fireside chat with jorn (shack15)

​Jørn Lyseggen is the Founder of SHACK15, a global community and social club for entrepreneurs and innovators based in SF. A five-time tech bootstrapper with 3 exits and 2 IPOs, Jørn is best known for founding Meltwater with just $15,000 and scaling it to $500 million in revenue across 15 countries — all without external funding. Today, Meltwater is a global leader in media intelligence, serving over 27,000 corporate clients across 110 countries with a team of 2,000 employees in 50 offices worldwide.

​In addition to his work at Meltwater, Jørn founded the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST Africa)—a pan-African training program for aspiring tech entrepreneurs. Under his leadership, MEST has become a key force in developing Africa’s startup ecosystem. Jørn has been recognized for his contributions with awards such as the Europa Hall of Fame Award (2016) and was named one of the “Top 50 Most Influential People in the African Startup Ecosystem” in 2021.

​Jørn is also the author of Outside Insight: Navigating a World Drowning in Data (Penguin Random House, 2017), which explores how unstructured data on the internet can be leveraged for strategic decision-making.