CV and career historyDaniel Nilsson

CEO of MuchSkills. Co-founder of Up Strategy Lab. Building B2B companies from the inside for more than twenty years.

Full Name

Daniel Nilsson

ROLE

CEO, MuchSkills · Co-founder, Up Strategy Lab

Location

Gothenburg, Sweden

Nationality

Sweden

Resume Daniel Nilsson

Career Statement | Executive Summary

I build B2B companies, and I help other founders build theirs.The thread through everything I have done is a single idea. Most B2B companies that get stuck do not have a product problem, a price problem, or a market problem. They have a visibility problem. Buyers cannot see what the company does. Managers cannot see what their own people can do. Founders cannot see which parts of their commercial system are actually working. I have run into all three versions, in my own companies, more than once.

For twenty years I have worked on the cure. As a chief operating officer, a chief marketing officer, a chief commercial officer, a studio co-founder, and a product builder. I took an IT security startup from nothing to 850 customers across 34 countries. I built partner programmes that signed mobile operators across 40 countries with a team of one and a half people. Then my husband Noel and I co-founded Up Strategy Lab, and out of that studio built MuchSkills, a skills intelligence platform now used by more than 100,000 professionals and a winner of the Red Dot Design Award.I am not a commentator on this work. I am still doing it. That is the part I care about most.

Red Dot Design Award winner
Everest Group Major Contender 2026
100,000+ professionals on MuchSkills
+7,000 newsletter subscribers
Clients include Accenture & Red Hat
Advising globally from Gothenburg

Personal Success Stories

Joined Cryptzone at launch with no product, no revenue, and no team. Helped grow it to 61 employees, 6.5 million euros in annual revenue, and 850 customers across 34 countries. Cryptzone is today part of the zero-trust security company Appgate.

Built a partner programme at Appland that, with one and a half people, recruited 45 partners and signed agreements with mobile network operators across 40 countries, reaching more than ten million devices.

Co-founded Sweden’s leading student magazine, Metro Student, and sold it to Metro in 2007.

Designed the world’s leading tool for building partner programs.

Opened the United States market for Cryptzone from scratch and grew it into the company’s number one market.

Built a partner programme for the Tele2 Group that Tele2 adopted and still uses in its IoT division.

At Mentice, ran more than sixty sales, service and marketing projects in two years, including a CRM rollout delivered roughly 15% under budget, a rebrand, a new sales process, and a company-wide shift to a customer-centric culture.

Co-founded Up Strategy Lab and, from inside it, built MuchSkills from a Google Sheet to a Red Dot-winning platform used worldwide.

Co-founded One Life Dreams, a non-profit that helps children play, create, and dream.arketing and advertising and significantly improve internal communication by creating effective policies and procedures.

Experience

CEO & Co-founder – Up Strategy Lab

(2019 – Present)

Up Strategy Lab is a B2B design and strategy studio. We work with funded scale-ups, technology founders, and deep-tech companies whose products are too complex for most agencies to explain properly. Brand and positioning, digital product and UX design, partner programme design, and practical AI implementation. We decode the business before we design anything, and unlike most agencies we have built products of our own to prove the method works. MuchSkills was born here.

Co-founder & CEO – MuchSkills

(2020 – Present)

MuchSkills is a skills intelligence platform built to solve the people-visibility problem. Most organisations cannot answer a basic question: what skills do we actually have, right now, across this team and this company? Without the answer, workforce planning is guesswork and the right people never get matched to the right work. MuchSkills fixes that layer: skills profiles, gap analysis, team composition, workforce planning, and certification and compliance tracking. Red Dot Design Award winner. Used by 100,000+ professionals, with customers across HR, L&D, compliance, and consulting worldwide. Co-founded with Noel Braganza, who leads design.

Co-founder – HardSkills

(2020 – Present)

HardSkills connects technical and R&D-intensive companies with specialised talent, using a validated database of 79M+ technical skills.

Co-founder – ProtoAnything

(2023 – Present)

ProtoAnything delivers high-quality industrial prototypes fast, using 3D printing, CNC machining, and injection moulding.

Co-founder – OneLife Dreams

May 2026 – Present

A non-profit I co-founded with Aviad Arik Herman, built on the belief that every child should be loved and have the chance to play, create, and fulfil their dreams. We run creative campaigns that make that idea real

Chief Commercial Officer – Appland

Sep 2015 - Jul 2019

Responsible for growth and global partnerships. Redesigned the product into an app store as a service, with sub-stores for games, kids, and general apps, before Apple and Google expanded into the same space. Built and ran the partner programme: recruited 45 partners and signed agreements with mobile network operators across 40 countries, including Telenor, Vodafone, Axiata, Ooredoo, Smart, and Globe. Solutions reached more than ten million devices in over 200 countries. Appland was acquired by OnMobile in 2018.

Chief Marketing Officer – Mentice

Aug 2013 to Aug 2015

Mentice is a medical technology company making simulation platforms for endovascular procedures. Ran more than sixty projects in two years: a CRM rollout delivered roughly 15% under budget, a rebrand, a new sales process, a new support system and portal, and a company-wide cultural shift to customer-centric service. Mentice is now a customer of Up Strategy Lab.

COO & Chief Business Development Officer - Cryptzone

August 2003 – August 2012

Joined at launch with no product, no revenue, and no team. Over nine years helped grow Cryptzone to 61 employees, 6.5 million euros in annual revenue, and 850 customers across 34 countries. Introduced the company to the United States market, which became its largest. Led marketing and professional services, ran the partner training programme, and built the commercial systems that scaled the business. Cryptzone is today part of Appgate.