#1013 - WP-Tonic Show: Professional Hockey Player To CEO of Hosting Company Servebolt

Kurt Von Ahnen: You're listening to the WP tonic. Um, WordPress and tech focused on building a successful business in WordPress aimed at the WordPress professional and power user. Join Jonathan Denwood and Kurt Von Ahnin as your host and co host as we bring you great discussions from around the globe.

Jonathan Denwood: Welcome back folks to the WP Tonic Show. This is episode 1013. We've got a fabulous guest with us. We've got Leslie hall with us, the CEO of ServerBolt, um, one of the leading quality WordPress hosting providers in Europe, based I think in Oslo. Um, but they're distributed company, their people are everywhere. Um, should be a great discussion. Leslie. Um, thank you so much for agreeing to come on the show. I've been looking forward to this discussion.

Lasse: My pleasure.

Jonathan Denwood: And I've got my great co host with me, Kirk. Kirk, would you quickly like to introduce yourself to the listeners and viewers?

Kurt Von Ahnen: Sure thing, Jonathan. My name is Kurt, Kurt Von Ahnen. I own a company called Manana no Mas and we also work directly with the great team over at WP Tonic. And if I could be so bold, Jonathan and I have volleyed your name back and forth before going live. Is it Lossy? Lassie? How do, how should we be saying this name?

Lasse: Yeah, so if uh, if I'm, I'm saying it in, in the proper Nordic way, it's L. Um, but most, um, most, you know, Americans, they, they say Lassie because, uh, because of the e. But it's, it's Lasse or Lasse. Um, that would, that would be the, like, you know, the proper pronunciation. So it's just like, you know, it's a silent E at the end there.

Kurt Von Ahnen: So in.

Jonathan Denwood: I won't be shot in sun. Lassie.

Lasse: It's always difficult with names especially you know, it's, it is what it is.

Jonathan Denwood: Yeah, it should be a great show. We're going to be discussing Lassie's uh, background, why he decided to become the CEO of serverbolt. We're going to be talking about the fragmented hosting market and how ServerBolt can find its niche. We're going to be talking about private equity as well. We got a ton of things to discuss. It should be a great show. But before we go into the meat and potatoes, I got a message from one of our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks.

Kurt Von Ahnen: Hey, running a business is tough. You shouldn't have to worry about your website too. With Kinsta's managed hosting for WordPress, you get lightning fast load times, enterprise grade security and 24,7 expert support from real humans. Uh, switch to Kinsta and see site speeds improve by up to 200% with effortless migrations and powerful easy to use dashboard. Join over 120,000 other businesses who also trust Kinsta. Get your first month for free at kinsta.com that's k I n-t a.com Kinsta Simply better posting.

Jonathan Denwood: We're coming back folks. Want to point out this show is brought to you by the support of our sponsors. So uh, come go over and support them. And by the way we've got some great special offers from the sponsors plus a created list of the best WordPress plugins and services for you, the freelancer and small agency owner. You can find all these free goodies and the special offers from the sponsors by going over to wp-tonic.com deals wp-tonic.com Deals. You find all the goodies there. Um, my beloved tribe. What more could you ask for? Probably a lot more but that's all you're going to get on that page. Um, so let's go straight into it Lessie.

Lasse: Sure.

Jonathan Denwood: So you got extensive business background um and then you become the CEO of serverbolt. What attracted you to the company and the challenges that have probably come with that decision?

Lasse: Yeah, uh, well you know, good question. So my background uh is a bit unusual for uh hosting CEO uh as I understand. Um, you know I played ice hockey for uh a good number of years as a professional hockey player. Um, also was on the. Yeah, love it Kirk. Um, you know I was on the national team for Norway and juniors and um and um, uh what that does to you is it wires you for performance under pressure as a hockey player. Team dynamics, um, the mindset, uh, the talent without uh execution um means nothing. Um and after hockey I went into fintech. I was in banking for a number of years. Finance, um and also management consulting. Um so I co founded two uh fintech companies uh back in the day, uh scaled them across nine countries um built them close to 100 people. Um I also led a vertical at a consulting firm uh, uh which I co own um and that was also quite successful. Um so I've been in high growth and high pressure uh environments my whole career. Um uh Serval came to me in early 2025 the Founder island, uh built something I um think was genuinely uh exceptional from a technology standpoint. Um and one of the fastest managed WordPress and PHP platforms uh in the world. M but the business needed kind um of different leadership, different direction, needed uh, a commercial motion structure um and kind of a clear Path to scale. Um, so that's exactly the kind of challenge I love and like, and what's been driving me for, uh, X number of years. So I took, uh, CEO role, um, you know, in Feb.25, and been rebuilding from the inside, uh, ever since. And I think, you know, what's, uh, what's coming in the future for us. I think it's, um. I'm extremely bullish for so m. Yeah, that was kind of a little bit of a background and where, ah, and why I'm here.

Jonathan Denwood: But are you, are you based in Norway yourself or is it Dubai?

Lasse: Uh, yeah, so it's my, My main, uh, space is Dubai, but, um, there's a war going on and uh, and um, so I'm mostly now in Norway, so it's, It's. I think that's, that's a good thing to be. Um, but, you know, life is normal in Dubai at the moment. Um, I don't think there's. There's lots to be worried about in that perspective. But, yeah, I don't want to take any chances. Who knows?

Jonathan Denwood: Over to you, Kurt.

Kurt Von Ahnen: Well, I think the whole interview just took a wild turn here, Jonathan, because I'm really interested in this hockey background. Um, so I played defense throughout high school and apparently I have a big dog.

Lasse: Yeah, you have. It's huge.

Kurt Von Ahnen: We got a delivery. I'm sorry. They always seem to have their podcasts. Um, so I played hockey. I also played soccer Till I was 29 years old. And I raced motorcycles, uh, professionally, like all over the United States. And what you said, I think is so, like, paramount to a lot of entrepreneurs. Like, once you're in a space, whether it's a team sport or like an individual team sport, like every, Everyone thinks racing is like this individual thing, but there's a team behind you. There's. Oh, yeah, there's a pit crew, a travel crew, a logistics crew, you know, a sponsorship crew. There's all that stuff. I, I just gotta know, like, how much of that sports driven, um, Jonathan's heard me say this, right? I'm like, we have two options. We, we can, we can fail or we can succeed. Like, I, I'm not going to work towards failure. Right? We got to work towards success. Um, how much do you think your sports background played in your pathway professionally?

Lasse: Oh, 100%, like, everything. My, My team, the mentality of, of being, um, you're in while you play hockey. So, you know, and it's like, you know, the, you're just one player out of 20 guys that's there, um, if you have two guys that's dragging their heels or having a bad attitude or just, you know, not performing at the level, the entire team faults, uh, and you're gonna lose that game. Um, it's, it's, you know, it's. I know that I'm just a piece of the puzzle. Uh, yeah, I'm the CEO and I take decisions and all that good stuff. But, um, there's a team here. Um, and if the team is not performing, I'm not performing. And looking back, it's about building hockey teams with, um, different angles. You have different roles that you need to perform and you, uh, need that across any business. You know, no one can be the same. Uh, you know, that's why all star teams never work because they're, they're just used to getting the puck, you know, sheeted to them and they have one shot and that's it, and they score a goal. But if everyone is that one shot guy, yeah, you'll, you'll lose because he's not going to do that. He's not never going to do that grunt work in, in the corners.

Kurt Von Ahnen: Yeah. I find the whole thing fascinating because especially the culture in the United States corporately now is very touchy feely emotions. How do you feel today? But, you know, and uh, there's a, there's, there's a resonance with me that's like this, we're here to win.

Jonathan Denwood: That's not my impression of American culprit.

Lasse: Yeah. And you know, I'm not going to, you know, use the F word here, but, uh, I'm, I'm in your face, uh, 100%. And I think, you know, to win you need to be, um, thick skinned. Um, and I'm, I'm a pretty decent, nice guy and so on, but I'm, I'm demanding. I like direct language. Um, if things are not working, I'll tell you, uh, and I'll tell you why. Um, and if you, if you can't handle that, sorry, you know, maybe you could go, you know, work somewhere else because, yeah, that's what we need. I think. You know, this touchy feel stuff, that's fine for, um, people that just want to manage, uh, stuff. Um, but if you want to win and you want to, uh, you want to be in a high pressure environment and you want to, you want to make stuff happen, you want to, want to do, um, you know, great numbers, you want to scale, you want to, all that good stuff, uh, I'm sorry, but if you can't handle the um, you can't handle the good stuff either. So yeah, you know that's, that's my kind of a easy approach uh, to that one. Um, you know and, and bringing back the hockey teams like you know I've you know can't count the amount of times people been screaming at each other and telling people to step up and, and you know, most likely you know 99 of the time it's um, it's. They need it.

Kurt Von Ahnen: Yeah, yeah, no, no, I agree. So, so that takes us kind of to another way to ask a question that's you know we work in WordPress obviously right. WP Tonic and so we work in WordPress, we work in hosting. Manana Nomas has hosting. Hosting um, seems to be like this ever more like fragmented, missing pieces of the puzzle kind of experiment. And so if the market is kind of that fragmented, how do you feel that Serve Bolt was able to like find a niche really drilled down on it and then just asking because you mentioned WordPress and PHP right? So it was like obviously there's another level. How important is WordPress to serve Bolt like in the overall picture?

Lasse: Oh it's, it's, it's um, you know it's massive for us. Uh, obviously I think you know the hosting market looks fragmented on the surface but when you go one level deeper it's actually quite consolidated. Um you have a handful of private equity backed platforms, own most of the volume. Uh and most of that volume is low end high churn commoditized hosting. Um, the niche we place is performance critical, uh workloads. Right? So agencies, developers, enterprise, um, e commerce, uh, WordPress people for whom uh, slow site or a 2am outage isn't just annoying. Uh uh it's, it's going to cost some clients and definitely 100% revenue. Um um so, so these customers don't buy on price. Uh obviously they buy on trust and performance. Um so I think you know WordPress is, is still dominant CMS on, on the Internet it powers somewhere around what 40% of the web. Um and that's not going away. Um uh but you know the interesting shift right now is uh, most I um think valuable WordPress customers, agencies running high traffic, let's say Woocommerce, uh stores, publishers, enterprise teams. Um, they're increasingly uh, unhappy with big platforms and it's coming, you know a lot of that information is coming every week to us. Um, they've outgrown shared infrastructure and they need something like purpose or custom built. Um and that's what searbolt is built for. Uh, so yeah, uh, WordPress is critical for us. Uh, but more uh, I would say, uh, precisely demanding WordPress users are definitely our market for sure.

Kurt Von Ahnen: As a follow up to that, because I know your website specifically calls out WooCommerce. Do you find like these larger WooCommerce sites are the demanding like dynamic server resource hungry websites or is there a different type of site that kind of like dwarfs their demand?

Lasse: Uh, good question. Um, I think you know from, from um. Yeah, good question. Um, in terms of the, um, in terms of. Actually a question I need to think about a little bit. I think you know, in terms of the demand I think um, there's a lot of things happening in, in WooCommerce and I think you know they're, they're kind of lagging behind on, on the, on the direction they're going right now and obviously they're losing a lot of business um, to different um, well, other tech and we'll probably discuss that a little bit later. Um, but I think if WooCommerce could step up their um, development a little bit, I would say um, I don't want to say that lightly because um, because they're you know, they're definitely moving but not moving in the right direction. I think, you know, it's this. Yeah, that's a little bit of babble from me on that question. I need to think about that. But yeah, um, we can let Jonathan

Kurt Von Ahnen: come to the rescue and take over. John, Jonathan, over to you.

Jonathan Denwood: Thank you so much. Um, well it's kind of linked in in a way in my mind because lately obviously um, Matt Mo is having his problems with private equity.

Kurt Von Ahnen: Yeah.

Jonathan Denwood: And recently um, liquid web decision to consolidate um, the company and remove a number of brands around plugins. Um, so you got the question of private equity which you touched upon. But um, I want to discuss the private equity. But first we had a number of hosting companies buy plugins, buy and bundled them, um, either separately or you got them um, combined with their hosting packages. I was never, I was never sure that was a, I could understand it in some ways but in other ways I never, it never totally gelled with me. Lessie. Um, yeah, so, but I suppose on the commodity side of the market, I suppose you are, apart from price, you are struggling. So adding plugins seems attractive but they always, always seem to be something missing about it. Um, what's your own views on the plugin side? And then maybe we can touch on the private equity side as well as the second part.

Lasse: Yeah, well we don't have any plugins at all. Um and what we have is more or less uh add on that you can like you know where our tech is custom built, uh, proprietary tech. We don't have any outsourced uh, admin panels or anything that's coming outside from. So everything is this, you know, um, built from, from scratch and you know all, all um, you know, all uh, success to the plugin, uh, people and companies out there that does a good plugin, um, fantastic. Um, good for them. But for us I think you know, uh, to have the ecosystem we have and to be. To have um, the um. Let's say the speed we have on Art, uh, on Art Network, it's, it's the more plugins we have into that will just slow everything up and we don't want to do that. So if you want to have a plugin um, on, on your. On your own, be my guest. I guess that's, that's my you know, response to that. Um, and there's so many plugins out there. So it's uh, uh, we can, we can talk about that for, for a long time. But I think you know, having a clean infrastructure is something that people um, I think our customers.

Jonathan Denwood: I think what you're saying is maybe, and I think you might be correct, but I'm not. I'm inferring that you might be suggesting this I got from that answer, uh, that in some ways you, you didn't totally like the concept even though not solely about the Pacifics, because serverbolt is dealing with high performance, high level clients, you know, agencies, whatever.

Lasse: Yeah.

Jonathan Denwood: But uh, just the general. The boundary between what a host provides and what the plugins. Because you seem to suggest the plugins, some plugins have a performance here and they do. So combining the two becomes a little bit messy. I think you were hinting.

Lasse: Yeah, that's what I'm more or less saying is that ah, you know, some plugins are great and, and uh, I'm not taking anyway anything away from anyone. Um, but for, for us I think you know it's. It's um. The plugins we do have is custom built for us. Um, and it's not from the outside.

Jonathan Denwood: Yeah.

Lasse: Yeah.

Jonathan Denwood: So let's look at the private equity. You know, obviously, um, that could be

Lasse: a show of its own to be honest.

Jonathan Denwood: Yeah. There's only so much drama I can stay. Leslie. Um, so M. Merriwig, he's had his um. He's having these continuous problems legally and also um. And we've had Matt on the show a few times and um, we love Matt and um, we wish him well. Um, but then you've had this thing with Liquid Web as well. Um, so what's your general opinion about private equity getting into hosting? Do you see it's a positive in negative or a negative thing or is it a mixed bag really?

Lasse: Um, well, you know, uh, it's definitely, you know, private equity. We have one of the private equity companies that's, that's with Cerbolt is one of our investors. And I, I uh, think it's a, uh, fascinating and honestly a bit uh, troubling dynamic at the same time, um, when you see PE firms rolling up hosting companies and consolidating them under a uh, single um, P and L, um go. The goal is always the same. It's optimizing margins, right? So reduce costs, you have upsells, um, and they prepare for an exit. That's what they do. Um, and that's the business model. Um, there's nothing inherently wrong, I think with that, but it typically leads to the same outcome. Um, service quality degrades, support gets outsourced, um, the product stops, um, innovating and customers feel it's 100%. It's just they kind of market it as ah, we're moving in a positive uh, direction. But um, it's really not. And I come from that uh, space as well so I know the business model, um, in and out. Um, so what it's creating, uh, our market is actually an opportunity. There's a, there's a growing segment of customers, uh, who specifically don't want to be a PE owned platform, uh, or want to be on ah, PE owned platform. And they want a team that actually cares about the product. Um, they want a founder and leadership team that uh, has skin in the game. They want to talk to someone who knows their stack, uh, for example. Um. So in a strange way, uh, the PE consolidation, uh, wave has been good uh, for companies like us, um, and it's definitely driving high value uh, customers towards premium independent platforms like us. And we see that in our pipeline every week. So customers switching from big consolidated uh, players specifically because um, quite frankly they're being burned.

Jonathan Denwood: Right?

Kurt Von Ahnen: Um,

Jonathan Denwood: I wouldn't say he's a close friend, but I think Jason Cohen, the founder of WP Engine, would say I was a friend of his. He would, you know, pick, always answer my email and the occasional call and he seems a great guy, um, and he's been very supportive. He's one of them. He's always impressed me with his insights and his down to earth attitude. Um, but do you think, do you think it, you know, enough, Kingston. I've always got on with Kingster really well. They've supported the show, has been, they've supported the show on four occasions as a major sponsor. But do you, do you think what you've said affects both of those? Or, or is it.

Lasse: I think, yeah, I think it affects both of them because you're, you're having um, you know, finance guys coming in saying, hey, this is not ah, you need to optimize, you need to do this, you need to do that. Um, and it kind of takes away the innovation of the company and the um. But I, you know, it's all depends on who's at the top obviously of every company. Um, and um, it's, you know, I'm not saying that it's necessarily uh, wrong or bad in any way. It all depends on the trajectory of the PE firm coming in and what they want to do with the company. If that's a, you know, three year exit, you're in for a, um, a ride. But if it's 10 years holding, um, it's much better uh, because they're in for a long run and they're there to build um, you know, good standing and good markets and, and, and all that good stuff that's, that's not needed. Um, but if it's a cash, cash grab in three years, m, uh, I don't think it's going to be a good, a good fun ride for anyone.

Jonathan Denwood: All right, thanks for that insight. I think it's a good place for us to go. For our middle break, we got another m message from one of our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments folks.

Kurt Von Ahnen: Updating plugins and theme shouldn't feel risky. That's why over 300,000 WordPress users trust WP rollback. With just a click you can safely roll back any plugin or theme. No manual file uploads and no downtime. And with WP Rollback Pro you can download premium plugins and themes tools like Elementor, Gravity Forms More. Track every rollback you do with detailed activity Activity logs protect your workflow and take the stress out of updates. Learn more@wprollback.com

Lasse: this podcast episode is brought to you by Lifter LMS, the leading learning management system solution for WordPress. If you or your client are creating any kind of online course, training based membership website or any type of eLearning project, Lifter LMS is the most secure, stable, well supported solution on the market. Go to lifterlms.com and save 20% at checkout with coupon code podcast20. That's podcast20. Enjoy the rest of your show.

Jonathan Denwood: We're coming back, folks. We've had a great discussion with Essie, um, about all things WordPress and hosting and private equity. Um, before we go into the second half of the show, if you really want to support independent media, um, and you're listening on Spotify or on itunes, um, Apple's podcast app, you can leave a review really easily. Um, good, bad, or indifferent, I want to see those reviews. It does really help us reach a larger audience. Um, so I'm going to throw it over to Kirk for the next question.

Kurt Von Ahnen: Well, I'm like a dog with a bone this morning. L. Um, we're. We're back on the Woocommerce trail.

Lasse: Yeah.

Kurt Von Ahnen: And I just. I, you know, I know we, we kind of put the question up like, you know, competitors like Shopify. But then as an agency owner, I'm on the other side of the coin too, because it's. It's, um, you know, uh, let's just call it out. Like, fluent cart came out and fluent cart was like, lightweight, quick. Seemed to be easy to set up shortcart with with Adam and his team over at Astra. Or the other name, uh, again, lightweight. More of a SaaS platform, but still lightweight. Works with Woo, but, I mean, works with WordPress. Uh, yeah, but. But as an agency, it seems like clients invented these problems or these concerns or these wishes where you end up going, oh, crap, now we got to drive back towards WooCommerce. So we have to do WooCommerce and any one of the. The multitudes of premium extensions. You need to make Woocommerce do what you want it to do. Um, and so for me, I see WooCommerce as this incredibly powerful shopping cart, but I also see it as this thing that nickel and dimes me for every feature I want to add to it to make it function. Um, and then, of course, either pass that to the client or upsell that service with the client. But. But. So that's my standpoint. But I mean, you're. When I look at the website for Serve Bolt, I. It's. It's in your face, right? It's fast. It's fast, it's fast. And I always see WooCommerce as being this. This one anchor that can really slow things down. So, uh, I was hoping you'd give me some insights there

Lasse: in terms of the, uh, the you know, WooCommerce Living,

Kurt Von Ahnen: um, it just seems like they're seem. Gosh, I hate to say it like this because we have friends there, but it's like it seems like they're just leaving. Leaving an opportunity for Shopify, fluent cart shortcut to kind of take more of the market away from them rather than. I don't, I don't see them doing activities right now that, that stay here or don't look somewhere else.

Lasse: Yeah, I think. Okay, so I get, I get that question. I think WooCommerce, uh, um, I think, I think it's uh, has like a massive intent identity problem. Uh, right now it's, it's uh, you know, it's open source, uh, it's extendable, it runs on WordPress, um, theoretically. Ah, those are all advantages in my view. Um, but the experience of getting WooCommerce to perform at scale is generally uh, painful and people are coming back to that. So hosting, uh, dependencies, you have plugin conflicts, performance tuning. Uh, most merchants don't want to deal with any, anything of that. You know, nothing. Um, they want, they just want something that works, plain and simple. Yeah, right. So Shopify solves that beautifully. You know, they, they opinionated, fast, reliable, um, great ecosystem. Uh, and they've eaten a lot of the market that WooCommerce have, you know, previously, uh, owned. Um, but where I think WooCommerce still has uh, a real advantage is the um, you know, the flexibility and you know, the cost of ownership at scale. If you're a uh, larger merchant with complex requirements, custom workflows or you want to say, own your data and your stack, um, WooCommerce and WordPress give you that option that Shopify won't ever give you. Yeah, never. Right. For um, WooCommerce to um, genuinely uh, compete, I think it needs the whole stack to improve. Uh, as I said a little bit earlier, um, including infrastructure, uh, WooCommerce, uh, store on mediocre hosting is a bad product like 100%. So regardless of how good the software is, it's mediocre. Um, uh, and coming back to our stack, it's like when WooCommerce runs on serval, it's a completely different experience. Um, and I'm not marketing that at all. It's just is physics and you can test us. Please do.

Kurt Von Ahnen: Jonathan.

Jonathan Denwood: Yeah, I think, I think there's another side of this as well because I know for a fact that Automatic were developing a fully hosted WooCommerce solution and they were very close to going public with it. And last year it was decided to bin it basically. Um, um. I don't know the precise reasons. I, I also know that, and I'm only surmising this um, is that if Automatic went down that route not with you or with hosting providers that are ah, that offering ah a performance partnership with agencies and um, it caused a little bit of friction with some of the other hosting companies but in my opinion I think really Automatic should provide a hosted woocommerce solution for those that, that you pointed out because there would still be an enormous amount of business out there for those that grew their business, that wanted more customization. So would you uh, so would you object to Automatic providing a fully hosted salute?

Lasse: I, I think you know it's, I uh, think honestly you know if they have that and, and you know it's um, you know and I'm not talking against my own market here but I think from, from um, let's say um, agent or let's say a E commerce store owner, if I were in their shoes that would kind of take the, take the nail out of the uh. Uh yeah, you know the pain will go away, right?

Jonathan Denwood: Yeah,

Lasse: potentially.

Jonathan Denwood: Potentially, yeah. Um, I want to move on to AI. Obviously we got some major uh, with open AI and um, coming to the market in North America. Um and we've seen, we've seen a lot of SAS companies under the share price being under a lot of pressure recently. I personally don't know how this is going to work out. I think you got really take it on an individual basis because some of these SAS companies have got um, a strong moat around them, others not so strong. So I personally think you've got to take it on a case by case. But in general I think in some areas AI, it has been um, the. It's just got on the verge of propaganda but when it actually comes to coding and certain Pacific areas, I think AI definitely has established that it's going to be changing the market. Like I say in coding, I think it is and has changed the market to. I see this as an enormous possibility for WordPress because this. The boundary between affording a sat, affording a. Buying a SaaS product and being limited with what it offers and not being able to afford a custom solution. I, I think those barriers are breaking down to some degree. Um, would you agree with that statement? What's your own views about AI and where we find ourselves in the middle 2016, 26? Sorry.

Lasse: Yeah. Difficult, you know, uh, ah, it's a big question obviously and there's so Many changes happening every day and every week and we can probably talk about this for quite some time. Um, but I think um, AI is the most significant platform shift we've seen since the mobile came out. Um, and most people in the WordPress space either panicking because there are a lot of people panicking now, um, or you're not paying enough attention to it. So you have both um, camps. Right. The honest reality is that uh, there's a lot of generic content, uh, sites, um, thin SaaS, products, templated agency work, um, it will get compressed. Um, AI can produce that output now and super fast. Right. So you don't need that industry at all and you'll be disrupted. Um, it's just what it is. Um, so if you're, you know, your value proposition uh, as a developer or agency um, is volume based content or templated builds, I think you need to move and, and you need to move quickly. Um, but I think you know there's a flip side. Um, AI is gen generating also massive um, surge in computing demand. You know the AI engines, uh, agents, uh, LLM, um, powered applications, uh, inference workloads. These need fast, reliable, scalable um, infrastructure. They need hosting that can, you know actually handle it. Um, so um, at Herbal we're definitely leaning into that hard. We're ah, positioning ourselves um, as the infrastructure layer, uh for AI, native PHP and WordPress applications. Um so we're looking at MCP servers which we are um, it's live uh now but that's just the first layer. Everyone's you know doing MCP, um, so agent compatible APIs, um, the whole stack. We're going all the way down to infrastructure. Um and without me saying too much, I think we believe the next generation of web applications will be agent driven. Um, and they need a ah, platform built for that. So um, I think you know my view is simple. Um, AI will kill the average, uh, and it will accelerate the accident. Um, so if you're generally good at what you do, uh, and um, I think that there's more opportunity uh, coming forward than ever before.

Jonathan Denwood: Yeah, I thought it would mean um, with your own company. Am I correct? How important is North America? Because you're, you seem to be established in the north, the Nordic. Yeah, countries and Europe. I can't actually remember where, how you came on my radar actually Sarah. Um, but um, I went to the website, talked a couple of people, I approached you through LinkedIn and you seem, you seem to have an interesting setup. Um, so you're established in the Nordic and Europe, but how Important is North America America to your. How you see the company growing basically. And am I correct that it. You get most of your. Through recommendation through agencies and that is, that is about. Is that about right?

Kurt Von Ahnen: Yep.

Lasse: Uh, you know the company's uh. The company is 12 uh, 12 years old. Um and um, before I came in at um. I would say that the entire um customer base has been built by word of mouth actually through agencies, enterprise, other customers, stuff like that. When I looked through their P and L from start till I came on board in 25, like very little marketing. Um, you know you have some sales initiatives and, and stuff like that and you come to um. You know from where I am right now, I'm at war camp. Um, Europe, um, you know they've been to that. That kind of stuff and, and all that, uh, and all that stuff. But um. But I think North America for us. When I came in I said hey, um, you know first. One of the first things I said, do we have a um. Um American company? Uh, that was. No, we have that now. Um, Serval Inc. And so North America is extremely important for us and we have a bunch of massive customers in the US um which is household names. Uh, you would know about. Um and um. And it's. It's getting um, more and more important because the, the growth we're seeing uh, is coming from. From um, North America. Um, and we're seeing extreme. Um. I don't want to say extreme but I want to say that the interest from enterprise large E commerce players is definitely um. They're getting their eyes open and you know that's for us. I find that um, you know, great because we love custom and um, we want to do custom for everyone. Um, and these guys needs custom. So yeah, honest, you know, very short answer for that. Yes. 100 U.S. america, Canada, even in North America is extremely important for us.

Jonathan Denwood: So what kind of relationship. You've mentioned customization quite a few times in this conversation. You're working with agencies. They have their own developers that they are talking to the client and they're doing. How does their developer uh, um, resources work with what you're providing? How does that normally work generally in terms of. Well the boundaries. The boundaries between what you're providing and what the agency is providing. Or is that. Or does that really. It might be a silly question because m. It might be those boundaries on a case by case scenario.

Lasse: Case by case. Most um, likely, um, like we usually do is that we handle everything um on the infrastructure side. Uh, and they're more or less just, you know, uh, ask us what um, what they can do and what they cannot do. Uh, but we normally we don't access, let people access our infrastructure at all. So we handle everything from that perspective. So more or less they just send us orders on Slack or whatever and say hey, we want to do this. Sure, no problem. Uh, we'll handle it. And um. Done.

Jonathan Denwood: Over to you, Kurt.

Kurt Von Ahnen: Well, I think um, it's time to kind of drive things home a little bit. Lhasa, um, if we were to think back, you know, we used to ask about, you know, time machines and crazy things like that, but if, if we

Lasse: were back to the future.

Kurt Von Ahnen: Yeah, if we were to, to just look back and, and think like uh, you know, hockey, sports injuries, business. I mean for you personally, what's, what's kind of like your biggest business or personal challenge and, and how would you credit overcoming that?

Lasse: Um, yeah, you know I can talk about hockey and, and you know that um, that for hours. But you know the, the one that shaped me the most was um, was actually building my own company, uh, from scratch. Um, I don't talk about it much, but I kind of just um, I saw an opportunity in the market and I um, resigned from a high paying banking job, uh, and just got started. So um, um. Yeah, so you know, not joining anything that already existed, um, starting from zero, no customers, no brands, no playbook, nothing. Um, so what people, um, don't tell you about building a company is that you know, the, the business challenges are actually the uh, the easy part. Uh, with, with running um, you know, the, the market fit, product pricing, those are, are all like solvable problems that everyone, you know, can work around. Um, the hard part is the psychological volatility. Uh, right. Because it's, it's so, so up and down. It can, you know, you can be at the bottom at, at 9:00am and, and you're up at uh, 3:00pm Right. So it's, it's um. Yeah, you know, the weeks where you're, you generally don't know where you're going, uh, and how you, how you're going to make payroll. Uh, right, um, the moment where you're sitting um, in front of your um, uh, ah, front of your 62nd investor meeting. Uh, let's say that because I, I counted because uh, uh, yeah, I, I did go to 62 investor meetings, uh, before I got my first investment. Um, and you're pitching the same energy, with the same energy and, and conviction, um, as meeting number one. Right. Even though you have three months of Runway left. And, uh, the team is just, you know, 100 depending on you, ah, taking home, um, you know, this run, um, and, you know, coming back to, you know, hockey mindset, stuff like that, uh, that's where character gets, um, built or broken. Um, so. So what kept me going was, was, uh, two things. Uh, first, um, the team. You know, I wanted the team. I wanted to, you know, have their backs. Um, you know, when you recruited people who left safe jobs to bet on your vision and, and what you wanted to achieve, um, you know, you don't get to quit. Yeah, right. That's just, you know, that's. That's. Yeah, that's just ego. Um, so that responsibility is real. Ah, it kind of changes how you show up every single day. And second, I think and sounds simple, but it's not. I just never confused a hard period with a, ah, wrong direction. Um, volatility is not the same as failure. Um, every company worth building, uh, goes through periods where it looks like it's over from the outside.

Jonathan Denwood: Uh, um,

Lasse: but the discipline is knowing the difference between this is hard and, um, this is wrong. Um, but we got through it. We raised capital, we scaled, uh, we built teams and, uh, multiple countries. But I'll tell you that, uh, those 62 investimatings. Yeah. Um, and that three month Runway window taught me more about, you know, leadership than anything else in my, uh, career. And I think that's where my, you know, me, m. Being the CEO now, that's where that got built, you know, through that. And, um, m. I'm super thankful for, um, you know, the team and the people and. And every. Everything, you know, people believing in. In both me and. And uh, so many other things that, um, Yeah, I think, you know, I'm super happy I went through that. It's at. At times it was. It's proper, you know, uh, but. But, uh, you know, now I can look back and say, wow, you know, we made, uh, was good fun and I want to do it again. So.

Kurt Von Ahnen: Yeah, it's, you know, from an entrepreneur's standpoint that getting through that valley. Right, because we all, we all go through a valley of some kind.

Lasse: Yeah.

Kurt Von Ahnen: But you get through that valley and then things start to look good. And then the people that come on later, they're like, they're like, oh, he's so selfish. He's trying to keep the profits for himself. And it's like, hey, I don't remember you being in the valley. Yeah, Uh, I don't remember you leveraging your house to do this.

Lasse: No, exactly. Yeah, you, you weren't, you were not stuck in, in mud up, up to, uh, your neck, trying to, to swim, get out from that mud. Um, and it's like, you know, it's, it's um, yeah, it's. People, uh, tend to forget that. You know, it's like, you know, if you, and if you look at people that's been super successful and, and um, everyone's like, you know, oh my God, you know, this guy made, um, you know, um, and they're envious, right? But what they don't see is all the, they've been through to get there and it's never an easy ride. So, you know, it's, it's, and that's all due respect to everyone that starts on their own. Um, you know, it's, you have my respect because I know how hard it is.

Kurt Von Ahnen: Yeah. Yeah, Jonathan.

Jonathan Denwood: Well, I think that's a good place to end our conversation.

Kurt Von Ahnen: Jonathan's like, amen.

Jonathan Denwood: Well, I totally agree what you say, but this, if it had failed, you would have been, uh, you know, it would have been m. Personally painful, but you would have been able to go back into the banking industry, wouldn't you? Not. But it would have still been extremely bitter pilled to take though, uh, wouldn't it?

Lasse: Yeah, but, you know, it's uh, you, if you need to take that pill, you do that, right? It's just, it's the mindset of moving on. I'm always like that. It's, it's um, if things don't work, fine, leave it. Let's go, uh, we move on. Um, I think, you know, if you're, um, I, I never ever get, um, um, discouraged by failure. I, I, it's, it's. Everyone says, you know, you learn from it, yeah, you do, but I, uh, I, I never think about it afterwards. If it's done, you failed, fine, move on.

Jonathan Denwood: Right? Yeah. What's the best way to find out more about you and what you're up to, Lissy?

Lasse: Well, you know, I'm quite active on, on LinkedIn or try to be at least. So, uh, you know, uh, reach out to me, me there and connect with me on, on um, LinkedIn. Um, or you can send me an email@lassaerbolt.com, um, and um, just get in touch.

Jonathan Denwood: That's fantastic. Hopefully you agree to come back on the show. Um, and we have another discussion if you enjoyed it. So Kurt, what's the best way for people to find out more about you and what you're up to?

Kurt Von Ahnen: I'll be hanging out with lasso over on LinkedIn. The only Kurt Fanon in there. I'm easy to find. And then Manana Nomas is the company name. So anything Manana Nomas leads back to us.

Jonathan Denwood: And, uh, I want to say you want to find more interviews and anything around WordPress. Best place is to go to the WP Tonic YouTube channel. Got a load of content on there. It's mostly all around WordPress. You'll find some value and subscribe. That's another way you can support independent media. We will be back next week with, uh, another fabulous interview. We see you soon, folks. Bye.

Lasse: Hey, thanks for listening. We really do appreciate it. Why not visit the Mastermind Facebook group? And also to keep up with the

Jonathan Denwood: latest news, click wp-tonic.com forward/newsletter.

Lasse: We'll see you next time.