June 22 2022

Meet the team: Thor Sundsvik

Product Manager Thor Sundsvik is a key member of the team bringing Actiste® to market. He spoke to us about some of Brighter’s learnings and why he’s excited about the company’s current momentum.

Please give us a brief idea of the work your team does.

We span a lot of different disciplines in the product-management team, as Brighter works in hardware, software, telecommunications and the medical industry. All these disciplines are evolving all the time, so there’s always a lot to learn.

What learnings stand out as significant?

For example, we’ve gained a lot of knowledge over the years figuring out exactly how the global roaming for Actiste® is going to work. It sounds like it should be straightforward, but there are a lot of pieces you need to put together for it to become reality.

Data privacy is another area we’ve put a lot of work into. A few years ago the perception was that cloud services would remove limitations anywhere in the world. But the fact is that there are countries where some of the big cloud providers are not yet active, and it will take a few years for them to develop there.

You’ll mark four years at Brighter this coming November. The company has been through a lot of changes in that time – what can you say about those?

We’re now much more focused. Instead of trying to enter 20 different markets at the same time, right now we’re concentrating on getting the product out to our customer in Qatar. There are other markets too where we’re putting our efforts, but all in all it’s a lot more focused than it was a few years ago.

There’s a lot of work required to enter new countries. Sometimes it’s good not to understand things completely, because then you push ahead and learn a lot along the way. We’re now using a lot of this knowledge while staying focused on our key markets.

The team we have now is the best we’ve ever had. We have the maturity from what we’ve learned over the years, with people who have the character to solve challenges.

How have you been involved in the Qatar commercialization?

My role is to harvest the input from the sales team and the market team, and transfer that knowledge into the product in an applicable manner. Sometimes this means trying to find solutions to the hurdles that come up along the way. You may have an idea of how something should be, but when it doesn’t work out like that in reality then you need to find other ways.

What gives you confidence in where Brighter is right now?

Our employees. The team we have now is the best we’ve ever had. We have the maturity from what we’ve learned over the years, with people who have the character to solve challenges. They also have the confidence to say when they think something should be done differently.

It’s really good to have the focus on Qatar right now, as this pushes us to go all the way. We’re landing a lot of our different ideas in the country, and this really means a lot to the team.

Finally, please tell us how you personally got into product management?

At the start of my career I was a product manager for medical oxygen in the home. I was part of the engineering team and worked in the company’s testing facility.

I then worked as part of a medical-aid center that handled about 20% of Sweden’s medical aid. It was the first time the Swedish state had outsourced this kind of service to a private company. There I came into contact with managing about 20 different product groups.

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