Las Vegas 2001: First page

Torbjörn Hellerstad
CEO Aktiv IT

The Internet really is fantastic!

On the Internet and in the Internet business you can find anything and everything. At hand is a fascinating technology which connects hundreds of millions of people worldwide and which is developing at a higher rate than ever experienced in human history.

The Net offers you entertainment, information, politics, shopping & trade, work opportunities – and even love if you whish so. What else is there? Money. Lots of money, of all kinds. Money to pay. Money to save. Money to invest. Money to lose. Money to win and to earn.

The Internet, and the business associated with it, is too large and comprehensive for any individual or organisation to be able to clearly understand and embrace its present state or future development. This situation breeds a whole lot of different speculation.

Especially as experts from all various fields - such as technology, politics, web design, and financial analysis - are voicing opinions about the Internet on matters far outside their own competence field. To be sure, the Internet is here to stay and it will continue to grow. It will influence our lives in many, many ways.

To be sure, again, large amounts of money are generated on the Internet today, which include revenues from selling technology, services, goods, advertising and money gained by rationalization procedures involving the Internet. Today we see how post and bank officies close down after hundreds of years of the same kind of traditional activities.

We also see reports from Swedish banks showing very good results. These good results are to a very high degree ascribed to the Internet. All banks make it clear to their customers that they want as many as possible of them to use the Internet bank services now and in the future. If the banks are profiting from the Net technology, what about other industries? In my opinion, many of them will make large sums of money on the Internet. There are lots of examples already.

Aktiv IT will be among these successful examples. Why are the media reports on Internet businesses focused on loss, bankruptcy, delays and similar negative things? The answer is that companies who have concentrated on creating a rather hyped PR have gotten all the publicity – although not very flattering publicity lately. . . The rest of us, who havn’t prioritized PR as much, continue to do our job and to bring our projects forward.

The Internet creates new, earlier unseen, possibilities to start up and manage activities covering a very wide spectrum. To act on the Net demands a whole lot, sometimes more than traditional business activities do. The challenge for us, in this kind of business, is to understand the new possibilities and how to best take advantage of them, and to act fast. This needs to be combined with the more traditional focus on management, business strategy, entrepreneur spirit and organization.

There are things which money simply cannot do - no matter how large sums of money you have. I strongly believe that the factor “time” sometimes just cannot be overlooked. No matter how skilful you are or what money you can present, it takes time to build a solid and well functioning business with the potential of forceful and successful expansion.

We are now in the very fortunate and thrilling position of owning some well established and successful – some of them on the cutting edge – websites in areas which have proved to have the highest profit-making potential. We are now concentrating mainly on five of our websites: Interlotto.com, Spela.com, SistaMinuten.com, GuldochSilver.com and Kondomeriet.com. Four of these sites represent the areas gambling, gaming, travels and erotics. These areas are generating the highest profits on the Internet today.

Torbjörn Hellerstad

CEO of AAU Aktiv IT AB(publ.) Torbjörn Hellerstad is one of the founders of AAU Aktiv IT AB and was appointed CEO in April this year. He has a background as an entrepreneur in the IT field and has started up, developed and managed several businesses in the computer and IT sector since 1981.