Forbes_USA_June_13_2017

HUMAN RESOURCES
pitched Meltwater to 1,500 companies. The answer
from 1,499 was no, with one maybe. Lyseggen told
his team they couldn’t pitch the service until they got
a sense of their clients’ pain points. Only with that
context in mind were they permitted to proceed with
the hard sell. He also required that all subscription
fees be paid up front for the entire year so he could
continue bootstrapping the business. Both moves
worked: By the end of 2003, Meltwater had signed
1,000 clients and revenue had reached seven figures.
The following year, it expanded into Sweden.
Warming up to his own company, Lyseggen brought
new hires to Oslo and trained them for three months
before returning them to Stockholm to open a new
office, which was cash-flow-positive after two weeks.
He repeated the process as he spread Meltwater
across northern Europe, and by the end of 2005, annual
revenue had reached $11 million.
As Meltwater continued to expand, Lyseggen unfurled
his exhaustive—and exhausting—approach
to recruiting: the 3,000-interview binge. With his
human resources teams, he concentrated on top
universities, trying to hire only candidates with
management potential—as well as intelligence, drive
and wit. The new hires helped Meltwater compete as
Google Alerts and Yahoo News inundated the media-intelligence
space in the Web 2.0 world. Lyseggen
cast his new competitors as entry-level versions
of his superior service—while constantly trying to
improve Meltwater’s once-clunky product. Says Ben
Hunt, director of digital media for the Denver Broncos,
“The interface has come a long way.”
Raised in Norway by adoptive
parents, Jorn Lyseggen says
people are often surprised he
isn’t tall and blond. He was
photographed in Ghana at his
school for entrepreneurs.
JUNE 13, 2017 FORBES | 55