Invest in Norrbotten

Meet Jorma Mobrin, business angel

Jorma Mobrin is one of the more talked-about private venture capitalists – or business angels – within IT/telecoms in Norrbotten. He is involved in six different companies, one of which he helped to move from Stockholm to Luleå.

“It’s easy to work here. The engineers that come from Luleå University of Technology are really high class and there are a lot of interesting business ideas. At the same time Luleå is small enough for it to be easy to get in contact with banks, Almi, the Norrland Fund, Innovation Bridge and other investors. Connect also does an extremely good job here. Generally speaking people take the time to listen and are open for good collaborations,” is how Jorma Mobrin summarizes the investment climate in Luleå.

He wound up in Norrbotten mostly by chance. Jorma Mobrin began work as a management consultant in Stockholm in 2002 after leaving a senior position at Ericsson. An old acquaintance let him know that Connect was looking for a suitable person for the board of a start-up company in Luleå called NordNav. Jorma Mobrin invested a little money and took the position of CEO and board chairman. Five years later the company was sold at a good profit.

“It’s thanks to the profits from NordNav that I got the opportunity to get involved in other start-up companies in Luleå and I had a lot of good contacts. One thing led to another despite the fact that I had no connections at all to Norrbotten beforehand.”

Jorma Mobrin now devotes most of his time to his Norrbotten investments and assignments. In addition to being a financier he is also active in several companies in various executive roles. He does not see distance as a problem.

“Some days it takes as much time for me to get to the centre of Stockholm as it does to Aurorum Science Park in Luleå,” says Jorma Mobrin, who is based in Bålsta, northwest of Stockholm.