Raising Entrepreneurs

Welcome back!

Erik Fjellborg

Erik Fjellborg from Stockholm, Sweden, started his business, Calnet, at age 17.

The best business ideas are born of necessity. For Erik Fjellborg, inspiration came when he was 17 years old, flipping burgers at a McDonald’s in Sweden. Fjellborg realized there wasn’t a good system in place to find employees when the fast-food joint was short-staffed. So to fix the problem, he created a Web-based application that lets employees interact with each other to fill gaps in the rotation, even before managers know there’s a problem. The program caught on, and 83,000 McDonald’s employees in four European countries were soon using Fjellborg’s Quinyx FlexForce. To expand the business, Fjellborg recently sold a stake in his business to Swedish software and consulting firm UCMS Group, which hopes to introduce the application to a global audience.