S2E14: Building Two Industry Leaders - with Victor Henning
40m | Mar 9, 2023In this episode, I talk to Victor Henning, serial entrepreneur, investor, and former advisor to the UK and Dutch governments on technology policy.
Victor went from opening and raising 75000€ for the first student cafe in the town where he did his Bachelor, to building Mendeley, one of the world's leading platforms for scientific research. After his successful exit, he then went on to build the world's best smartphone camera system with Fjorden.
Victor has been nominated “Best European Startup Founder” by Techcrunch and holds investments in more than 15 startups.
In today’s episode, we talk about the following:
- how to identify strong customer pain points and build a business around it
- how to organically acquire tons of customers - in B2B and B2C
- and other core learnings of building leading tech companies
Victor Henning on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/victorhenning
Victor's smartphone camera system Fjorden: fjorden.co
👋 Get in touch with Kilian here: linkedin.com/in/kiliankarrasch
Do you have an innovative idea you would like to validate through market research or rapid prototyping or a validated concept you would like to bring to life (e.g. in form of an MVP)? Then book a free consultation here: http://bit.ly/3Xr0BvG 🚀
Timeline:
0:00 - Introduction
0:48 - Who is Victor Henning
1:25 - What we cover in the episode
1:49 - What made Victor the entrepreneur he is today
5:24 - How Victor founded 2 leading companies and which walls he encountered in the process
9:32 - How to validate and size market potential - and what not to do
16:49 - How to rapidly validate prototypes
21:59 - How to use content-marketing the right way to get vast amounts of customers
25:51 - Challenges in scaling a science platform into a market leader
28:40 - The advantage of keeping your product simple
34:17 - How to artfully deal with thousands of customer complaints
37:43 - Why your entire team needs to understand the customers problems
38:27 - Advice on how to succeed in launching new products and services