"Honestly. It's really cool that we've got some old folks on board." The year is 2016, and there's a board meeting at Soundboks. Around the table sit the founders and parts of the management team in the young Danish startup. The one referred to as the old man on board is Tue Mantoni. He is 41 years old, and he has just stepped down as CEO at B&O. He feels anything but old.
BARONS meets Tue Mantoni in Charlottenlund on the afternoon of that Monday in August when the children start school again. He doesn't look like an old chairman in his shorts and with his slightly boyish appearance. He begins to talk about his day.
"Today was the children's first day of school. Tine, my wife, had gone to work, so I got up with the kids, cycled to school with them, and back home while listening to a podcast. Then I've had a couple of phone meetings and a single meeting this morning. At 3 PM, I have to go cycling for two hours, and then I have a lot to read tonight because I have three big board meetings this week," he says, looking like someone who appreciates the day.
Young B&O Director
Tue Mantoni enjoys managing his day. He calls himself a workaholic, and he works many hours. But he is the one who decides over the day. It hasn't always been like that.
Most people know Tue Mantoni as a young, up-and-coming CEO for B&O. He was only 36 years old when he took the position. The reality, however, was that B&O was not his first job as the top executive. Already at the age of 28, he became director at the motorcycle company Triumph in England. Two years later, he became CEO at the same place.
"When you are CEO, your day is just locked in. Many believe in quality time, but I also believe that the amount of time with your family is important. That you can be there when needed, and not only when it fits into the company's financial calendar," he says.
It is precisely this flexibility that Tue Mantoni now has, using his experience from large companies as an investor and chairman in a number of startup companies and as chairman of the state's financing fund, Vækstfonden.
People Are Important
In 2003, Tue Mantoni is well on his way to a career in the consulting world. He has studied the nerdy cand.merc. in mathematics and got a job at McKinsey. If he sticks with it, he's on the fast track to the title of senior partner and a lot of money in the bank.
But then Tue Mantoni meets a person who changes his life path. The man's name is John Bloor. John Bloor was born and raised in the Midlands of England. His father was a coal miner, and due to health problems, John had to leave school at 15. He apprenticed as a craftsman, quickly started his own business, and built houses before he was 20. The rest is a kind of history, and John Bloor is today one of the richest people in England.
And he owns Triumph Motorcycles, where the young Tue Mantoni has completed a McKinsey project. John Bloor asks him if he wants to be the commercial director, and he says yes to what he himself calls "my first real job." Here, Tue Mantoni meets for the first time real employees who are not ultra-ambitious and for whom the job is not the primary thing in life.
"John always said that knowing people is the most important thing. I came there in a shirt and tie and thought: 'What's this about, as long as they're sharp and good at PowerPoint.' Then one day we had to recruit someone, and we had two candidates who were equally good. Then he said: 'We'll take him because his father is a farmer. Farmers get up early in the morning 365 days a year, and they work hard in the summer and save for the winter. It's good to be raised by a farmer.' And it was interesting because I had never thought about that. I looked more at people's CVs. It's important, but the person behind it is often more important," says Tue Mantoni today.
When you ask Tue Mantoni how he selects the companies he invests in, the first thing he says is:
"I look at what kind of people they are. It always takes quite a long time from when we start talking until we actually start working together. With Soundboks, it took six months or something like that. I like to get to know people – that I think they are skilled and pleasant. I want to feel like I'm looking forward to the meetings," he says.
Scratches in the Paint
In 2012, Tue Mantoni returns home to Denmark. He has agreed to become the CEO of B&O, a company that is one of the most Danish. Beautiful design, high quality.
It's a golden bird returning home. In an interview with Børsen in 2012, journalist Rune Skyum-Nielsen calls him: "The sky-stormer who contributed significantly to tripling Triumph's revenue during his eight years with the English motorcycle brand." In the interview, he also says that he can triple B&O's revenue – now in just five years.
That confidence gives plenty of critical coverage of Tue Mantoni during his years as the top executive at B&O.
"We promised too much, and we didn't deliver what we should have," he states today.
However, he believes there are two stories. The press's and the internal one.
"There is also another story about how we reduced a lot of complexity, modernized the products and self-perception, and thus ensured that the company survived at a time when things had looked bleak for several years. When I visit B&O today, several colleagues say that if it weren't for the decisions we made while I was in charge, we wouldn't be here today. We did a lot of things where the impact wasn't so obvious to outsiders in the short term, but which in hindsight were clearly necessary and right," he continues.
Tue Mantoni himself says that he is glad he got the scratches in the paint.
"It's very healthy to learn that you can't walk on water. It has probably been very good for my ego, I think. I don't even dare to think about what would have happened if it had gone fantastically well at B&O. It would have been good for the company, but I'm not sure it would have been good for me," he says with a smile and quotes the stoic philosophy: "Adversity only knocks you down if you've been seduced by prosperity."
A Different Chairman
Tue Mantoni is very clear when he says that he will never be CEO of a large company again. Today, he is an investor and on the board of Joe & the Juice, GUBI, Stine Goya, Lakrids by Johan Bülow, and Soundboks. In addition, he tries to take social responsibility as chairman of Vækstfonden and AM Hub, a Danish cluster of companies that, among other things, work with 3D printing. Most recently, he has become an author with the book Samfundskontrakten, in which he argues that companies and society are deeply dependent on each other.
"It's really interesting that a pharmaceutical company is measured by its stock price instead of the number of lives it has saved. If you told the CEO of a pharmaceutical company that their salary depends on the stock price AND the number of lives the company has saved, then you would start making completely different decisions. Once we've paid our development costs, we should go to Africa and save 50 million people," says Tue Mantoni as an example of the matter.
That's also what he tries to live out in his own investments. He invests in purpose-driven companies that can also become a good business.
Therefore, he is also a very different member of the boards he sits on. He is far from the one who just comes to meetings, reads the papers, and shares his experiences.
"Some people ask me if it's not a bit early to 'just' have a board career. But I don't have a classic board career. In some of the companies, I am very hands-on. In Soundboks, for example, I participate directly in design workshops. Then I draw on experience from Triumph, which has some similarities. Board work has really changed a lot. Companies develop so quickly that if you only come to board meetings, so much has happened since last time that management has to spend all their time updating the board," he says about his approach to board work.
A Little Regret
Tue Mantoni has tried a bit of everything. He has been a CEO with lots of people under him – in good times and bad. He has tried life as an investor and board member. However, there is one thing he regrets not having ventured into.
"I regret a little that I never started my own business. There is really a drive in having your own project. I would recommend all young people: 'Start your own business. It can just be making a cool t-shirt and marketing it on TikTok. It may not become a big business, but then you learn entrepreneurship, and it would have made me a better leader," he says and adds: "But it's not too late yet."
And no. Even though the young management team thought it was cool to get an old man on board, it's not too late to jump into the entrepreneurial life when you slowly start getting gray hair. The average age for new entrepreneurs in Denmark is 41 years.
Tue Mantoni in The Consultant
MAN IN THE SHIRT "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood" - quote Theodore Roosevelt in Paris, 1910. In the portrait series "Man in the Shirt," BARONS meets business people who have put themselves in play and at risk. Where do they find courage? What is the most important thing they have learned along the way? And what can the rest of us learn from them?
