TwentyThree Summit 2025 Interview: Niklas Hagen, CEO at Hive Streaming

Nicholas, how are you doing? Very well, thank you. It's been two amazing days here at TwentyThree Summit. Yes, and you're about to step on stage, right? Yeah, in a couple of minutes. In a couple of minutes. So, thank you so much for making the time. And first, I would like to ask you to briefly introduce yourself, actually. A bit of your journey, also with Hive Streaming. So, what have you guys been up to? Yeah, my name is Nicholas Hogan. I'm the CEO of Hive Streaming. It was a company that was founded already back in 2007 as a research project, like a collaboration between the Royal School of Engineering and some business initiatives in Stockholm. So, the first seven, eight years was mainly about finding a solution to a very, very complex problem on how to actually be able to deliver high-quality video to every single employee inside of offices with a very constrained network. So, it was a peer-to-peer based solution, very cutting edge, software only. At first, it was hard to get the idea out, but after a while, companies seemed to really understand that this was a way to make video work. Because in 2006, I think, Google bought YouTube and video became the big thing. And we realized that if something is big for the consumer, it's going to happen in the big enterprise as well. So, we took a big bet on that and realized that there was going to be problems distributing that video inside of those corporate networks. So, in the beginning, it was very, very technical, very low-level infrastructural products in that sense. Yeah. So, you've been talking about the engineering and the tech aspect of it. And Hive Streaming has pioneered solutions that help organizations deliver video at scale without this network disruption, right? That is a big problem. So, how do you see the role of video evolving in large enterprises, especially as hybrid work develops and there's more employee engagement problem happening in this type of setup? Great question. I love that you asked that question. Because, I mean, it took off really big for us and it actually started a lot in the U.S. I think the Americans were even earlier adopters of wanting to stand up on stage and tell the employees in a human, rich way where they're going in times of massive change. So, leaders wanted to reach out to the employees. And that's the problem we solved. But even when we were growing really fast, we thought it was really important to keep innovating. Yeah. Infrastructure is solved. There's more problems to be solved than we were in a unique position to solve them. So, we wanted to not just make the video come through without crashing the network. We wanted to maximize the quality and the resolution. And after that, we realized that we need to provide actionable insights so that companies can learn from communication, not just the message. Because, I mean, strategic communication is not only about crafting a great message. It's just as much about how you deliver that. Both the performance of the speaker, but also the resolution and the quality. And did it land? Did people understand the message? Did they agree with the message? Those kind of things are really important in times of massive change when you want to make a big organization change, adapt in an agile manner. It's really hard. It's like turning an oil tanker in a narrow strait. But if you learn from how your communication lands, then you can actually improve for the next big town hall and really get some impact out of that communication. That's why our vision now is to maximize the impact of strategic communication or internal live video communication. So, grown from the technology up to the video experience up to actionable insights. Yeah. And you quickly touched upon that. But what is the importance of building video-driven organizations nowadays? And how can companies like Hive Streaming and TwentyThree support that? Yeah. And I love that this is the theme of this summit, that, you know, the human side of digital. Because I think Thomas said in his keynote, like, we made everything more efficient by digitizing everything. But in the process, we removed the human out of the picture. I love that way of thinking of it. And video is a very human, very rich, very human mode of communication. And so, and to make people want, I usually say that this, you know, people love progress, but they hate change. So, change is uncomfortable. Progress, everyone, yeah, we made progress. But, you know, there is no progress without change. Of course. And that's the most, you know, powerful medium, media to make people want to change. And every company needs to change. So, that would be my take on it. This year's theme of the TwentyThree Summit is the human side of digital. What does that mean to you? I think our brain is evolved to capture fake. You know, in this early age of humanity, 200,000 years ago, if someone was lying, if someone was saying something untruthful, that could be really, really dangerous. And therefore, with the age of AI-generated content and a lot of text, I mean, we are super good at capturing whether someone is honest or authentic. So, therefore, I think video has that role to, you know, gather people and connect people. Because without, and it has to be high resolution. I usually say you need to see the thin lines next to a person's eyes. To believe what they're saying. So, video is uniquely powerful, but it has to be executed really, really well for that to happen. But I think it has a role to play. If you want to align people around something, then video is uniquely powerful. Thank you so much, Niklas. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.