Today Startup Grind Copenhagen was held for the first time. The event, with an intimate 45 participants, had a up-close-and-personal feel to it. This might have been aided buy being held at Northcap‘s facilities, which are nice and great, but probably not used to having so many people in them. But that only raised the intimacy and networking factor.
The Startup Grind concept is simple: have an “on stage” interview with a successful entrepreneur. For this first time event the interviewee was Thomas Madsen-Mygdal, known from amongst other Podio.
He was interviewed by Michel Riebel Boesen, who got to ask a large variety of questions, about things that you usually don’t hear on a normal stage.
The whole interview was filmed, which is part of the concept, and will be available for viewing later on the international Startup Grind website. But in the meanwhile, some tidbits from the interview:
It all started with a focus on the young Thomas Madsen-Mygdal, who told many interesting stories, such as how he ended up being DJ at hockey matches, and running a pirate radio station in his youth.
“Running pirate radio was fun – until it was sanctioned by the principal and was about delivering a tape every week to his office. Then it become institutional, too boring, and we quit.”
The talk focused for a short while on why he was in Copenhagen, and not in Silicon Valley or Berlin, given his long past and achievments.
“Copenhagen is an amazing city to live in.”
Was one of the answers there, met by an applause.
On why Copenhagen is missing from the top 10 lists of startup cities when Stockholm and Helsinki are there?
“The nordics rock! We are afraid of the germans but actually produce more interesting stuff and are only 25 millions. We beat Germany and Britain. We just need to get together.”
One of the most interesting questions was about the .com bubble, and his experiences and lessons from that time. He told some truly amazing stories, but concluded at the end:
“We came in naked, we came out naked. We just fucked the internet for two to three years.”
Of course Podio was a subject as well, where he started out by saying that
“It was about five co-founders building something bigger then themselves. It would not have been if it where not for these five people, and if it had not been for the first 30 employees we had.”
“Our vision was to change the way people work, make it more transparent.”
He also dropped some general advices and lessons, such as:
“You cannot both play and execute. Either you are in one mode or another.”
We look forward to the next Startup Grind Copenhagen, and getting to know another entrepreneur in depth.
