Before starting KaDonk, Anders Heie worked at Nokia's Research and Development (NYSE: NOK) center in Copenhagen. He did some whiz-bang things there – and even has five US patents.

To carry out his projects, he had to work with people across the globe. The problem was that project management software was not up to snuff.

So why not start a company to improve things? Well, that's what he did.

To get some background on his venture, I had a chance to interview Anders:

How did it start?

They say most businesses start with a good idea. We started with a strong drive to create a company, any company. So two of my friends (Jari Niskala and Dipanshu Sharma) got together one evening and started a month long brainstorming process. What we realized after a while was that everyone we knew had the same problem; Project Management is a one-way street. What I mean by that is that in most organizations, project plans are created by the manager, shown to the participants, and then occasionally updated. Rarely, if ever, do participants in a project get to collaborate and take an active part in the planning and development phase of the plan. We were also acutely aware that the price of a team-wide Microsoft Project (NASDAQ: MSFT) deployment represented significant investments that most companies shy away from. Each license costs $500-$1500 depending on the solution selected.

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