Claes J M Loberg (21 January 1970 - 15 June 2023) was a Swedish born Australian technology entrepreneur and designer who founded the music streaming and downloading service

Guvera Guvera is a music technology company and entertainment streaming service, focusing on music technology development, access to global streaming rights, and a legacy music services business model. Guvera was founded in 2008 by Claes Loberg. Aft ...

. in 2008, and Zero Party Deep Data Platform, Bounty Media in 2019, funded by

SOSV SOSV is an American venture capital firm that provides pre-seed, seed, Series A and later stage funding to deep tech startups that join its startup development programs, which are located in New York City, Newark, New Jersey, and San Francisco. ...

in Singapore. In June 2023, Loberg died from a sudden

aortic dissection Aortic dissection (AD) occurs when an injury to the innermost layer of the aorta allows blood to flow between the layers of the aortic wall, forcing the layers apart. In most cases, this is associated with a sudden onset of agonizing ches ...

Early life and education

Loberg was born in Sweden on January 21, 1970 and grew up in

Woolgoolga Woolgoolga is a town on the Mid North Coast of New South Wales, Australia. It is on the Pacific Highway, approximately 550 km north of Sydney and 365 km south of Brisbane. The closest city to Woolgoolga is Coffs Harbour, which lies 24 ...

, New South Wales and attended Woolgoolga High School. He was educated in fine arts at

Lund University Lund University () is a Public university, public research university in Sweden and one of Northern Europe's oldest universities. The university is located in the city of Lund in the Swedish province of Scania. The university was officially foun ...

Sweden, Business & Leadership at

London Business School London Business School (LBS) is a business school and a constituent college of the federal University of London. LBS was founded in 1964 and awards post-graduate degrees (Master's degree, Master's degrees in management and finance, Master of B ...

United Kingdom, and International Business at the Graduate school of business at

QUT The Queensland University of Technology (QUT) is a public research university located in the city of Brisbane in Queensland, Australia. It has two major campuses, a modern city campus in Gardens Point and a historical campus in Kelvin Grove. ...

Career

In 1994, Loberg founded his first company, Hyro.com, which was listed on the

Australian Stock Exchange Australian Securities Exchange Ltd (ASX) is an Australian public company that operates Australia's primary securities exchange, the Australian Securities Exchange (sometimes referred to outside of Australia as, or confused within Australia as, ...

(ASX:HYO) and ranked as one of the biggest IT and web development companies in Australia, with offices both domestically and in China and Thailand. Loberg was one of the founding team of Branded Content Marketing Association (BCMA) in London in 2004, assisting with partners in Australia and the USA. BCMA was dedicated to business-related research, specifically the concept of advertiser brands distributing versus disrupting content. Loberg founded Guvera in 2008 with colleague Brad Christiansen. In 2010, Guvera was launched as an online MP3 site. Loberg and his co-founders helped raise an initial $20 million investment for Guvera through private equity firm AMMA. Guvera was ranked by

Billboard Magazine ''Billboard'' (stylized in lowercase since 2013) is an American music and entertainment magazine published weekly by Penske Media Corporation. The magazine provides music charts, news, video, opinion, reviews, events and styles related to th ...

as one of the best digital music start-ups of 2010. Loberg was listed as

Ernst & Young EY, previously known as Ernst & Young, is a multinational corporation, multinational professional services partnership, network based in London, United Kingdom. Along with Deloitte, KPMG and PwC, it is one of the Big Four accounting firms, Big F ...

’s Entrepreneur of the Year in 2011, after winning the Technology category in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

. In 2021, in was reported that Loberg had also co-founded the Bounty Media Zero Party Deep Data platform with Jake Denney in Singapore in 2019, after securing funding from venture capital company

Guvera

In 2008 Loberg, Brad Christiansen set up Guvera Limited in Robina, Australia. In January 2010, the company launched its legal music streaming and download service

. In July 2016, it was reported that Loberg would become CEO. Guvera, acquired Blinkbox Music from UK retail chain Tesco in January 2015. Then Blinkbox was closed six months later as reported in BRW Australia. Guvera, launched in India in 2014, at an event in Mumbai as reported in Billboard. As of May 2017, Guvera has shut down all operations across all markets.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Loberg, Claes 1970 births 2023 deaths Swedish emigrants to Australia Swedish businesspeople Australian businesspeople Australian company founders Lund University alumni Alumni of London Business School Queensland University of Technology alumni Australian people of Swedish descent