How sports helped me overcome my fear of failure

First-year SSE student Odessa Bäckfors co-founded her startup at the SSE Business Lab after meeting her team at our Ideate program. At Ideate, students get to create teams, learn from business experts and test ideas.

What did you do before starting your company?

I started Archr a couple of months ago with my Co-Founders while studying my first year as a Business and Economics student at SSE. I have a background in alpine skiing, and before starting SSE, I lived 4 years in Gällivare, where I went to the alpine ski high school. Besides skiing, entrepreneurship and sales have always been a part of me. When I was only four years old, one can say that my entrepreneurial journey began. My friends and I started to sell our pearl plates in the summers, and when I was about 10 years old, me and another friend sold homemade muffins and coffee to people by the beach in Tantolunden. When I was 17 years old, I started my own café in Gällivare, which I had for two summers in a row. In the following months, I applied for and obtained my first "real" job as a customer- and sales consultant at Synsam, where I worked before starting my studies at SSE.

How has it been the change from your studies skiing to business school? Which values do you take with you from your previous experience?

Skiing has been a huge part of my life ever since I was a kid and I actually thought I would miss it more. I think the reason for that is all the lovely people at SSE, fun activities within SASSE and interesting courses that basically have kept my mind busy from missing skiing! Interestingly, life as a skier and as a business student is also a lot more similar than I thought. For example, skiing in a competition and writing an exam evokes the same feelings of adrenaline and of nervousness - it's just that I have switched skies and poles for pen and paper!

Both worlds also require me to set goals, make plans and execute in a disciplined way.

Something I am grateful to bring with me to SSE from skiing is the ability to fail. My skiing career has really been a roller-coaster with a lot of failures, which earlier on made me think negative thoughts about myself and my performance. Later on, I actually started to erase that word from my vocabulary and just saw “failures” as experiences to learn and grow stronger from. It made skiing a lot more fun and it made me feel better, but it also made it much easier to make progress when directing my energy to constructive thoughts instead of negative ones. Basically, what I have learned is that it is okay to not always live up to one’s goals and perform on top, as long as you don’t give up (if what you fight for is something you really want of course :)

As a first year at SSE, how has it been to start a company right away?

I won’t lie, starting a company alongside starting at SSE has not been easy. Studying at SSE is already sometimes more than a full-time commitment and adding having a company to that has been a lot. However, I don’t regret it a second and it has worked out well since we are a team working with Archr together!

The reason I chose to study at SSE was to learn about business for becoming an entrepreneur one day. Learning things in school that I can, and need, to use in practice when working with Archr is also a huge motivation for me to study hard. Moreover, I don’t think there will ever come a perfect time for starting a company. After studies comes commitments like work and family that are probably even more difficult to combine with entrepreneurship, so why wait? Lastly, the whole purpose of Archr is to make the world more sustainable and waiting ten years, it will be too late.

What problem are you solving and what is your mission?

The problem we are tackling is one that we all in the team experienced ourselves, namely that it is so hard and time-consuming for us consumers to make informed purchases that are good both for ourselves and the planet.

Our mission is to help consumers globally to make more sustainable purchase decisions through empowering them with knowledge. What we offer is a platform where you can compare products and services in a single place on both price and sustainability.

How did you meet your co-founders?

I met my Co-Founders Victoria, Nellie and Gustav in SSE Business Lab’s Ideate program! Where we competed and won the pitching competition. We saw an opportunity to keep the idea growing and this is why we are now at the SSE Business Lab.

Tell us about a time your plans didn't go as planned?

From my earlier experience of entrepreneurship, I remember having a tough time in the beginning when I started my café. It was raining constantly for one whole week and I had only a few customers per day. I can say that I really regretted that I didn’t apply for a “regular” and safe summer job by then, but luckily the sun came back and the number of customers started to increase. Something I learned from this was that entrepreneurship requires patience.

With Archr, I am sure a lot of things will not turn out as we plan and that’s great, because there will probably be a bunch of learnings coming from that!

What is one thing the SSE Business Lab has helped you with?

Being in the SSE Business lab has been very helpful since we get access to their valuable network and resources. For example, we get coaching from two experienced entrepreneurs every Monday and it has been super helpful to get some guidance when being in this early stage.

The team behind Archr:

Odessa Bäckfors (CEO)

Victoria Ivanova (COO)

Nellie Gunnarsson (CMO)

Gustav Olsson (CFO)

The team at the SSE Business lab is available for new business ideas. Do not hesitate to contact us if you are starting a new business. We can support you at an early and growth stage.

Book a meeting here with our program manager Andreas and get feedback on your business idea. We can help you with your application.