Mai-Li Dahlström
Mai-Li Dahlström (formerly Hammargren) provides actionable strategies and leadership insights on how to generate cash flow from pioneering ideas. As a wearable tech pioneer—having sold over 20,000 products long before Apple released a touchscreen watch – and following four years in Silicon Valley helping drive Lookback to profitability, she brings a wealth of hands-on lessons to share.
Mai-Li’s journey in groundbreaking consumer technology began at Sony in 2005. A few years later, she took the leap into entrepreneurship as co-founder of Mutewatch. Honored with an innovation award in 2007, the product gained international acclaim as the world’s first touchscreen watch, years before wearables hit the mass market.
Her experience extends to Silicon Valley, where as the third hire at a startup founded by early ex-Spotify engineers, she helped scale the company to profitability and position it as a pioneer in UX research.
From strategy to capital
Upon returning to Sweden, Mai-Li worked with corporate transformation and venture building. This unique ability to navigate seamlessly between fast-moving startups and large corporate organizations has shaped her perspective on how to build sustainable businesses. Alongside her professional career, she is deeply driven by philanthropy and systemic change within capital flows.
Mai-Li combines practical and strategic advice with immense energy, making her keynotes highly relevant for any organization seeking to bring longevity and strategic direction to their innovation agenda.
Some of Mai-Li’s highlights:
- Created the world’s first touchscreen watch (Mutewatch)
- Helped scale a Silicon Valley startup to profitability as the third hire
- 100k+ user growth across products and platforms
- Born-global launches + launch in Silicon Valley
- 5+ company turnarounds
- 10,000+ contacts globally
- 100+ talks on entrepreneurship and innovation
- 100+ startups advised on fundraising
Keynotes and themes
INNOVATION – The logic of expert entrepreneurs
Experienced founders do not forecast and then execute. They start from what is already in their hands, cap the downside, build with whoever commits, and treat surprises as material.
- The five principles, and why affordable loss beats expected gain
- Twenty concrete commitments a founder can apply the same week
- Why the planet, the market and the forecast are outcomes, not starting points
FOR Founder programmes, accelerators, corporate innovation teams, business schools
BASIS Framework from effectuation.org, Saras D. Sarasvathy
FUNDRAISING – Capital squinting
A round buys twelve to eighteen months. The company takes ten to fifteen years. Optimising each round locally is exactly what makes the later ones hard.
- Plan ten rounds and fifteen years, then benchmark the path, not the peak
- The unlocks that genuinely move a deal, and the four that only look like them
- What a data room has to prove before anyone finishes reading the deck
FOR Founders raising, boards, investor networks, angel and family-office groups
BASIS Drawn from 100+ ventures advised on capital formation
TURNAROUNDS – When structure is not the problem
After a merger that has not delivered, the instinct is to redraw the org chart. Usually the problem is unclear mandates and missing numbers in a structural costume.
- Four conditions that must hold before any structure is changed
- One cash flow threshold that settles the argument in a board meeting
- How to separate a governance problem from a genuinely structural one
FOR Boards, owners and private equity, CEOs in the first year after a merger
BASIS Drawn from five or more sector turnarounds and distressed rounds
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