2 min read
We are Data: An Interview with Helgi Hrafn Halldórsson, CEO at Maven
Written by: Juan Jose Keena, Chief Marketing Officer - January 31, 2022
I am talking to Helgi remotely, in Teams, with a cup of coffee in my hand. Right after the new year.
Helgi and the team at Maven have been in the media recently, as they have been doing more and more projects in their company.
Helgi looks happy, he's in a good mood, and he's ready to do this.
Before the interview, we had a lively conversation about our personal lives.
Helgi is a family man and I am about to become a father (there, I just gave you a piece of humanity), so the conversation revolves around raising children and the state of the world. We both agree that there are many things to improve and that technology will play a role in that. "Kids are amazing, you learn so much from them," he says.
Then we get down to business.
Iceland has become an incredible market for TimeXtender, so clearly Iceland in general is a data hub. We talk about some industries that are becoming more and more data empowered and trends, feels like we could spend the whole day doing this.
I ask Helgi, "What was the vision for Maven when you started a year ago?"
Helgi: In the beginning, when we started the company, we wanted to measure our success by our long-term relationships with our customers.
We did not know how we would do that, but we wanted that to be our foundation. Since then, we have built great relationships with our customers and we work closely with them on a long-term strategy.
The word "knowledge worker" also came up several times in our preparation, and we wanted to value the time we invest in learning.
JK: OK, and what about the name, what does Maven mean?
Helgi: Our name represents what we are.
A maven is a trusted expert in a certain field who tries to pass on his knowledge to others. The word maven comes from Hebrew, via Yiddish, and means someone who understands something, based on an accumulation of knowledge.
But to be a maven, you need to understand more than just a subject, you need to know it inside and out.
Often, mavens are the people you turn to as experts in a field. You do not become an expert overnight. That kind of expertise comes from accumulating knowledge over years.
Our tagline represents what we do:
"We build knowledge with data."
Listen to the rest of the interview here, there are incredible insights
About this series.
In this interview series, we talk to our partners, collaborators and thought leaders, because they are the real experts on data. From AI, machine learning, IoT, cloud computing, cloud architecture and machine economy to everything else.