SWEDISH BLOOD for CONTENT CARNIVORES
Jimmie Björling started as an intern of ours at Content Carnivores and within that time we brought him onboard full-time as employee #5. It’s no surprise that Jimmie jumped into the startup scene and excelled. His interest in the entrepreneur world began at an early age. Jimmie, being a professional golfer on the Scandinavian Tour and trying to reach the European Tour, started his own company when he was 14 years old developing golf training equipment. His goal was to make a little extra money and sell his equipment to smaller shops in Sweden. It resulted in a more serious interest in business and economics.
Jimmie got his Bachelor’s Degree in Business and Economics from Linköping University, Sweden and his Bachelor’s Degree in International Business from École de Commerce Européenne, Lyon, France. Jimmie then decided to move to the United States and attend Depaul University for his Master’s degree in IT Project Management. This was a dramatic transition; coming from Sweden to Chicago. Being 4,000 miles away from home is a change whatever way you look at it. This doesn’t stop Jimmie from finding home-like comforts, “Road trips to IKEA for Swedish meatballs and lingonberries have saved me some homesickness and general cravings for Swedish specialties”.
Jimmie was in the DePaul Masters Program under Professor Olayele Adelakun. Content Carnivores was connected to Professor Adelakun through Elbert Clayton, also an Entrepreneur, and like Content Carnivores, officing out of the tech incubator 1871. Jimmie was in a class where each student was required to have an internship working as an Agile SCRUM Master for a tech company. The desired outcome was to create a match where students could run programs using their new product management techniques.
We needed a team member that would be able to connect with our development team closely. Content Carnivores was planning the release of a new product to the larger product platform. This big step involves a team member who is able to work directly with both sides of development: the business side and the actual product development. We decided to give Jimmie this opportunity.
Our Carnivores development team consists of three coders in Brazil. Jimmie was a top Information Systems Master’s candidate. But the Carnivores CTO had doubts regarding his lack of a computer science background and coding experience. To understand the information systems, there must be some basic knowledge of coding in order to anticipate any problems. This was fair enough. On the other hand, Jimmie had other skills that would greatly contribute to Carnivores. We saw this Master’s intern program as a way to test out the waters. Expectations were promising. Soon after Jimmie joined our team, we were blown away. His competitive attitude helped him to push himself and learn to adapt to the entrepreneurial / business lifestyle.
Jimmie was able to start in right away beyond just working the agile process with the developers. With more experience, he became an expert Carnivore. He worked so efficiently with our platform that there was more time in his day he could devote to other things. There are lots of loopholes to get through when it comes to coding. Describing something in a language and then trying to translate it into code can be a tricky task. Our developers’ native language is Portuguese and their secondary language is Scala–or at least that’s the programming language we work in. Jimmie was able to work with the developers to increase the quality level of the first release and make it more intelligible by identifying problems. This is one simple example of a direct impact that the student had on a small scale.
Jimmie’s favorite memory of Content Carnivores was a from a big release we were working on in the spring. As Jimmie describes it, “We were working hard to get the release stable and up and running before a client meeting and a demo we had that afternoon. While I was walking over to the meeting, the new feature was still not working correctly. I had to pull my laptop out in the middle of street, while on the phone with our development team in Brazil, and continue to test the new features. We finally got it to work 5 min before the demo. That was a blast”.
Agile Development is a long-standing practice in the software industry. Small pieces of the project are accomplished by the team with a very strict regimen that holds everyone accountable. This requires detailed communication, quick alterations to see if something is working, and rapid development that is tested. Jimmie jumped right into this practice.
Content Carnivores has many moving parts. Learning the platform and understanding the big data integrations all takes a certain type of talent. Jimmie stated, “The startup culture with high paced and agile environment allows us to develop fast and respond quickly to changes in requirements and market trends. It’s inspiring to meet and work with great professionals from multiple industries and expand my professional network in Chicago and the United States.” He is right on.
After Jimmie’s class internship ended, we asked him to stay on as a paid intern. During this time we built more advanced structures of our company. We hired some additional interns and made a new arrangement with Jimmie. We proposed that he work full-time for us as a full staff member. We also added in the potential to earn equity in the company as part of his ongoing involvement and responsibilities. Jimmie recognizes DePaul for this Content Carnivores opportunity and intern pairing; “DePaul was supportive and flexible about my selection of courses and made it possible for me to customize my Master degree the way I wanted. DePaul has such a unique integration of professionals in Chicago and collaborations within the industry”.
So here Jimmie went from being an intern to a successful, valuable part of the Carnivores team. In the end, he has been a terrific match. His dedication and passion for our company has made all the difference.
Published by: Jeff Walker
Jimmie Björling: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmiebjorling