Hi! My name is Sebastian Brieger.
Limited to 3 things, this is what I would say about me:
I keep moving forward, even through hardship
I do whatever it takes to reach my goals
I respect people who do what I can't
Nov 2023
Google offered Dropmed a place in Google Startups,
and $100k in credits for all cloud technologies.
Jun 2023 - Nov 2023
I took over the role as CTO and started rebuilding our platforms from scratch using the low-code frameworks Weweb (Vue.js) for the frontend and Xano (Postgres SQL, PHP) for the backend.
Dec 2022 - May 2023
Dropmed's platforms were unable to scale and needed to be rebuilt. However, due to our high requirements and overall complexity of the build, it was always too expensive to do this with external resources.
In the spring of 2023 our burn rate spiraled out of control when an external development agency attempted to rebuild the platform.
At this point, I decided to bootstrap the company, firing all staff and consultants to extend the timeline and attempt to rebuild our platforms alone at minimum cost.
Nov 2022
By the end of 2022 Dropmed had around 45 registered caregiver organizations, 35 registered vendors and 65.000 products on the marketplace.
We closed a second investment round of 4.3M SEK from existing owners, Propel Capital, Diamond Head and Mainly.ai.
Jun 2022
I improved the company's structure and decision making by putting together a board consisting of 7 members, covering industry, marketing, startups & investment, revenue & SaaS.
Jan 2022
Right after Sting Accelerate I closed a 3M investment round at a pre-money evaluation of 25M.
Investors included Curus, Active Invest, Christer Fuglesang and Mattias Weinhandl.
Sep 2021 - Jan 2022 - Selected for Sting Acceleate
Dropmed was selected for Sting Accelerate, officially the World's best startup acceleration and incubation program.
Sting Accelerate gave me the tools, strength and confidence to believe in myself, take a leap of fate and devote 100% of my time to Dropmed.
May 2019 - Founded Dropmed.se
After years of work in the medical device industry, I became obsessed with studying its flaws. For the life of me, I could not understand why processes were kept so manual and no attempts were made to create an online B2B medical marketplace.
So I founded Dropmed.se - Sweden's first independent medical marketplace.
2019 - Highlight at Merivaara
During my last years at Merivaara I won over 90% of submitted tenders, securing millions of Euros in revenue for the company. However, I also got problems with burnouts from over-working, and started seeking a greater sense of purpose.
2017 - Promoted to Sales Manager Scandinavia
Merivaara started to get recognized. We went from being a hospital bed manufacturer to becoming known as one of the top companies delivering advanced integrations for operating rooms.
2014 - Started in the medtech industry
I was employed at Merivaara to sell their integration system OpenOR.
I was very interested in OpenOR. It controlled medical devices, lights, audio, integrated to patient databases and PACS systems. It had the potential to automate parts of surgical procedures and through advanced monitors provide better insight in procedures. At the time, the challenge was that nobody knew what an integration system was, and many people feared the technology because they didn't understand it.
May 2013
I studied the engineer's program of media technology at KTH, specializing in sound. I also studied human-technology interaction for one year in Holland (perception, cognition etc).
For my master's thesis in 2013, I published a paper in Sound & Music Computing Group covering the 3D-audio game I built for visually impaired people. The game used a head-related transfer function filter to position sounds in a 3D space, which the user "hunted" by tilting an iphone, where accelerometer data affected the hrtf filter positioning and perceived sound level (distance).
I enjoy brainstorming solutions to big problems. Whenever those ideas culminate into something I believe could be truly worthwhile to explore, I typically think of a name for that startup, purchase the domain, and in some cases start building the solution outline.
Below is a collection of some of these startup ideas.
A security application using clarity-based continuous access control, where system access is based on our own clarity of mind. This is a highly futuristic idea based on BCI technology (Brain-Computer Interfacing).
I imagine a form of "meditative unlock", where our ability of clear thought is monitored continuously. Apart from membership in an access group, the highest access levels further require each member to display high levels of alignment in their physiology, psychology and clarity of mind to gain access, which is downgraded quickly if clarity changes.
Piece off is an online turn-based game daring people to expose their secrets to a group of strangers. Each player thinks of a secret from their life (must be true), and uses AI to build up to 5 unique icons to represent different parts of that secret for other players to guess. Each player takes turns being the Secret Keeper, who plays against all other players.
Players first take turns guessing the meaning of each icon. The icons can be worth different amounts of points as decided by the Secret Keeper, however the definition of what makes them more or less difficult to guess is not known. This is part of the game, to understand how the Secret Keeper thinks when constructing their secret. Incorrect guesses give the Secret Keeper one point. When all the parts have been guessed, the players then guess the order in which they happened, where they get the same amount of points again for a correct guess. When all the icons are in the right order, the Secret Keeper can choose to either close the round without revealing the secret, or double their points by telling the secret in their own words.
Apart from being very entertaining, the game makes people connect and get to know each other through honesty. It can even be played with friends or family, even where some people already know the secret. It doesn't matter as you will still learn something new when the person tells it again in their own words. The game is also therapeutic, as people who have secrets they don't wish to share can take a first step by telling that secret to a group of strangers online that they will never meet, which makes it easier to tell people who matter.
Not written is a platform generating fictive stories and books using AI. Users decide the title, provide a description/summary of what the book is about, and are able to select sources of inspiration for the style in which the book is written. For example, a user might want to make a book about Robin, a startup founder struggling with mental illness about to become a father, which raises a series of philosophical questions in him. The book should be called "The Shaman CEO" and be written in an imaginary style mixing Ekhart Tolle and Shakespeare, with fictive quotes in the style of Elon Musk and Barrack Obama.
The interesting thing about this idea is that all books would always be fiction, and my original idea was that the author would always be "Artificial Intelligence". However, generative AI models are only tools constructing the story of the prompter, so there is nothing stopping the prompter from actually labelling themselves as the author. But as the point of this service is to promote the creation of interesting fictive stories without creating lots of fake authors, the service would not allow people to label themselves as authors but instead have something like "Prompted by XX". Thus creating a new category of book creators.
After generating the story, users are able to immediately publish them and sell them online or print them as physical books.
Assistlaw is a SaaS platform for lawyers to automate their document management and processes. The difference between Assistlaw and similar platforms on the market is that current platforms typically either focus only on document signatures (i.e. upload or write a document and send for signature), or attempt to make agreement creation easier for lawyers by offering a portfolio of generic paragraphs to be combined into agreements.
However, my experience is that lawyers prefer writing their own agreements with their own custom branding and formulations, but they often have a lot of unneccessary administration for changing these templates for new clients.
Assistlaw was built as a prototype for a law firm to use their own agreements, in which variable data was tagged to be programmatically re-written for new clients and immediately sent for signature using an easy interface. The power of this platform comes from the integration with the Acrobat PDF API, enabling programmatic editing of any pdf document. This means that lawyers can use their own pdf's exactly how they are, but very easily change whatever data that varies in these agreements. It also included a process tab where new clients were automatically moved into active processes once the first agreements were signed.
The prototype version of Assistlaw was limited to manually tagging document variables. However, it would be fairly straight forward to turn this into a fully fledged SaaS platform by using AI to tag and compartment the lawyers' own agreements. By doing this, Assistlaw would combine the benefits of current platforms by allowing lawyers to upload their own pdfs, compartment each paragraph as reusable components and tag variables for automating the re-usage of these components. In essence, the lawyers would be building their own portfolio of reusable paragraphs.
Not hard is an application intended to enable faster integration into Swedish society. It aims to educate and guide users towards a greater sense of independence and belonging, while continuously presenting reachable short-term and long-term goals as alternatives to criminality.
The app has its background in the fact that Sweden, while being a very accepting, friendly and highly innovative country, also has one of the world's slowest integration processes. This app aims to promote the innovative mindset to help immigrants think constructively and utilize their experiences and knowledge to find solutions to various problems they might have.
The app would highlight the areas that draw people to criminality in the first place and provide easily reachable alternatives, while also indicating a future to look forward to and how to reach that future step-by-step.
Ever thought about moving somewhere, but feel clueless about the area, in particular how safe it is for your family and kids?
Happie is an idea for a community and statistics website where users search for an area and get detailed statistics of all reported crimes per category, its crime index per capita compared to other areas, as well as what the community says about that area, such as lists of positive aspects which might outweigh potential negativities.
I haven't decided what this is yet. I just think the domain is awesome. It would have something to do with extending the idea of happie with detailed data analysis and statistics of some sort, likely AI driven.
Innovationsdemokraterna is the idea for a new political party that answers any political question by giving concrete examples of how that problem can be solved through innovation. Sweden arguably has the highest innovation capital per capita in the world. As the inventors of telecommunication, we have excellent coverage of high speed internet anywhere in our country, as well as powerful laptops, smartphones and tablets. We are also highly educated, and have the world's best startup accelerator Sting in Stockholm.
However what Sweden lacks in my opinion is educating the general public that risks are worth to be taken, and that anybody can innovate. Yes we do have the best startup accelerator in the world, but why is KTH celebrating when one department is top 50 in the world? KTH and other universities in Sweden should be at least top 10, if not top 5 in the world. The difference between KTH and MIT is not that the quality of the education is lower. The only difference between Harvard or MIT compared to our Swedish universities is that they teach the students not to apply for a job, but instead create the job. If we implemented our version of "the American dream" in Sweden and made (for example) engineers question how problems they come across could be solved instead of complaining about the bad investments our politicians are doing, we would very quickly see real solutions being presented to combat these problems.
Innovation is the fastest and most democratic way to solve big problems in our society. Also, another problem with our current startup accelerators is that they often follow a theme to more effectively group startups together. This is good for exchanges and networking for that group of startups, but it also limits the variety of ideas to be funded. Yet another problem is that only "the best" ideas are picked for these programs. Typically, the best ideas are those most likely to be invested in by the angels and VC's connected to that startup hub. This means that very many startups never get the funding they need because they never learn how to approach investors. In fact they might be very suited for investors but never get past the idea stage because they never realize their potential and relatively low threshold to launch an MVP and test their innovation.
My opinion is that the budgets that the government have at their disposal and the limitations currently in place of implementing highly efficient usage of these budgets, slows down Sweden's potential. How can a newly appointed minister of healthcare with a 50 billion budget solve the real problems of healthcare? Technology is evolving at an exponential rate, and today's politics as well as our legal system is too slow for this development. It poses a great threat to our democracy and ability for our society to thrive.
Innovationsdemokraterna would build Innovationsdepartementet and invite engineers, doctors, lawyers, nurses, developers, social workers, police officers, architects, environmental activists, designers and more to target the biggest problems in different areas in brainstorming sessions, publish these ideas online for the mass public and create feedback loops and AI driven big data analyses to create lists of tons of startups.
Furthermore, Innovationsdemokraterna would promote innovation and aim to fund almost any idea from people who want to innovate. Ideas would be rated with a societal impact index, where a very low score (e.g. a new casino) would be taxed much higher (say 80 %) and receive lower levels of funding than ideas with the potential to truly change society or the world for the better (say 20 % and 5 times the capital injection).
Innovationsdemokraterna would also aim to implement a new legal system, where new laws would be possible to implement much faster than today.
CHANGE is a "light" version of Innovationsdemokraterna. It can be seen as a form of activist innovation network aiming to democratize innovation by creating a community to educate the general public how to innovate, fail fast and fund MVPs. The idea was born after I was contacted by a doctor who noticed that many good ideas were being communicated by hospital staff, but were never implemented. She was trying to create something similar to what I was thinking, but it is still in the idea stage.
I often challenge myself by imagining future technologies and areas I would like to work with, patiently waiting for the day where my path crosses with "Morpheus", introducing me to the Matrix.
I am particularly interested in applications interfacing human perception and consciousness.
Such as activating or adjusting the settings of smart devices through thought alone, e.g. "raise indoor temperature by 2 degrees" or "dim ceiling light 1 step".
Taking our hearing as an example, we can't switch it off naturally. Hairs in our ears vibrate, translating frequencies of sound waves into perceived sounds in our brain. Today's technologies for lowering perceived sound level either mask or cancel these frequencies, but if we could isolate neural-sensory signals between the brain and ear it would make sense that perceived sound level could be altered by reducing or amplifying the intensity of those signals.
Networked consciousness, guided consciousness, parallel consciousness, synchronizing consciousness from the right and left sides of the brain through oscillation, telepathy or becoming aware of others' consciousness, transferring consciousness into beings or robots, enhanced perception by adding or strengthening sensory input, enhanced perception by reducing or removing sensory input from other senses, investigating our abilities to learn additional senses.
Extreme weather conditions, sensory alterations and simulations. I imagine these simulations to be especially useful for the army, the most extreme being pain and torture simulations.
Music is my great passion in life. Over the years I have developed near perfect pitch, and can create complete pieces of music in my head.
The music I've released is mainly electronic, but my recent creations are classic style piano pieces inspired by Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin and Debussy. I like mixing beautiful melodies with dramatic dark melodies, and have started exploring challenging left/right hand techniques and learning to play very fast.
When I'm not playing music I love spending time with my son Lukas. He is my world and I just love being with him.