MEET WITH THE TEAM #2. Interview with Samuel Westberg, our Chief Executive Officer
Welcome to the second part of our series of “MEET WITH THE TEAM”.
After having interviewed our Chief Operating Officer David Goncalves, let’s introduce you to our second co-founder & Chief Executive Officer Samuel Westberg. For this interview we decided to move away from a traditional one to do one with a more offbeat tone!
Samuel you co-founded LaSource and you are now the CEO, what did you do before in your career?
As many folks in the industry, I am first of all an ex-young kid who wanted to make it as a professional player (in football) but who didn’t have what it takes to make it to the highest level. I then wanted to be a football coach which I really enjoyed doing in parallel with my studies. But I guess my parents unconsciously drove me in the direction of something “safer” in a traditional University and then Business School.
Rapidly, I entered a professional club (Paris FC) doing a little bit of everything there which then drove me to my first experience in a sports digital startup. I have been in that space now for the last 10 years.
Where does this idea of creating LaSource come from? What was the reason behind?
After a first experience in the Startup world, LiveLikeVR was created in 2015. I was one of the original members on that team which drove us to big successes covering a Super Bowl, the FIFA World Cup 2018, Roland Garros and many more events. I saw a company go fundraise in the US because it is a whole other dynamic there for fundraising where there are more means and where sports organizations are quicker to adopt innovation. However, after the UEFA innovation hub which we were part of in 2018 organized by UEFA, it became more and more evident that big American startups needed help in understanding better the European landscape, in understanding its differences with the US one, and that David and I’s experience was valuable to help those organizations accelerate their development in Europe. This was the first pillar of LaSource: help American Sports Tech startups optimize their strategy and time to market in Europe.
Being CEO of a young agency must be super exciting but also very tiring. How would you describe your typical working day to a child?
Well, I wake up with early baby screams between, generally between 6:30 and 7:00. I take 15 minutes to screen sports news, then I drop the kids at school. Between 8:30 and 18:30 it is a mix of internal and external calls, early with Asia, late with the US. It is also hundreds of whatsapps and slacks, a couple of coffee breaks and 30 minutes to eat on good days.
I always try to save the 18:30 to 20:30 slot for my family and than it’s more often than another 1-2 hours of catch ups / follow up emails and final whatsapps, except on PSG Champions League evenings and Fridays that are non-negotiable hard stops at 18:30.
If you could swap your job with someone, who would this person be?
I think there are a lot of factors that make me say that I wouldn’t want to change my position for anyone’s as it is my baby, built with people I truly appreciate, and I really have a blast doing what I do on a daily basis. As for what I would love my next job to be, I would like being able to take over a tier 3 professional football club and rebuild it from the ground up, mixing my learnings and relationships both on the administrative side and on the sports performance side.
If you could be someone else for a day, who would you like to be? Why?
For one day, I am not sure. But if I had been given the chance to follow one person in the sports industry for a month to learn and understand how he ran things, I think it probably would have been Mr David Stern or Pep Guardiola.
Is there a dream that you often have and that you really want to make come true?
I think that one thing that has always been very clear to me is that I have never wanted to be a small part of a big organization. I like building and my dream is to one day be in a position that I can build a project, onboard the right team around me, and make the project grow over the consequent period of time it takes to do things well and with the DNA I would like to give to it. I really would like to accomplish something I think was hard to achieve but managed to accomplish it for the right reasons.
Which sports do you love the most (apart from football)? and the one you hate the most?
I love a lot of sports but if I had to give an order, Basketball would probably be #2 although I have been watching more and more NFL after getting hooked through All or Nothing. But I can go anywhere from watching a Boxing fight to watching swimming at the Olympics. I genuinely love sports and get something out of watching and playing any sport. I loved my years in STAPS (sports university) trying out every sport.
Now let’s talk about football: your brother is a goalkeeper, are you more a defender or a striker?
I played most of my life in the 5 or 10 spot, anywhere I can hide my absence of speed by reading the game well or by making the difference with a good pass...
What is your favorite memory in sports?
I think it’s playing sports rather than watching it.
I think it would be winning our U18 Regional 2 division in Paris region with FC Issy-les-Moulineaux. I am a utopist and it was the perfect application of losing a few matches in the early season putting the right fundamentals in place driving to later success and a 10 game winning streak with a great group of guys. 3-4 players of that team are still amongst my best friends to this day.
If you could have achieved a world record, what would it be?
Definitely the number of victories in the UEFA Champions League.
What is your guilty pleasure?
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
What revolts you in life in general?
I wouldn’t say revolts me but one thing I am not a big fan of is Demagogy.
Would you rather never have internet again or be alone on a desert island with internet?
Never have the internet again. 100%.