Rune Sovndahl

Summary - Rune Sovndahl (Born 13 February, 1975) is a Danish-born entrepreneur with over fifteen years' experience in the the IT, dot-com and telecommunications industries. He is the founder of Briing.com, Polish portal Gadatka.com and Victor Connect Ltd. He is currently the co-owner and CEO of international SEO agency [First Online Solutions](http://www.1stonlinesolutions.com/). Early Life- Sovndahl grew up in Copenhagen attending both [Ingrid Jespersens Gymnasie skole](http://ijg.dk/) and [Oestre Borgerdyd](http://www.gefion-gym.dk/om-gefion/historie/oestre-borgerdyds-historie.aspx). He became interested in programming and business technology at an early age, primarily through the influence of his father who was a programmer for IBM, writing his first program for stock management at age 10. Rune attended the [Copenhagen Business School](http://eng.brock.dk/) from 1997 – 1999 with a focus on innovation and entrepreneurship. As a graduate student, he worked with [British Telecom](http://www.bt.com/) as a systems architect. His early technological influences include the inspiration of William Gibson's novel, Virtual Light. Following his service in the Royal Danish Navy, Rune developed a passion for the culinary arts which lead to him to working in the kitchens of multiple Michelin Star restaurants in Copenhagen and Søllerød under the tutelage of Franz Stockhammer. Rune was fascinated by El Bulli and the school of culinary technology and organization, but he left the industry due to a severe shellfish allergy. He keeps the passion of his culinary days alive in the day to day work of his companies. Career- Rune's interest in technology and human interaction led him to the fields of Search Engine Marketing, Paid Search, Natural Search, Brand Discovery, and Protection & Visibility. His early days in technology involved the development of location-based systems and the early development of a [3G platform](http://www.btagilemedia.com/) for locating restaurants and shops, as well as one of the first televised SMS campaigns in the UK. In 2003 Rune launched a mid-sized SEO and affiliate web design company, [Victor Connect Ltd.](http://www.victorconnect.com/) before he became Head of Search at Lastminute.com where he managed an extensive multi-million dollar SEM strategy in the travel market. He co-founded First Online Solutions in 2009, which owns and operates a number of popular consumer telecom brands: - [Fantastic cleaners](www.fantasticcleaners.com) - [Rubbish Please](www.rubbishplease.com) - [Tick Tick Check](www.ticktickcheck.com) - [Aussie Handyman](www.aussiehandyman.com) - [Aussie Clean Team](www.aussiecleanteam.com) - [TimeVouchers](www.timevouchers.com) - [Mini Wardrobe](www.miniwardrobe.com) - [Now Roam](www.nowroam.com) - [Briing.com](www.bring.com) Personal Life – Sovndahl currently resides in London's Bloomsbury. He remains passionate about travel, culinary arts and designing sustainable business models for technology that optimize marketing and usability across the full value chain of the consumer. Philanthropy – Rune is the co-founder of Stepnote, a charity music school in Denmark. The [site](stepnote.dk) is a personal matching service that aims to find the ideal music teacher based on a student’s individual needs.