pia!

Pia Persson is responsible for Financial Controlling & Legal at Tradedoubler