Founders-Meeting Titelbild

Founders-Meeting

Founders-Meeting

Von: Helga Osk | SERIOUS.BUSINESS
Jetzt kostenlos hören, ohne Abo

Saisonale Sparangebote | 0,99 € pro Monat für die ersten 3 Monate

Danach 6,99 €/Monat. Bedingungen gelten. Monatlich kündbar.
This is the Founders-Meeting podcast—your Monday morning "snack" to kickstart the week with positivity, innovative thinking, and entrepreneurial drive. Every week, we dive into the minds of founders from around the globe, uncovering the strategies and stories behind their biggest wins and toughest challenges. Whether you're just starting out or scaling to new heights, this podcast is your weekly dose of motivation and insight. Hosted by Helga Osk Hlynsdottir, Spiritual Leader and co-founder of SERIOUS.BUSINESS, with over a decade of experience in building stronger teams, driving business growth, and crafting premium brands. Tune in every Monday for fresh inspiration—subscribe now and get inspired by your new favourite entrepreneurs.Copyright 2026 Helga Osk | SERIOUS.BUSINESS Bildung Management & Leadership Ökonomie
Folgen
  • 38 | Laura / KeyPitt: Told There Was No Founder Seat, She Took the Job Anyway

    38 | Laura / KeyPitt: Told There Was No Founder Seat, She Took the Job Anyway
    Sep 28 2026
    Episode OverviewWhen Laura Katzensteiner joined Keypitt, she asked whether there was room for another founder. The answer was "not currently." She took the job anyway. She had worked out that she adds the most value once a product exists and there are real problems to solve, not at stage zero with nothing but an idea. Today she's co-founder and COO, and she's leading the company's first fundraise.Keypitt was founded in Copenhagen by Karla Pitt Winther, with CTO and co-founder André Bergan. It replaces paper cloakroom tickets with the KeyPass, a reusable digital pass for nightclubs, concert venues and conferences. It sounds simple, but investors can't put the company in a box: it's not quite SaaS, not quite fintech, not quite hospitality. We get into what it took to grow from employee to co-founder, how Laura is preparing to raise DKK 2.5–3M from angels, building tech simple enough for her mother, and why AI is making every brand look the same.🔑 In this episode, we talk about:Asking for a founder seat, hearing "not currently," and growing into the role anywayWhy she didn't want to join a startup at "stage zero"Growing up between two very different parents, and a father who offered to work for free to prove his valueLearning from Karla's pivots from NFC to QR codes and from tablets to phonesBuilding a product that's deliberately "not so high tech" so her mother can use it tooWhy Keypitt doesn't fit neatly into SaaS, fintech, e-commerce or hospitality, and what that means for fundraisingRaising DKK 2.5–3M from angel investors, and why they're looking for "smart money" with payments experienceWhy AI is making every brand look the same, and how to put the human back in🧠 Key TakeawaysJoin where you add the most value, not where it's most glamorous. Laura knew she wouldn't add the most value at the idea stage, so she looked for a startup where her skills would count from day one.Simple beats impressive when your users are everyone. A product used across a whole society has to work for the 70-year-old concertgoer as well as the tech-savvy one.Being hard to categorise is a pitching problem, not a product problem. Investors think in verticals, so if you don't fit one, you first have to convince them you're close enough to talk to.Pitch the vision, not only the proof. Laura noticed she tends to talk about what exists today, while research suggests men pitch what's coming. Founders need both.Raise for brains as much as money. With paying customers already, Keypitt is raising to grow faster and to get strategic help from people who have built bigger things.Let AI build the draft, not the personality. Generate the website or the post, then take the time to add one thing that's unmistakably you.🗣️ Sound Bites"When I joined, I asked whether they were open to having another founder, and the answer I received was not really, or not currently.""Most people will be met with a wardrobe in their life. They have received a paper ticket. Why have we not questioned this?""For the guest, we want to make the experience forgettable. But for the employee who stands in the wardrobe, that's their everyday life."📍 Chapter Highlights00:00 – Cold open01:00 – Welcoming Laura: the software running the cloakroom01:43 – Growing up in Vienna, and a father who offered to work for free04:33 – A rainy boat at Tech BBQ, and asking for a founder seat before day one08:54 – Why Keypitt: the paper ticket nobody questioned10:16 – Learning from Karla's pivots, and why resilience matters most13:02 – High-tech vs. intuitive: building for her mother15:08 – The company that fits no box, and pitching the vision vs. what exists today20:07 – Dead phones, lost tickets, and Karla's origin story23:31 – A last-minute payments partner over Christmas26:11 – Preparing for a first fundraise, and raising DKK 2.5–3M from angels31:49 – "Fundraising is a social game," and raising as a female-founded team37:51 – Expanding abroad, and when the business case works for a venue42:35 – The through line across customers, and backups for guests without a phone44:11 – Proudest moments: a big nightclub launch, and happy wardrobe staff49:56 – Branding to guests and venues at the same time55:17 – Why Denmark, and why AI is making every brand look the same1:02:49 – The first full-time hire, a team of Leos, and "freedom under responsibility"1:10:04 – Where to find Laura and Keypitt, and closing thoughts🔗 Links & ResourcesKeypitt: keypitt.comLaura Katzensteiner on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/laura-katzensteinerKeypitt on Instagram: instagram.com/keypitt_officialKeypitt on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/100185831Keypitt on Facebook: facebook.com/keypitt🏢 Companies / Organisations MentionedKeypitt: Copenhagen startup behind the KeyPass, a reusable digital cloakroom pass for venuesSupervillain: one of Copenhagen's biggest nightclubs and Keypitt's first major customerClue: the period-tracking app whose founder, Ida Tin, ...
    Mehr anzeigen Weniger anzeigen
    1 Std. und 13 Min.
  • 37 | Frederik / Interhuman AI: Building the Machine That Could Replace His Mother's Career

    37 | Frederik / Interhuman AI: Building the Machine That Could Replace His Mother's Career
    Sep 14 2026
    Frederik Sally is trying to teach machines to read the parts of a conversation that never make it into words: the hesitation before an answer, the confidence behind a claim, the nervous energy under a smile. If he and his team succeed, one of the first careers their technology could make obsolete is his own mother's. She has spent her life running a communication consultancy and writing books on how people talk to each other. Frederik tells her as much, and she jokes that he might just put her out of a job. He isn't sure the two things are connected. He suspects it's more coincidence than inheritance. But it's hard to ignore that he also has a grandfather still launching ventures at almost 90 and a biological father who ran one of Denmark's first commercial radio stations. Something in the family clearly likes building things other people said couldn't be built.That instinct led him and two co-founders, Paula Petcu and Line Clemmensen, to found Interhuman AI, a Copenhagen startup building what Frederik calls a "social intelligence layer" for AI. The idea didn't start where it is now. It began as a therapist app, failed to find buyers, and pivoted hard once the founders noticed that companies were far more interested in the underlying technology than in the product itself. That pivot has since raised a €2 million pre-seed round, and Interhuman AI is now betting on sales training and user research as the use cases that prove the technology works before the bigger, harder problems (cultural nuance, healthcare, therapy) are ready to tackle.Whatever stage you're building at, this conversation will land somewhere familiar: being early to a market that isn't ready yet, discovering your actual business by watching what customers ask for instead of what you set out to sell, and using story and branding to buy yourself time while the technology catches up.🔑 In this episode, we talk about:What Interhuman AI's "social intelligence layer" actually reads (tone, hesitation, confidence, body language) and why today's LLMs miss all of itGrowing up in a family of entrepreneurs: a grandfather still starting companies near 90, a mother who built a career teaching communication, and a biological father who ran early commercial radio in DenmarkThe pivot from a failed therapist app to licensing the underlying tech to sales-training and user-research platformsRaising a €2 million pre-seed round, and why deep tech is a harder sell to European investors than American onesHow they collect training data: Creative Commons sources, synthetic data, and recording their own lives, including a rose party, with Meta smart glassesCompeting with hyperscalers like OpenAI and Anthropic and specialists like Hume AI, and why depth beats general intelligence for this problemTurning down an investor who wanted the technology used for defense and lie detectionBuilding the company's ethical guardrails around the EU AI ActA pilot with the Region of Copenhagen helping parents practice hard conversations with kids who have additional needsWhy Frederik thinks a single homemade video did more to open investor doors than any slide deckThe 93%-nonverbal statistic he's been told by his own behavioral scientists to stop quoting🧠 Key TakeawaysSell what the market is asking for, not what you set out to build. Interhuman AI's therapist app flopped, but the underlying technology kept generating inbound interest. That signal, not the original plan, became the business.Being early means testing constantly, not waiting to be proven right. With no playbook to follow, the team treats every week as a chance to pivot, informed by pilots and customer feedback rather than a fixed roadmap.Sometimes speed beats accuracy. Their new "real-time experimental" model trades some precision for instant feedback, on the theory that a rough first read (much like meeting a stranger) can still be useful while a fuller picture builds over the conversation.Draw your ethical line before you need the money. The founders turned down a defense-focused investor before they had funding secured, so there was never a moment where the answer might have been different.Branding can open doors the technology hasn't earned yet. A short, well-made video of signals overlaid on a conversation did more to get early investor meetings than research slides, and the team kept using it for almost two years.People remember the trust a conversation created, not what was said in it. Two years after meeting at a conference, neither Frederik nor Helga can recall their actual conversation, only that it built enough trust to stay in touch, which is itself the thesis Interhuman AI is built on.Specialization can beat scale for narrow, deep problems. Frederik doesn't think general models will out-compete focused ones on things like cultural nuance and personal baseline, because that depth isn't what the big labs are optimizing for.A mismatched skill set among co-founders can be the real fundraising asset....
    Mehr anzeigen Weniger anzeigen
    54 Min.
  • 36 | Aurore / Goodvest: Why Scaling Feels Like Grieving

    36 | Aurore / Goodvest: Why Scaling Feels Like Grieving
    Aug 31 2026
    Aurore Pinon-Jacques has built and let go of things twice over. She shut down her first company after a co-founder partnership fell apart. Four years into Goodvest, she stepped back from the CMO title she'd held since day one. And in between, she had to grieve an entire era of the company itself — the 10-person "family" that a €12M Series B and a 40-person team have now replaced. This episode is about what that letting go actually costs a founder, and what it makes possible.Aurore is co-founder of Goodvest, a French sustainable investment platform reimagining wealth management for people who want their money to do good, not just grow — now with a sharpened focus on founders who've exited or are about to. Her path there wasn't a straight line: a childhood dream of becoming a war journalist, a detour into luxury marketing, then a first company — sustainable, recycled-fiber tights — built and lost alongside a close friend. Every step forward came with something she had to release.Whatever stage you're at as a founder, this conversation will feel familiar: the version of your company you're currently grieving, and the one you haven't grieved yet.🔑 In this episode, we talk about:Why "Goodvest" trips up almost every non-native English speaker (and how Aurore turned that into an icebreaker)What Goodvest actually does, and why it's now built specifically for exited and exiting foundersGrowing up wanting to be a war journalist, then chasing the glamour of luxury marketingFounding — and shutting down — her first company, a sustainable fashion label using recycled fibersWhat she learned about mixing friendship with business after her first co-founder splitRunning two companies and planning a wedding at the same timeHow Goodvest's three co-founders handle conflict, and the compatibility questionnaire she wishes she'd used the first timeScaling from a 10-person "family" to a 40-person team after a €12M Series B — and grieving what got left behindRecruiting, bias, and onboarding once you're past the early "generalists who can do five things" stageWhy she stepped back from her CMO role to write a graphic novel about sustainable financeWhy branding gets more valuable, not less, in the age of AIThe real problem Goodvest exists to solve, and why sustainable investing is a rational bet, not just an ethical one🧠 Key Takeaways:Shared vision isn't enough. Compatibility in values and working style matters just as much as agreeing on the mission — and a simple written questionnaire can surface a mismatch before it costs you a company.Similarity between co-founders is its own risk. When communication feels effortless, you stop working at it. Real differences force you to build transparency deliberately, from day one.Odd numbers of co-founders break ties. Two people can only push and pull; three (or four) can actually resolve a disagreement.Shutting a company down isn't failure — it's an experience. Giving yourself a hard deadline (Aurore gave hers a year) protects you from staying in a broken partnership on hope alone.Scaling means grieving what worked before. The intimacy of a small founding "family" has to be let go, on purpose, for the company to grow past it.Your value shifts from doing the work to building what outlasts you. Legacy — not daily tasks — is what lets a founder step back and start something new.Recruiting bias is real and unconscious. We default to people who feel familiar — same background, same communication style. Naming that bias is step one to hiring well, not just comfortably.AI raises the floor on brands, which raises the ceiling on authenticity. When anyone can generate a "clean" brand, the human, personal ones become the ones people actually choose.🗣️ Sound Bites:"Once you tell yourself my value is not in my everyday tasks anymore, my value is in what I gave as a legacy, you can move on and do other projects.""It's not sufficient to share the same vision. It's not sufficient to have good communication. You also have to be compatible on some levels.""You can't do lazy branding with AI. People are going to give value to that.""In let's say 10, 20 or 30 years, do you think you will be happy that you invested in oil companies?""The more personal an experience, the more universal it becomes."📍 Chapter Highlights:00:04 – Kicking off, and getting "Goodvest" pronounced correctly04:55 – What Goodvest does, and its 2026 focus on exited/exiting founders06:24 – The emotional weight of an exit, and why founders need somewhere to turn09:51 – Childhood dreams of becoming a war journalist11:04 – The pivot into luxury marketing, and The Devil Wears Prada pull of it14:02 – Why the luxury job stopped fitting her values14:34 – Founding her first company: recycled-fiber sustainable tights15:38 – The co-founder conflict that ended it, and the hard lesson on friendship + business16:58 – Why being too similar to a co-founder is its own risk18:41 – Running two ...
    Mehr anzeigen Weniger anzeigen
    54 Min.
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
Noch keine Rezensionen vorhanden