Interview with Cascade Drives new COO Edward Källrot

The Cascade Drives team is expanding! Meet our newest addition, Edward Källrot. Edward joined us a few months ago as Chief Operations Officer. Edward is bringing years of industry experience and is ready for his next challenge. We discuss Edward’s journey thus far, and his ambitions for the future. 

What attracted you to the role of COO at Cascade Drives? 

The challenge! The biggest challenge and thrill is to be part of the build-up of a startup company. I have a long working history in the business and have previous experience working in the build-up of a company. Cascade Drives is the earliest (in a company’s formation) I’ve started. That’s really challenging and also inspiring! I believe in this company and the product, otherwise, I wouldn’t have jumped on. 

How did your previous experiences prepare you for the role at Cascade Drives? 

Well, I’ve worked previously for bigger companies so I have had similar experiences but not identical. And as I mentioned, I've been part of the buildup in previous companies and have experience in organisation and production. The difference is this was for a consulting company delivering services from technical laboratories, not a company producing goods like Cascade Drives. Now I get the opportunity to start all over again and apply what I’ve learned previously. So with Cascade Drives, I get the chance to bring everything I’ve learnt along the way.

Do you think this may be the most challenging role that you've done so far? 

It might be! Everything in this job is down to whether the business is going as planned. If everything goes as foreseen, my role will be to upscale the production, enormously. And of course, that will be a challenge and a thrill to do. 

What do you hope to achieve in this position? 

Upscaling production and at the same time ensuring quality, are my key priorities. I mean, a key challenge when you're upscaling is to maintain quality. We have been delivering prototypes early in the development chain. But when you go to full-scale production, a lot of new challenges come up. 

What would you like to see Cascade Drives achieve in the next five years? 

Our main goal is to break through with customers and that will lead us to upscale our production to the volumes we are hoping for. 

Why did you choose to get into this industry? 

It’s an interesting and challenging business. I’m particularly interested in highly technical fields and so to have the opportunity to work at a technical company like Cascade Drives is a dream role. Also not specific to this industry but working with people and developing the staff and the organisation of the company.

What are the main challenges your industry faces today? 

Efficiency! The main driver for Cascade Drives and developing our solution is that it’s much more efficient. The old systems are not effective and they waste a lot of energy. Most equipment, so far, has been powered by petrol engines or combustion engines, when everything goes electric, you really, really need to work more on the efficiency side. That's our main driver and we are competing a lot with the hydraulic systems, for example in different applications where we have much better efficiency. We have a more expensive product but the positive side is that it is much more efficient. 

An important customer area for us is heavy-duty vehicles. The traditional steering systems are mostly hydraulic based which is not very efficient. When you go electric, you need to save everything you can to extend the range of the vehicle. 

How can Cascade Drives help to overcome these challenges? 

Our products are helping to overcome these challenges around efficiency. From our point of view, we are providing a product that solves our customer's existing problems. By meeting the demand that companies are asking for - in applications compatible with our units, we can enable greater efficiencies. 

What is your favourite project or your greatest achievement so far? 

That’s a hard question. I don’t have a specific answer, but I would say I’ve enjoyed the journey so far! I’ve had the possibility, during my professional life, to work on many projects and company build-ups. Before I came to Cascade Drives, I spent 20 years working at the company AVL. I had several different roles within that company, and these experiences more or less made me what I am today. So I wouldn’t like to say that a single point has been my greatest achievement. During my career, I’ve gained a lot of hands-on experience and insight from spending many years at one company. This has given me a lot of experience to bring to Cascade Drives and that will be my biggest contribution to make. 

Is there something unique or surprising about you that readers would be interested to know? 

I’m a hobby farmer. About 2 years ago, I purchased a 200-year-old farm, 40 km north of Stockholm. I operate the farm myself with the help of my kids. Currently, on the farm, I’m trying out sheep. If that goes well I will get bees and chickens. The aim is to produce products like honey and eggs for local distribution. 

My whole life I’ve spent so much time on more technical stuff. I have a workshop where I work on racing cars with friends, and now the workshop is more geared towards the farm. Farm life is an opportunity to have a different type of lifestyle, I can go and have a morning swim with the children if I want before going to work. It also gives my children the chance to gain experience by doing something totally different. It’s a change from the work I’ve done my whole life but also as I have a technical background, I can apply the skills I have accumulated throughout my career to operate the farm. 

I like to try new things and challenge myself. In the future, in 10 years or so I can say that I tried to be a farmer, and maybe it didn't work out or it’s the best thing ever - let's see! 

So far, what has been more challenging Cascade Drives or working on the farm? 

No comment! No, they are both challenging in their own ways, of course, work is my main focus. As you can see, I love challenges. That is the main way you develop yourself. Staying in your comfort zone makes it hard to grow yourself. That is one of the most inspiring things about becoming a manager- you don't only develop yourself, you get to help other people develop. 

One of the things I'm looking forward to at Cascade Drives is that to achieve our wider goal of increasing production, we need to develop our existing team and hire more people. I've developed myself over the years, but it gets tougher and tougher to learn more. The more experience you have the more you can utilise it. Being a manager that means helping others. The most inspiring thing is to work with people that need a little bit of a boost and challenge them to grow. 

The challenging and thrilling part is creating a bigger movement of people all working together to achieve the same goal and hopefully have fun at the same time!