Hi Johan! Can you tell us a bit about your role at Centi and why you decided to join the team?

Hello world! As a Full-stack Engineer at Centi, I develop new features to make private equity ownership frictionless for our users. I’m a part of the product development cycle from idea, to discovery, system design, development and user experience.

Being a small tight knit engineering team, it also means taking on every technical challenge that comes your way. One of the first things I did was a technical domain infrastructure migration to enable more reliable and scalable operations. I felt the trust to do that critical task, from day one. I’ve also had the opportunity to lead the development of our new valuations module. Since valuations touch almost every part of the system, the project offered me a deep dive into our data model and the mechanics of how Private Equity companies are valued, including the many concepts that tie into it.

I joined Centi because I wanted to go back to a startup with an exciting vision — in a tight talented team. Coming from other fast paced projects at Klarna and Tier, I wanted to be a part of the building journey at an earlier stage.

Coming from Netlight—like the rest of our engineering team—what aspects of that culture do you find continuing or changing here at Centi?

If there is one thing I’ve learned it is that with the right team, where care is the core of the culture, you can tackle any problem together. That passion, support and self-leadership is core at Centi. Sometimes I lead, sometimes I follow. When you know that everyone has your back, it’s easy.

Here, I can reduce all the extra contexts I used to be part of and focus purely on solving whatever is most important right in front of me. Multitasking isn’t a thing, and I try to live by that.

You were based in Berlin before moving back in 2022. What, if anything, do you miss about it?

Berlin is this melting pot of people from all over the world, where culture and creativity thrives through different outlets. Everyone lives their lives differently, and I miss the unexpected, you know.

The bars, the clubs and the restaurants. The Vietnamese food. The dumplings. Ever since my exchange year in South Korea, I’m always on the search for a great bibimbap, and Berlin has a lot of them.

We heard you’re a new cyclist and had an eventful first ride, where you even bumped into Fredrik on the road—anything you would like to share about that experience?

I signed up for the Siljan Runt race together with my friends around the time I started at Centi, and Fredrik was an instant support in the cycling jungle. During our first training session on Kärsön, I saw Fredrik speeding past us, completely in his zone. We managed to make contact and rode back through Bromma together while chatting. A biking selfie together sent on Slack. Stockholm is a small place when in your own bubble. And great minds think like that of course. Fredrik is an inspiration with his positive energy radiating around him.

When you’re not coding or cycling, what’s something people at Centi might be surprised to learn about you?

During high school, my friends and I made short film projects together, and right after graduation I studied cinematography. Cliché, maybe — but I was drawn to the idea of bringing ideas to life through technology and a frame. A blast from the past can even be found on my IMDb profile. In a way, it’s similar to what I do today, just in a different format. I think it’s for the best that I found another creative outlet in software development, building things online has been with me since my early teens.

I also watch far too many infrastructure project videos on YouTube. That’s also a path I might have taken if I hadn’t gone into software engineering, something within city planning or architecture. The idea of making our surroundings more efficient, more reliable, and better designed, while contributing to the constant movement of societal improvement, really speaks to me.

Funny enough, construction projects seem to follow us everywhere at Centi — whether it’s the Nobel Center next to our old office, district heating installation in Gamla Stan, or the house under renovation beside our team off-site. Keep on building!

Looking ahead, what projects or challenges at Centi are you most excited to dive into?

We have some really exciting projects and feature development in the coming months that will take our service to the next level, involving AI, advanced fund flows, and more. In our tight-knit team, we drive projects end-to-end, working closely across planning, architecture, execution, and user experience. From seed to a growing tree, that is providing value to our users. That is rewarding.