Team
Our team is driven, hard-working, and passionate about value creation. Our backgrounds span many industries and geographies with leading consulting and online environments. As of today, Ignitas consists of six people:
Gard Jenssen (Partner)
Gard is a senior product executive with 15 years web-development and management experience from Yahoo! Europe (VP Product Development), Kelkoo (VP Product Management), European Commission (National Expert), Origo/Telenor Media (Chief Development Editor), Regjeringen.no/Odin (created the first version in 1994).
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Runar Eidsaa (Partner)
Runar has over the last 15 years been involved with a broad range of assignments within the telco, media and energy sector focusing on market entry, IT and business strategy. He has previously worked for PWC, PA Consulting, Framtidsfabriken and Hydro. From 2000 to 2003 he was in charge of Framfabs Oslo office, and with PA Consulting he was in charge of Marketing practice and helped Orange build up their 3G business in Sweden.
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Torkel Johannessen (CEO)
Torkel came to Ignitas from the role as Product Director at Passado.com, one of Europe’s largest community sites with 5 million users. Prior to joining Passado, he spent four years at Match.com, an online personals provider operated by Interactivecorp. Torkel held a number of product and marketing positions at Match.com, including Senior Brand Manager, responsible for the International Product Development of Chemistry.com, a premium online personals brand. In previous roles with Match.com, Torkel was employed as Marketing and Business Analytics Manager, Customer Care Manager and a Business Analyst. He has also served as Product Manager for Yahoo! Europe.
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Frode Vik (Senior Advisor)
Frode came to Ignitas from Kelkoo/Yahoo!, where he was Product Manager for Norway and Germany until mid-2008. Frode started out as the editor of the Norwegian website Zoomit.no. He became the Product Manager for Kelkoo.no in 2001, and also had the product responsibility for Kelkoo Denmark between 2002 and 2004. When Yahoo! bought Kelkoo in 2004, Frode also assumed product responsibility for Yahoo! Norway. Frode Vik has than 8 years of experience from the e-commerce industry, including experience as a owner and founder of the online retailer Intersalg.no and as co-founder of webshop provider Demostore.no.
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Terje Berg (Senior Advisor)
Terje has for more than 20 years focused on the areas of Internet, innovation, futurology and new technologies, especially energy, textiles and electronics. He is one of Norway’s foremost nanotechnology experts with deep knowledge of how this development will change our media consumption patterns as well as our daily lives. Terje is an highly sought-after speaker and enjoys a broad international network in his areas of expertise. Prior to joining Ignitas, Berg held key positions in Innovation Studios, Cientifica and Kairos future. He is a founding Member of the NanoBusiness Alliance (USA 2000 – ), Nanotechnology Expert at APTE (Switzerland 2002 – ) and Senior Associate Fellow at the Foresight Institute (1995 – ) in Palo Alto, USA. Currently Terje is also involved in an international project in synthetic and system biology with IBM.
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Tor Grønsund (Advisor)
Tor holds a M.Sc. degree in Innovation and Entrepreneurship from the University of Oslo, in addition to studies at Boston University – School of Management and the Norwegian School of Entrepreneurship. He received a Bachelor in Information Science from the University of Bergen and studied Informatics at Università degli Studi di Genova. Before joining our team, Tor also worked with Fast Search and Transfer and Schibsted, mainly focusing on the understanding of information technologies and its application to business.
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We are also proud to have a truly great Advisory Board.