Introduction
Two long-standing professional relationships have shaped how Johan Styren built out Dilanti Media’s leadership team, both formed years before the company existed.
A Founding Partnership with Valentin Alsen
Styren co-founded Dilanti Media in January 2018 with Valentin Alsen, former head of SEO at Catena Media, pairing Styren’s operator-side acquisition experience with Alsen’s technical SEO expertise.
This kind of complementary co-founder pairing is common in early-stage companies, though it tends to work best when each founder already has credibility in their respective domain before the company begins, allowing decisions in each area to be made with clear authority.
A Long-Running Collaboration with Jarl Moden
Styren also continued working with Jarl Moden, whom he first worked alongside at LeoVegas and who now serves as Dilanti Media’s Chief Product Officer. The relationship predates Dilanti Media and reflects a broader pattern in how Styren has approached hiring: prioritizing colleagues he had already worked with under pressure, rather than hiring solely on the strength of a résumé.
Bringing Moden into Dilanti Media’s leadership extended a working relationship that had already been tested at LeoVegas a factor that can reduce the time needed to build working trust in a young company’s early years.
How This Shapes Dilanti’s Structure
That approach is reflected in how Dilanti Media is structured. Rather than centralizing every strategic decision, Styren has built a leadership team that includes CFO Neville Pullicino, appointed in 2020 to strengthen financial oversight, alongside leaders responsible for SEO, product, and operator-side acquisition. The aim is for major decisions to be informed by domain expertise in each function rather than a single generalist perspective.
Balancing Trusted Relationships with Outside Expertise
Dilanti Media has also brought in outside expertise where needed: the appointment of Neville Pullicino as CFO in 2020 added specialized financial leadership from outside the founding circle as the company grew. Styren has described this as a continuing balance between relationships tested over time and deliberate outside hires, one he says he reassesses with each senior appointment.
Conclusion
Styren has pointed to this distributed leadership structure combined with genuine domain authority in each function as a deliberate part of how Dilanti Media has scaled its leadership alongside its growth.
