In a meeting room overlooking the construction cranes at Slussen, two people sit with a shared passion for changing the way Stockholmers think about offices: Patrik Åström and Eric Spongberg.
Our CEO Patrik – often seen with his Jack Russell terrier Gemma close at his heels – considers the mountains around Deià in Mallorca his true home on Earth. Visiting hotels is both a favorite pastime and a field where he’s spent most of his long career.
Our other co-founder, Eric, is Helio’s Chief Commercial Officer, overseeing product development, sales, and expansion. Ask Eric anything about the great outdoors and sports in combination – ski touring in the backcountry, skating on glassy black ice, surfskiing in stormy seas, mountain biking in Åre (or his latest favorite restaurant!) – and you’ll likely be stuck in conversation for a while.
🌱 It all started with a seed in the Swiss Alps
The story of Helio begins in a monastery village high in the Swiss Alps, known for receiving the deepest snowfalls in the region. A few years earlier, Eric and a group of ski friends had made a dream reality by opening a hotel in Engelberg. The plan was as simple as it was naïve: to run a ski lodge for true mountain nerds (just like themselves) who lived for steep lines and deep powder.
Under the name Ski Lodge Engelberg, the place quickly grew and started attracting skiers from all over the world, drawn by the growing buzz around the little village with massive off-piste terrain.
One of the regular guests was Patrik – a hospitality veteran who had made a career in some of Europe’s leading hotel groups, and a devoted skier himself. A few years after Eric and Patrik first crossed paths in Engelberg (with Patrik offering no shortage of constructive suggestions about hotel operations), he became part of the team behind Ski Lodge Engelberg.
The lodge had already become the kind of meeting place they dreamed of, but with Patrik on the board, the backstage got a whole lot more structured too.
It was somewhere on a ski lift during those powder-filled days in Engelberg that the idea for their next joint project, Helio, began to take shape.
“Hotels and restaurants live and die by their guest experience – but somehow offices still get away with being uniform and dull. Why does it have to be that way?”
From “have to go to the office” to “want to go to the office”
Patrik had long observed how traditional office spaces drained people of energy the moment they walked in.
“At the time, most office environments were a bleak sight of grey carpets, white laminate desks, and cold LED lighting. Spaces that didn’t exactly spark inspiration – but realistically, most people had no choice but to show up if they wanted to keep their job,” he says.
Eric adds:
“But with more freelancers, remote teams, and companies competing for talent, something shifted. Suddenly, the questions became: ‘Do I actually want to be in this office?’ or ‘Will this space help me attract the best people?’ Or even, ‘My whole team is in Amsterdam – but I still want to feel part of something during the workday.’”
What started as a casual conversation on a chairlift eventually led to the founding of Helio in 2017.
The idea was simple: take the best of Ski Lodge Engelberg – the authenticity, the sense of community, the meeting place – combine it with Patrik’s deep hotel experience, and see what would happen if you built an office out of it.
The Members Create Helio
Today, Helio has grown into eight offices and coworking spaces across Stockholm, home to thousands of members working with everything from cars to broadband, kombucha to AI agents, SaaS products to angel investing – and a thousand things in between.
It’s that carefully curated mix of exciting people and companies that makes Helio a place to build your network and learn something you’d never come across in a typical office.
Eric and Patrik describe it as a mix of culture, knowledge, and community.
“It doesn’t matter how good the interior design is if our members don’t truly feel at home at Helio,” says Eric. “We’re total hospitality nerds – and our entire team trains together several times a year on how to nurture and build the Helio culture with our members.”
The Future: Dare to Experiment
After a period of expansion, Helio is now taking a pause in its growth journey for the first time since 2020.
“We’ve now completed the plan we set during the pandemic,” says Patrik. “But we’re continuing to grow – just in other areas than opening new locations.”
Members often point to the Community Managers and Site Managers as key to the special atmosphere that defines Helio.
“I’m incredibly proud of our team and how they work every day to shape what makes Helio unique,” Patrik explains. “One of our core values is to dare to experiment. So don’t expect us to stay quiet for long – new ideas are already brewing.”
Helio Is Just Getting Started
When we ask Eric about his proudest moment, he laughs and says:
“The fact that so much of what we talked about on that ski lift all those years ago actually became reality. Helio has become a living, breathing place where exciting companies grow, where people find new collaborations, their first client or investor – and sometimes even friends for life. When coworking works at its best, it’s like magic.”
Patrik adds:
“It feels like we’re only getting started. We’re evolving every day, and our best ideas always come from our members. Like our new studio for photography, video, streaming, and podcasting – it all started with a member suggestion, and now it’s (almost) here. But that’s just one of many. There are still a thousand things we want to test and improve. What the office will be in the future – no one really knows. And that’s exactly what makes it so exciting.”
Quick Facts:
Eric Spongberg, Chief Commercial Officer
Lives: Nacka (close to the mountain bike trails)
Favorite customer experience: Skiing Galtiberg in Engelberg – one of the Alps’ longest runs, starting on a glacier at 3,000 meters and ending 2,000 vertical meters later on a golf course.
Patrik Åström, CEO
Lives: Stockholm
Favorite customer experience: An unforgettable evening at Arzak in San Sebastian. It started with champagne and ended in a group hug in the kitchen with father-and-daughter chefs Juan Mari and Elena.
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