Lyseggen began his career as a research scientist in artificial intelligence and machine vision at the Norwegian Computing Center, but left to work in startups. His first startup was an internet consultancy founded in 1995, which reportedly counted many of the leading Norwegian media houses, including Nettavisen founded by Norwegian media entrepreneur Knut Ivar Skeid, as its clients. The company was sold in 1997 to EUnet International. In 1998, Lyseggen joined the company Mogul AS as CEO and helped to grow the company before selling it in 1999 to Optosoft. He then served as CEO of Mogul Group AB and led the group to its IPO in 2000.
Meltwater
In 2001, Lyseggen established Magenta News, an online media monitoring company analyzing online news in real time in Oslo, Norway. He bootstrapped the company, starting it with just a US$15,000 investment, and within two years it had nearly $2 million in revenue with no venture funding. The company changed its name to Meltwater News and moved its headquarters to San Francisco in the mid 2000s. As of 2017, Meltwater, employed over staff in over 60 cities and 26 countries while generating revenue of over $250 million. The company had also expanded its services beyond media monitoring, to social media analytics, and competitive intelligence for more than clients worldwide.
Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology
In 2008, Lyseggen created the Meltwater Foundation and launched Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology in Accra, Ghana. MEST is a Pan-African training program, seed fund and incubator for aspiring technology entrepreneurs. Through the program, the entrepreneurs in training are taught how to code, as well as essential business, communication and leadership skills. The final examination includes an investment pitch in front of a panel of global entrepreneurs and investors. Historically, about half the teams pitching are given seed funding from the Meltwater Foundation and incubated. MEST alumni have been enrolled in Techstars, 500 Startups, and other international accelerator programs to pursue their international expansion. MEST is funded by an annual donation of $2 million from Meltwater. In 2015, MEST was named by Fast Company as one of the top 10 most innovative organizations in Africa.
''Outside Insight''
In 2017, Lyseggen released the book Outside Insight: Navigating a World Drowning in Data, which is aimed at helping business leaders learn how to implement data-led decisions. The book covers the role of analytics and AI in the business world as well as the importance of an outside perspective and industry trends to influence financial decisions of companies. In an interview with Forbes, Lyseggen explains what motivated him to write the book:
“External data is one of the biggest blind spots in executive decision making today. That’s because external information contains so much forward-looking information. If your competitors are hiring, and your customers are changing their behavior, those are external forces influencing your future performance, and it can be found in online ‘breadcrumbs’ and external data."
