Henrik Lie-Nielsen

Bergen-based serial entrepreneur. Founded my first tech company in 1995 — at eighteen, before "tech company" was a category in Norway. The name was Bergen Nettverkssenter; it eventually became Reaktor. The next twenty-seven years went to building, advising, investing, and getting it wrong on the way to getting it right.

Reaktor I co-founded with Roger and Geir. We built it for fifteen years — systems for Frank Mohn, Vesta Finans, Skandiabanken, and the long tail of Nordic firms doing serious things on the internet before "internet business" was a phrase. We sold to Knowit in 2010. I stayed five more years to scale the Norwegian arm from 200 to 700 people, then helped knit Stockholm, Göteborg, and Helsinki into what became Knowit Experience. December 2015 I walked.

I grew up in Åsane, north of Bergen, packing boxes in my parents' toy-shop warehouse. That's where I learned the difference between cost and price — and that the job doesn't do itself. Along the way I also co-founded Bookkeeper in 2011, an accounting firm that grew to 170 MNOK in revenue and later listed publicly; I've since sold down to a financial position. After Knowit I wanted to work for me, not for a thousand shareholders on the Stockholm exchange. Amp Eleven was the answer. Roger, Geir and I put equal money into a new investment vehicle — same operating partners as Reaktor, same skin in the game, same way of working. Twenty-plus years in, the only thing that's changed is what we're building.

At Amp I lead our Bergen office and sit inside two portfolio companies on a weekly cadence. I'm not afraid of voicing my opinion in a room where everyone else seems to agree on the opposite. I write more than I should on Amplified, mostly about the gap between what investors say they do and what they actually do.