Employee insight: A success story with Ludvig Kraft, Head of Strategy and M&A

The proptech industry is both competitive and fast-changing, and the benefits and necessity of devising strategies for progress and staying agile are vital. At Marketer, we see the need to have both an in-house Consultant team that is fully committed to strengthening our client's digital strategy, in addition to a Strategy team focusing on our growth potential on a local and global scale. Ludvig Kraft has now ventured into the role as our Head of Strategy and M&A (Mergers & Acquisitions) at Marketer, just a few months after he initially started in the role as Strategy Consultant. He will be responsible for the Strategy team and their measurements to streamline Marketer’s solid growth.

“In such a young and fast-moving industry with new players entering the market continuously, new technologies emerging, and indefinite roads to pursue - a well-defined strategy is key. As the leading company within our field, we need to pave the way for ourselves and others alike. My team has the important role of making this journey as seamless as possible, and more importantly, making sure that we reach our strategic and financial ambitions.”  - Ludvig Kraft.

Ludvig started his career at Marketer as a Strategy Consultant in February 2022 and grew quickly into the role, showing immense expertise and taking full responsibility for several large projects. Not long after he started, he was promoted to Head of Strategy and M&A, where he is now responsible for the Strategy team as a whole. It is an inspiring journey and we are interested to hear more about his accomplishments and ambitions.

Tell us about your background:

The most relevant I would say is my experience from my previous job at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), where I had two significant focus areas. Firstly, I was a member of the BCG Oslo PIPE team, working towards Private Equity players, supporting them with both commercial due diligence during live transactions and full-potential plans (strategy formulation including identification of growth levers, margin expansion levers etc.) of their existing portfolio companies. Secondly, I worked within the TMT sector (Technology, Media, and Telecommunications), assisting clients with their digital strategies. Luckily, the combination of these two distinct experiences has been a very good foundation for my current position at Marketer. More generally, I was also fortunate to develop strong problem-solving capabilities and an analytical toolbox which I am still benefiting from today.

Before my professional career, I took a Bachelor's degree in International Business at Copenhagen Business School with an exchange year at Harvard Business School, and a Master's degree in Finance and Accounting at Imperial College of London. During my studies, I actually also founded a software company providing a sharing platform for storage space, so I guess you can say that I have an entrepreneurial spirit in me which matches well with the environment at Marketer.

How has the journey been since you started at Marketer?

Working in a thriving scale-up with a lot of potential, already strong traction, and even higher ambitions is amazing. What is also unique is that every single employee is sharing the ambitions of the company, which makes it very inspiring and a lot of fun to work here. In terms of my role, my journey has been really exciting with a variety of responsibilities and contributions. In the beginning, I was lucky enough to be responsible for developing our accelerated go-to-market strategy in the US, which is a significant focus for us going forward. This work was eventually relieved by a commercial due diligence process, ending with the acquisition of vY Communication and EVE Images.

Subsequently, I took the lead on the integration of the two companies which is still ongoing to this day, where the focus lies on how to tie together and create synergy between three historical companies and their unique products - eventually developing our products to best suit our client's needs and enabling our continued growth.

What do you enjoy the most about working with strategy?

There are a lot of things I enjoy about this field, but what I find the most distinguishable and rewarding is contributing to solving complex problems which can have a decisive (hopefully positive) impact on the performance of the overall business. Further, as the company's priorities evolve and change, so do the day-to-day tasks, meaning a lot of work variation. Another benefit of this is that the Strategy team at Marketer is fortunate to work with many different departments and people across the entire organisation.

What are the ambitions for Marketer’s Strategy team going forward?

The Strategy team's main focus is to contribute to maintaining, and best of all, accelerating Marketer’s already rapid growth. In order to do so, there are a set of key success factors and enablers - you can call them ambitions.

To highlight three; first of all, we will continue to develop our products and enhance our end-to-end offering according to the customer's needs. The task of the Strategy team is to help identify the actual needs and thereby price and bundle our products accordingly, both benefiting our customers and subsequently us. Secondly, we will concentrate on Marketer's plans for further international expansion. We are already present in 17 countries, but we will continue working on increasing market penetration within these markets as well as expanding our operations to new geographies. Lastly, our team will have a strict focus on enabling and sustaining Marketer’s high growth rate, where it is crucial to maintain the organisational leanness, operational efficiency and agility, despite the increasing complexity that comes with expanding. Many scale-ups before us have painfully experienced how they outrun themselves leading to bottlenecks in the delivery, hampering further growth and negatively affecting profitability.

Fun fact: Which song can you listen to all day long?

Together Again by Dave Koz.

Join us!

Now you have the chance to become a part of Ludvig’s Strategy team. We are looking for strategic thinkers with solid business understanding to join the team, playing an important part in shaping Marketer’s future. You will be a part of a team that values teamwork and building on each other’s strengths, and you will work with a wide range of areas across the organization from business strategy and M&A to operational efficiency. Click here to read more about the position.