L-Soft Europe: Who We Are and What We Can Offer

L-Soft, incorporated in 1994, is a leading provider of email list and opt-in email marketing software and hosting services for managing email newsletters, discussion groups, email communities and email marketing campaigns. L-Soft focuses on providing robust, reliable, flexible and scalable software for the global marketplace.

Today, thousands of worldwide customers from Internet, media, business, government, education, non-profit and other sectors rely on L-Soft's solutions for their permission-based email initiatives. L-Soft's flagship product, LISTSERV^®, celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2011. LISTSERV was the first product of its kind, launching the email list communication industry in 1986 and setting the industry standard ever since. Today, LISTSERV has more than 100 million list subscriptions.

L-Soft provides enterprise software and targets two primary markets:

• The traditional electronic mailing list market: This market began to emerge in 1994 as the Internet opened up for corporations. Customers in this segment need reliable solutions for customer newsletters, discussion groups and announcement lists. L-Soft's LISTSERV email list management software is a top-notch solution for managing all types of email list communication initiatives.
• The opt-in email marketing segment: This focus arose as businesses have started to incorporate permission-based email marketing into their online customer communication strategies. Opt-in email marketing campaigns can enhance customer relations, increase customer loyalty and build branding. Email is a great channel for last-minute offers, specials and reminders. L-Soft develops and sells LISTSERV Maestro software for companies to manage and track their opt-in email marketing campaigns with a powerful and flexible solution.
  
  Seth Godin, the expert who coined the phrase "permission marketing", has stated: "Without LISTSERV, email marketing never would have gotten off the ground."

The market for email communication continues to grow and there are hundreds of players nowadays. A majority of the players are hosting service providers that focus on local markets; many fewer are truly able to offer customer organizations the choice of software or hosting solutions. L-Soft recommends the best solution to meet each customer's specific needs: licensed software or hosted services. In addition, L-Soft differentiates itself from competitors by being an international company providing standard software, software that customers can adjust to the local use as needed.

L-Soft has created a global LISTSERV community of organizations that use our solutions. We donate occasionally our software or services to organizations around the world to help them implement mission-critical email lists that would not have otherwise been possible because of funding and resource constraints. L-Soft also offers NetPals, free email lists for the international school community. Our LISTSERV Lite Free Edition is available for hobby-based email list use.

This is why we believe L-Soft is unique:

• L-Soft's flagship product, LISTSERV, is a widely used, time-tested program that launched the email list communication industry in 1986. LISTSERV sets the industry standard as the first and one of the most respected solutions of its kind.
• Many Internet software innovations with international success are dominated by U.S. companies. L-Soft is a European company, and LISTSERV was invented in Europe, so we offer a fresh alternative.
• L-Soft's largest office is in the United States because the Swedish authorities did not allow our founder to start a corporation in Sweden. This turned out to have some advantages, but the corporate culture is more European than American, even at the U.S. office. At the same time, we have adopted the dynamism and career growth opportunities of U.S. companies, where only results count and age does not matter.
• Diversity is one of our core values. We welcome employees of all ages and national origins and, needless to say, of both sexes. Currently, 45 percent of our employees are women – including 50 percent of our managers – and more than 10 languages are spoken at L-Soft. Five citizenships are represented among our management team. We believe that this diversity makes us stronger and more creative.
• We think long term. Perhaps what makes us really unique is our history. We had to do everything the hard way, learning and finding creative solutions to problems as we went along.

When our founder, Eric Thomas, started looking for funding in 1992, he found out that nobody had the time to listen to a 26-year-old immigrant with no money and no business degree. This was long before Internet companies were commonplace on the NASDAQ, but even today it is unlikely that a European investor would fund a new company like L-Soft. Shortly before the "dot-com crash", a representative from a leading European venture capital firm told Eric:

"If you have the right profile – at least 40 years old, a degree from a top business university, and relevant professional experience – and if you can contribute about $150,000 from your own pocket, we will probably fund your venture."

The closest L-Soft came to obtaining funding was when a Swedish bank reluctantly agreed to think about lending Eric 100.000 kr at a 17 percent interest rate. The bank never got back to him, and one cannot do much with money borrowed at 17 percent.

But starting a company is not supposed to be easy, and Eric did not give up when he realized that he would not be able to find any funding, nor when he was told that he could not start a company in Sweden with the type of work permit he had. In the end, L-Soft started with $3,000, a laptop and a plane ticket to New York City.

With this background, we are open to creative and even daring proposals, and indeed we have made "Who dares wins" one of our mottos; of course, everything has to make sound business sense, both in the short and long term.

L-Soft can offer exceptional opportunities to creative, motivated employees. At the same time, it is a very challenging environment. You will be faced with new problems that you might not have experienced before, and you will quickly find out that your boss has a million other things to do in spite of working long hours. This means you will have to be able to work on your own most of the time. It also means that if you do well, you may find yourself in charge of important projects just a few months after your arrival. It is in the company's interest to quickly promote efficient, motivated people who are able to see projects to completion without assistance, and at L-Soft we generally do whatever is in the company's interest, even when it goes against established corporate tradition.

Generally speaking, L-Soft offers many of the challenges of a big, well-established corporation, but within the framework of a small company with an entrepreneurial culture. We are facing the same issues, but on a smaller scale, which means your potential role and involvement is much more significant than in a big corporation.

You may have read all sorts of clichés in the press about the culture of Internet companies. Some of it is true of course, but to a certain extent this is also a kind of act: "be cool" and give the press what they want in return for free advertisement. We are quite a bit different from the "Internet hippie" myth. The average age at L-Soft is just over 30, the atmosphere at work is relaxed, and you will not find many people wearing suits and ties, but we are professional, focused and down-to-earth rather than "cool hip visionaries." We are open to creative and even daring proposals, and indeed we have made "Who dares wins" one of our mottos, but everything has to be well thought out and make sound business sense, both in the short and long term.

L-Soft is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. However, L-Soft's largest office is located in the United States, near Washington, DC. This is where most of the group's employees work, although we have telecommuters from other parts of the United States. The U.S. company, L-Soft international, Inc., was incorporated in February 1994.

Our Stockholm office is the group's first European office and opened in October 1999. L-Soft Sweden AB takes care of the customers in Continental Europe, Africa and Asia. L-Soft UK Ltd. was incorporated in April 2001 in order to serve customers in the UK and Ireland. L-Soft Germany GmbH is a product development office.

Although the U.S. market is now the largest, the first LISTSERV users in 1986 were in Europe and L-Soft has provided European customers software licenses and support services since the company began in 1994.