Some people think that being super aggressive and speak in war-like metaphors is the way to go, when it comes to showing leadership in a start up. I would suggest it shows more of a profound insecurity that you’re trying to hide by bluster. Trying to hide things is borderline poisonous no matter how or…
Category: Personal
That’s so junior…
Back in the day I had a very experienced direct report who I used as a sounding board for thoughts and ideas to bring forward to executive management. We would meet in my office (even though technically I didn’t have one), and we would go through the arguments, I had thought of making. If I…
RIP Tony Hsieh
Tony Hsieh was one of my startup heroes, and I was saddened to hear that he tragically passed away after suffering injuries in a house fire. 46 years is no age. Tony was involved in a lot of different things, and there were plenty of mind blowing new approaches to business and entrepreneurship to be…
A question of empathy
When you are a parent, your biggest anxieties are always related to your kids. You want them to be healthy, do well, grow and be liked by their surroundings, and when something is off it is just a killing feeling that truly and utterly hurts. The other day my eldest once again experienced a play…
Shitty days
It doesn’t matter if you have a shitty day. We can all have them. I had one as late as yesterday. The important thing is not the shitty day. They can’t be avoided. It is how you pick yourself up again, get back into a positive state of mind and start getting things moving again….
Capturing learnings
One of the things I am trying to do while we work to get our new MedTech startup off the ground is to document my learnings so far. I do that in a mindmap using SimpleMind. Because when taking notes and reflecting on things the easy of speed of getting it down into some sort…
A bit too Fresh
Some months ago I started subscribing to the Hello Fresh meal-kit service because I was puzzled about the international juggernauts foray into a Danish market that I already found quite saturated. Fast forward a few months, and I am still subscribing to the service. Yes, it has it’s kinks and minor mistakes here and there,…
Bye bye, Endomondo
A couple of days ago an old love affair ended, when I deleted the Endomondo fitness app from my phone. For what seems like many years I have been a loyal Endomondo user, and for a period of a couple of years I also subscribed to the product to be able to get customized workout…
Become (sort of) a journalist
A day doesn’t go by without someone deeply questioning the value of higher education. It’s the cost, it’s the hazzle, it’s the time wasted on subjects you never get to use etc. And a day doesn’t go by without young people feeling anxious about making the right choices for their education and subsequent careers. Because…
The problem with OKR
I love OKR’s as a concept. And God knows I have been trying time and time again to make them and associated tracking apps and services work for me and my team. But alas; I have failed every single time. It is not that setting up OKRs is super hard; everybody can define and objective…
What’s in a co-founder?
Not so long ago I met for the second time with a potential co-founder for our MedTech startup. It was a really good and interesting meeting, and the conversation was really good. One of the things we talked about was what it means to be a co-founder of a startup. “What does being a co-founder…
Circle kind of complete
One of the things, others can never take away from you is your past experience(s). They are completely yours. Yours to cherish. Yours to curse. Yours to learn from. Yours to channel into something new. I have often wondered why things happen. Why do you meet the people, you do? Why do you get the…
Success-in-progress
I have a fondness for paradoxes. I find them interesting, intriguing and sometimes even amusing. One of the paradoxes is the one about working agile and lean while at the same time lamenting the lack of progress. Why is it that we often judge something that is work-in-progress as a failure because it’s not the…
Burning the Midnight Oil
“I work all the time.” It is one of the things, you most often hear from entrepreneurs trying to succeed with whatever their venture may be. And while in no way surprising, to me it has always been kind of puzzling. I am a guy who likes to picture things in my mind. And I…
Mistakes are OK
When you venture into something new, you haven’t tried before and/or don’t have the faintest idea of where will end up, you are going to make mistakes. And probably a lot of them. The easy thing to do is not to venture anywhere, in the first place, because by doing nothing, you won’t make any…
A happy note
Yesterday, a long time acquintance sent me a direct Twitter-message that made me really happy. In it he basically stated that it was great to observe from the sidelines the new things, I am involved in, and that to him it looked like, I had found a much better place for myself than was the…
Corona thoughts, part 9
So, we’re back in Covid-19 territory. The numbers are going up in the greater Copenhagen area and as such many have been requested to go back to working from home, not meeting physically etc. It was a pain the last time. And it’s a pain again. But for me a different kind of pain. First…
Mindmapping rules
I have become a big fan of mindmapping. And specially the application SimpleMind Pro for Mac. When you have a lot of ideas, keeping a hold of them can be super tricky. This is exactly where mindmapping comes in handy; with the right application if allows you to structure your thoughts at more or less…
Remember the important ones
Today is the 8 year birthday of my oldest daughter, Laura. Aside from celebrating her it is a good occasion for me as her dad to remember something that I think is absolutely vital: No matter how much and how hard you work on building and succeeding with your startup, and no matter how things…
Towards infinity
There are a lot of things that aren’t exactly rocket science. But space-analogies are nonetheless still pretty powerful in terms of exemplifying things and efforts that may seem out of this world. Back when I was a kid, my biggest dream was to one day to get the opportunity to launch a Saturn V-rocket. You…
Igniting change
When you try to affect change and solve a problem in a new way, you need them to be ready to give up how they have done things in the past. Or get them interested in forming a new habit. For some things it’s easier than with others. If you’re just presenting a more efficient…
A necessary read
While working to create a MedTech startup either from scratch or later trying to get the product to market, John Carreyrou’s book “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup” about the Theranos scandal should be absolutely required reading. The story about Theranos is well documentet by now: Only the lies were bigger…
You’re (likely) not a pro
A couple of weeks ago, I ordered a new pair of shoes. I don’t do that often – it’s kind of one yearly event – and I settled on a pair of ‘Nike By You‘ customized shoes. Not because I wanted to but because they were actually cheaper than some of the other models, I…
Destroy the problem
During the summer I have become involved in a couple of product management communities in order to built network and get insights and inspiration for tools and methods that we can use in our new MedTech startup. Sifting through a couple of discussions in the forums, I came across a discussion on attitudes towards building…
The HelloFresh test
One of the basic common rules for startups is that if what you’re working on is worth doing, you’re bound to have competition (unless you’re operating in one of those rare spaces, where you have spotted something before anyone else, of course). With so many services – especially in the consumer space – feeling more…
Interview more, not less
Hiring for a key role in a new startup is both interesting and frightening. You get the opportunity to meet great people, who have invested time and interest in what you’re going to do, and you really need to make sure you end up with the right one. It can be tempting to just interview…
Do the Prof G Strategy Sprint
Last night at 1.40 AM I wrapped up my participation in the Prof G Strategy Sprint with Professor Scott Galloway, NYU Stern School of Business. The course ended – fittingly – with a session on Life Strategy by the man himself that is some of the most insightful I have heard in a while. The…
Pick up the learnings
A while ago we applied for the summer 2020 batch of Y Combinator with our FIXDIT project. Alas, we didn’t make the cut from the thousands of startups that applied. While that of course is a total bummer, the whole process did allow us to revisit the whole project, look at it with fresh eyes…
Crossing our fingers
A couple of weeks ago we applied (late) for Y Combinator with FIXDIT, our take on making the market work for homeowners and contractors again. I participated in Y Combinators Startup School this winter, and upon graduation, I got an email saying that since we were among the 10% participants in the school that continually…
Work-in-progress
Yesterday at inQvation we were honoured to get a visit from the brand new Incubation Studio team from LEGO Ventures. They are just setting out with some really cool people onboard, and they had asked if they could come and learn from our experiences, and of course they could. We are always willing to share…