William Wolfram
Entrepreneur turned early stage investor. Born in Helsinki, Finland, I started my first company at the age of 12 building computers for friends and family. At 15 I dropped out of school when my first e-commerce business took off. From 2008-2019 I was CEO of various venture backed startups I built focused on e-commerce growing them profitably to hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and tens of millions of Customers. In 2019 I shifted my focus and gradually became a full-time investor and supporter of young entrepreneurs. Today I lead Trifecta, a proprietary investment firm. In 2013 I was fortunate enough to win the EY World Entrepreneur of the Year National Prize for Finland and received a nice recognition from the President of the Republic of Finland, which remains one of my proudest career achievements to date. In 2016, I impressed my old teachers by successfully graduating from the Harvard Business School’s 3-year OPM (exec. ed) program, becoming the youngest ever alumni of HBS. My day to day work is mainly focused on helping entrepreneurs however I can and occasionally stepping in to help with the grinding work whenever asked. In my spare time I enjoy hiking, spending time at home cooking with my wife and reading.
I believe all businesses should be Customer obsessed (in my own businesses that I ran I always made a point of having all employees regardless of role talk to Customers on the phone regularly) and that we should only hire people we trust and admire. I believe that while there are phenomenal venture capital investors who add tremendous value, most venture capital investors add negative value and that entrepreneurs should think twice before agreeing to “industry standard” terms. In my own investing I aim to be extremely founder friendly. To date I have never sided against a founder we’ve invested in and I hope to continue that track record all throughout my career.