Swiftcourt honored with VA:s Innovation Prize Student

For the fifth year in a row, Veckans Affärer (www.va.se) and ÅF honor Swedish innovations - that have been developed during university studies and have made a commercial impact - with the Swedish Innovation Prize Student.

The jury this year consisted of Anders Snell, Åforsk, Jonas Wiström, CEO ÅF, Jessica Nilsson, investment manager at Northzone, Staffan Helgesson, partner at Creandum, Annika Steiber, founder of Innoway and Jill Bederoff, journalist at Veckans Affärer.

Swiftcourt had the honor to receive the prize with the following motivation:

 “Swiftcourt is an innovation that challenge a sector characterized of conservative thinking. Using digital tools and straight forward thinking to solve problems within the legal system is bold, but not too daring for Johan Hedén Hultgren, who got the idea during his last year as a law student at the University of Gothenburg. Disputes that today are to small to be solved, can through his start-up, Swiftcourt, attain access to justice.”

Read the full article in Swedish here or check out the article in English below.

"His digital court receives prize

An innovation that challenges in one of the most conservative industries. Johan Hedén Hultgren has developed a digital tool to solve disputes that today are to small for the courts to take. Therefor, Swiftcourt is honored with Veckans Affärers award Innovation Prize Student 2014.

“I’ve made three big choices so far in my life. To choose the entrepreneurial life instead of a career in law was one of them”, says Johan Hedén Hultgren, founder and CEO of the start up Swiftcourt.

Despite his young age, only 24 years, and that he finished his law studies as late as this January, Johan is already working on his second start up. The first one, Finansfilm, was founded already during his legal studies with some friends from the football team in Gothenburg. Finansfilm is still growing but Johan Hedén Hultgren is now engaged more on a strategic level.

Instead, he spends all his time on Swiftcourt - which happened to be born through a random meeting.

“I was visiting ALMI to talk financing for Finansfilm. There I met Fredrik Andersson, who was working as a consultant for ALMI and as my contact there. After he had heard about my background, he insisted that I should meet Jakob Elander, a lawyer at the law firm Lindmark Welinder in Lund. The meeting became a perfect match”, says Johan Hedén Hultgren.

Jakob Elander had seen a problem in need of a solution. Disputes on lower amounts remained unsolved. The legal system wasn’t able to handle them.

“He found that most disputes that reached the courts were over high amounts, and even for some of these disputes, the costs were too high.”

At Venture Lab, an incubator at Lund’s University, Johan Hedén Hultgren got to know Hampus Sahlin who became an important foundation for Swiftcourt.

“He’s a technical genius. He has build the entire Swiftcourt platform at the same time he was learning web programming”.

The business model of Swiftcourt consists of two parts – the arbitration clause that can be integrated in almost any contract and the digital dispute resolution platform that enables the disputing parties to solve their dispute with Swiftcourt, quick and easy online.

The concept is innovative in many ways and challenges an industry that is characterized of conservative thinking and unwillingness to change. Such a challenge require bravery, ambition and perseverance, qualities that Johan Hedén Hultgren and his teem seems to have.

“We’ve noticed a certain resistance from lawyers here in Sweden, while the companies are much more curious and interested in our solution. In the US, where we plan to launch soon, both lawyers and companies are far more mature for Swiftcourt.

Before the choice of an entrepreneurial lifestyle instead of a career in law, he had made two major life decisions, football instead of hockey and law school instead of professional football.

“I’ve dedicated my entire childhood to football ever since my father brought me to the pitch as a child and started to train me and my friends. When I was 15 years old, I made my debut for Sweden in the Swedish youth national team.”

When he was 16 years old, he packed all of his stuff, left his parents and brother in Karlshamn and moved to Trelleborg. But the football life wasn’t as glamorous as he had expected.

“Practice, eat and sleep. And TV-games in between.“

After graduation, he left Trelleborg and moved to Gothenburg, the city in which he and his family had visited many times when he was a child and from where he had many bright memories.

From the apartment, where he lived with the owner, 90+, and two other students he had exactly 25 seconds to school.

“I became a time optimist”.

But law school didn’t give Johan Hedén Hultgren enough stimulation.

“I didn’t get to express my creative abilities by sitting at the desk reading book after book. You’ll reach nowhere. Therefor I started looking for other things to do.”

Through his chairmanship in the students’ association of law, role as a project manager of the law fair GAIUS and his extra job as legal researcher at the law firm Jansson & Norin, he was able to find inspiration and discovered the joy of building something of his own.

Since this summer, Swiftcourt is available on the Scandinavian market and after the end of the year a launch in the US is planned, where both lawyers and companies according to Johan Hedén Hultgren are far more mature for this type of innovation within the legal industry..

In two years, I wish Swiftcourt is the standard solution for solving disputes concerning lower amounts and that it is part of many transactions, both here in the Scandinavia but also in the US.”"

Jill Bederoff, journalist at Veckans affärer, 2014-11-05 [our translation]

About Swiftcourt

Swiftcourt is a Digital Arbitration Court enabling individuals and SME’s to solve disputes on lower amounts. The process takes 6 weeks and the verdict is directly enforceable. For more information, please visit our website: Swiftcourt

Contact:

Johan Hedén Hultgren, VD

Swiftcourt AB

0766 45 44 59

johan.hultgren@swiftcourt.se

Swiftcourt

Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn