Turning a world of info into business decisions

Leaders are surrounded by information. News sites, local media, LinkedIn posts, corporate announcements – it is all out there. Yet when boards ask straightforward questions – who is entering our market, where is the next growth opportunity – the answers are often stitched together from guesswork and partial views. This is the gap Gustav Fridell, Founder and CEO of Distill, wants to close. Built from his experience as a management consultant and venture capital investor, Distill is designed to turn external signals into real decisions.

Most organisations still lean on generic news alerts. Gustav knows their limits. "The problem is that you receive so much irrelevant news. If you're tracking Apple, for example, you might get news about the fruit rather than the company." 

Distill responds in two ways. First, it filters ruthlessly – removing everything unrelated to the companies and topics a user is tracking. Second, it widens what counts as a signal. "Instead of just tracking traditional media, it monitors what companies actually say across their own channels – their newsrooms, PR feeds, LinkedIn, and websites." The result is a richer picture of how organisations present themselves – not just how they are reported on.

Breaking Europe's language and information barriers
Distill's thinking is rooted in a distinctly European challenge: fragmented markets and fragmented information.

As a consultant, Gustav helped clients read new markets and decide where to expand. "We used to buy massive amounts of data… But the problem was the immense cost and effort required to extract any real insight." Third-party reports help, but they are someone else's interpretation of reality.

Language compounds this. "Germany is a huge market, but if you're tracking companies there, they mostly publish in German." Distill tackles this directly – following sources in every language and translating content to English. "With Distill, you simply add the companies you want to track, and you receive the intelligence in your preferred language." No consultants. No expensive reports. Just the information itself.

From information overload to what actually matters
Removing barriers only solves part of the challenge. The bigger issue for leaders today is overload. "Today, we face constant information overload. There is simply too much noise to figure out what actually matters.” 

This is where Distill's key differentiator lies. Using AI alongside rich metadata on every tracked company – size, sector, competitive position – the platform weighs each development against its context. Gustav gives a clear example: "If a massive corporation announces a deal with a tiny customer, it might not be that important. But if a small startup lands a major player, that is highly significant."

That contextual judgement separates intelligence from information. "You want a service that says, ‘Hey, here is what happened, and here is why it matters.’ You don't want a list of 1,000 events left for you to figure out yourself."

Simple to start, fast to value
Distill is straightforward to set up. For organisations wanting to understand their competitive landscape, "all you have to do is add your website." Distill finds relevant competitors automatically and delivers weekly summaries of the most significant moves.

For market expansion, a ‘track a sector’ option lets organisations define the type of companies they want to follow in a specific region. Distill identifies the most prominent players and starts sending intelligence almost immediately. Users can then personalise by topic – financial results, product launches, market entries – building a feed that is useful rather than just comprehensive.
Why Sweden keeps punching above its weight

Gustav is not just watching the European AI boom from the sidelines – he is building Distill right at its epicentre. Stockholm has become one of the most productive AI ecosystems in the world, and for him, that is no coincidence. The answer, he argues, is legacy.

"We have a long legacy of actually building successful tech companies in Stockholm and Sweden. Going back to companies like Skype, Spotify, Mojang, King, and Klarna – all of those companies really set the precedent of what you can do and inspire lots of new people to start new companies." 

Gustav continues to offer three more reasons. The first is cultural: Sweden has built a genuine norm of founding companies with international ambitions from day one, not growing locally first, but thinking globally at the outset. The second is linguistic. "Swedes are highly proficient in English, which helps us present ourselves and expand globally, as well as attracting top international talent. We're good at attracting talent from other markets." 

The third reason is, he admits with a smile, more practical. "Stockholm is a beautiful place, but half of the year it's completely dark, so you have nothing else to do other than work." 

A wider challenge for leadership
Behind the product sits a challenge to how leaders think about knowing their world. "Even if you think you know your market inside out, there are always things happening that you aren't aware of. With technology and markets moving so fast today, you simply can't afford not to stay on top of it.” 

His conclusion is direct: "Market intelligence is more important than ever, and it's also easier than ever. So, there's no reason not to do it." 

That is the shift Distill asks of leadership teams – not just to adopt a new tool, but to treat market intelligence as a core discipline, one that sits alongside strategy and governance in how organisations respond to change.