Ombori

Andreas Hassellof's journey began in his teenage years as an Evangelist, where he learned the art of pitching ideas to often-uninterested audiences—lessons in resilience that shaped his entrepreneurial mindset. After several entrepreneurial ventures, he founded Ombori as a consultancy company. The consulting revenue became the lifeblood that funded more ambitious product ventures, all operating under the Ombori Group banner.

In 2015, Andreas identified a critical market gap: "building m-commerce apps was far too slow and expensive." The speed and cost of development couldn't match the rate of industry change. He built Web2App—a tool that automatically created mobile commerce apps from existing e-commerce sites in minutes, requiring no coding. This evolved into PresenceKit, a marketplace where businesses could find, customize, and deploy solutions without sales involvement. Alongside product development, Ombori ran innovative pilots with House of Dagmar, Lindt, Telenor, and Clas Ohlson. In collaboration with Microsoft, they built a talking, voice-controlled interactive "selfie mirror" installed in H&M's flagship store in Manhattan—a project that brought global attention from major brands wanting digital transformations.

The H&M selfie mirror project became a turning point. When Satya Nadella showcased it at Envision in 2018, "the interest in Ombori suddenly went through the roof." Strategic partnerships became the cornerstone of growth. Microsoft, Samsung, Avanade, and ITAB didn't just collaborate—they became extensions of the sales team, providing direct access to C-level decision-makers at major brands like Warner, Target, and IKEA. Andreas noted: "Having partners like these means that we can get access to C-level decision-makers at major brands...we go into meetings with immense credibility."

COVID-19 nearly destroyed Ombori. Every project was suspended within days in 2020. But Andreas moved fast: he fast-tracked conversations with Kjell, a Swedish retail chain, about IoT occupancy counting systems and deployed worldwide. This crisis forced innovation—the team leveraged its philosophy of "rapid and easy deployment and compatibility with existing hardware and software" to create what was effectively "PresenceKit for IoT." The Ombori Grid Marketplace launched with solutions for occupancy control, queue management, BOPIS, appointment booking, video customer service, and digital signage—all deployable without coding.

Andreas's biggest mistake was hiring. While excellent at recruiting developers, he struggled finding the right sales and marketing talent. "There's so much knowledge locked up in my head, and a lot of it is almost instinctive now, and not easy to explain." He became a bottleneck, unable to delegate because he was the only person who fully understood the customers and products. Burnout followed—managing coding, sales, marketing, partnerships, and fundraising simultaneously. The lesson: "At some point, you have to make the time, empower someone else to do the job, and let them get on with it."

Ombori is building a developer program, transforming from a pure product company into an ecosystem hub. Andreas's vision: "What Apple is to iPhone users, that's what we want to be for businesses." The focus is recurring revenue—subscription models provide stability and lower sticker shock compared to one-off consulting deals. Content marketing (blogging, guest posts, live-streamed events with thousands of viewers) complemented partnership-driven growth. The company now operates across retail, offices, healthcare, and restaurants.