We go back to March 2013. It is a dark time for Birger Baylund. The bank forces him to sell the company he started just over ten years earlier to what Birger calls "a hijacker" – all for the debt and a bus ticket. He sleeps at the office, in a small room in the old DR city in Søborg. He has covered the light sensor so the automatic light doesn't wake him when he turns over. His wife has thrown him out.
But the bank has given him three months to find a buyer himself.
"Damn, I had it bad. I was on the verge of a divorce and about to break. I was thrown out of the house because, frankly, I couldn’t stand myself. I slept in this room. I was defeated. Someone was coming to take my business. Everything was like a chess clock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. He was doing due diligence and wanted to deceive everything and everyone," says Birger Baylund.
Entrepreneurship in the Blood
Birger Baylund has entrepreneurship in his blood. His father ran a wholesaler selling screws, bolts, and nuts to auto repair shops. As a child, Birger would fill the shelves. It’s the classic story. You become an entrepreneur because your father was.
But not Birger. At least not immediately.
He quickly became a student, cand.merc., and took jobs in large companies. By his mid-forties, he was the Director of the Nordics at Dun & Bradstreet – a large American company. He loved the Americans’ demands for "double-digit growth" and "speed." He enjoyed traveling across Europe and meeting other cultures.
Also, when he was 45, he stopped his international career and became self-employed.
“My father was an entrepreneur, so it’s in my blood. I just didn’t really know it until I turned 45. Now, I can get chills just thinking back to it. I had four kids, two cars, dachshunds, and a villa. But it’s only now that I realize that. At that moment, I was sure of my business,” says Birger Baylund.
Registered in RKI
The idea of Birger Baylund was simple. Only about half of all bad payers in the country were registered in RKI. Therefore, he believed it would be possible to break RKI's monopoly on providing credit information to telecommunications companies, banks, and others with private customers. He jumped in and set up the Debtor Register in his home garage. The idea was simple, but the execution was far from over.
"It’s like starting a real estate business in windows, without houses. You need to have the bad payers in your database. In 2008 – after four years – we had 70% of RKI. And only then did we get our first customer. So for four years, I burned money with very little income,” says Birger Baylund.
Merging with the company
The following years, the Debtor Register would become a significant part of Birger Baylund's life. Several times, cash flow ran out, and Birger had to find money from banks and investors to keep the company afloat. One Friday, in the summer of 2006, everything went wrong. The cash register was empty, the overdraft facility at the bank was overdrawn, and Birger had to pay employee salaries by Tuesday.
"The next step is that my pension plan, my house, and my kids have to go into the pool," as Birger Baylund puts it.
Fortunately, he had cultivated contact with a potential investor, EBH Bank. And that’s why, in the summer of 2006, he’s negotiating with the bank in a small, much too hot meeting room. With his back against the wall, he plays loud games and demands that the deal be signed immediately.
"I’m completely calm in those situations. I think I inherited that from my father. But you’re right: it’s thrilling. It was so exciting that I’ve given talks about that 5-10. About all the little details in the room, the curtains, how the air changed, the temperature. To tapping my lawyer so he knew I wanted something,”
says Birger Baylund about the day he secured 20 million Danish kroner with a frantic rescue. However, the high stakes also meant that Birger gradually nearly fused with the Debtor Register. It erodes, and therefore, Birger now has valuable advice for all the passionate entrepreneurs and career builders. "I took it all personally. It was, in a sense, like an attack on my body, and I wasn’t ready to defend. This is how I think many entrepreneurs feel. They need to learn to separate themselves,” says Birger Baylund.
It was a business psychologist who taught him that when everything looked bleak.
'Birger,' she said. This is you, and this is the debtor register. But that’s not the case – right now, you are one. And you need to separate it, and I need to help you do that." Birger continues: "I realized it was good. And then I worked for a few weeks to figure out who I was and who the debtor register was – that’s one of the best things I’ve ever done for myself."
Luck runs out
In March 2013, however, luck starts running out. The loan of the Debtor Register has landed in Financial Stability, who now want their money. They have also found a buyer, 'the hijacker' from the beginning of the story – the one who wants to buy Birger’s life’s work.
"I’ve often run out of money, but I’ve always managed to keep going," says Birger Baylund.
The bank, however, has given Birger three months to find a buyer, and he manages to get an offer from Bisnode, a Swedish company Birger already knows. At this point, Birger has managed to separate himself from the Debtor Register and regain his cool perspective. He then says the following:
“I called Bisnode in Stockholm and said; the board has reviewed the various offers, and unfortunately, you’re not among the top three we want to move forward with. I’m sorry. I was really playing high stakes there, I had only received offers from them,” says Birger Baylund, laughing: “Luckily, they called back in the afternoon and asked what it would take to get on the list and that they were the only ones we wanted to talk to.”
Three months later, he had sold the Debtor Register and began a new job integrating the Debtor Register into Bisnode. Four years later, the task was complete, and he left Bisnode. Birger had agreed with his wife, with whom he had reconciled, that they would now go to Mallorca to fish and enjoy life.
The movement wins again
'On the way to the travel agency and the fishmonger calls my boss. He says: Birger. Would you like to be the head of all our European countries? I think you'd be good at it. He’s referring back to the good times in Dun & Bradstreet and Europe. When I got home, I went to my wife and said we needed to talk about this. I had promised her that if I got a job where I travel again, we would both agree to it. We agreed on two things. She quits her job and doesn’t have to work anymore. And she can travel with me whenever it suits her,” says Birger Baylund
In September 2017, he started the role he has today, where he is the CEO of Bisnode and head of sales across Europe.
