Category: Startup life

I am super excited to announce that I am going to be a speaker at the Asian Leadership Conference in Seoul! I am very grateful for the opportunity that was provided by Andrew Ngui and the MIT Bootcamp community. The conference brings global leaders and minds together to discuss issues that affect people in Asia. Together with Sungwon Yang and Ning Shirakawa, we will be sharing personal stories and best practice frameworks on entrepreneurship. The theme is “Globalization in crisis – Navigating the World with New Opportunities”, and I sincerely hope that we can inspire the people and help build a new strong generation on entrepreneurs, dreamers and doers in SK.

More details about the event can be found here: http://www.alcchosun.com/ – See you in SK peeps!

After traveling 21 months as a digital nomad in 30+ countries on five different continents, I am now returning back to Copenhagen. Looking forward to reconnecting with my family and friends in Denmark and welcoming overseas friends to Denmark!

It has been an amazing journey, I want to say thanks to all the wonderful people I have met on my way. Thank you for inspiring me, thank you for being there for me, thank you for making me a better person.

I tried to jot down some key lessons from my travels:

• Passport privilege: Being able to travel, live and work almost anywhere in the world is truly a gift. It is something you might take for granted until you meet someone who cannot travel as freely as you. I am especially thinking of my friends in Bangladesh. I spent a couple of months in Bangladesh in 2016, and I had this discussion with my Bangladeshi friends. With a Danish passport, I can travel to 156 countries without a visa, whereas a Bangladeshi passport grants travel visa-free to 35 countries. Freedom of mobility is limited to the passport. As grateful I am for the opportunity to travel, as frustrated I am for the ones who do not have the same possibilities.
  
• Minimalistic lifestyle: I really do not need that many things in my life. Living with the bare necessities gives me more freedom. Essentially, everything that I can fit into my hand luggage is all I need. (Unless you go to Burning Man, then you need a tent, food, bike, tutu skirts, sleeping pads, food, rebars, sleeping bags, LED lights, food…)
  
• Relationships come and go: Traveling around the world means meeting new people and parting with them. It is all about enjoying the time together, creating new memories and most importantly being present. Even though everyone is moving in different directions, I strongly believe in “See you soon” rather than “Goodbye”.
  
• Disconnect to reconnect: Bye bye world. I spent 10 days on a silent meditation retreat in the mountains of Nepal. I did not have a eureka moment, but I found an inner calmness that I carry with me every day and remember in stressful times. I can highly recommend pulling the plug for a couple of days if your current situation allows you to do so.
  
• Intuition is a superpower: My gut feeling is always right. I need to listen more to it.
  
• Global Shapers Community: I love you guys! 

To be honest, I spend most of my time sitting in front of a computer screen. I can easily sit there for 13 hours straight, only to leave for food and, ahem, other necessities. I do not mind, I actually kind of like it. Though I felt that I needed to use my two hands and my civil engineering degree. Two years ago, I started with my creative Mondays. Every Monday, I would do something totally unrelated to work and my studies. Activities such as dancing, painting (the colorful background photo is my creation), writing with my non-dominant hand, woodburning, and volunteering were on the agenda. All of these projects were fun and meaningful to me, but I was seeking a bigger challenge. I wanted to create and build something with my own two hands.

This year I have traveled quite a lot and every time I needed to find accommodation, food and be dependent on public transport. Finding accommodation and being dependent on public transport is always a hassle to spend time and energy on. How can you solve that problem? You talk to a friend and you decide to build a camper van togther. Total self-reliance. YES!

How do you build a bad ass camper van?

You partner up with a friend, ask YouTube and Google for advice and then you build it together. The van conversion was inspired by the Barefoot Theory, and my friend planned out the whole footprint of the van. We built everything from scratch and one month in, we drove to Tüv Nord to get the van registered and approved as a camper van. SUCCESS!

What did I learn from this process?

• YouTube is your best friend and everything is possible. You can literally find everything you need on YouTube. From “How to Sew a Zipper in a Mattress”, “How to lay click-on flooring” to “How to Install Gas Pipes in a Kitchen”. All the problems you encounter are not foreign at all – others have experienced just the same as you. I must admit, it is somewhat a trial and error process. Especially, when you have carved out a hole in the kitchen that you definitely should not have. Re-iterate, re-iterate and there you go! I can now add a bunch of new skills to my resume. Able to master a spatula; can paint to perfection; can design, tailor and pick the perfect fabric to your furniture; and the list goes on.
• Establishing routines is GOLD: Waking up and going to bed at the same time work wonders. Every morning, I woke up at 7:30, and went out for a run. At 8:00, I was ready to get breakfast, and at 9:00 my friend and I were in the garage working on the van. We would finish around 23:00 in the evening. I would read for half an hour and then go to bed before 00:00.
• Audible (audio books) is brilliant: The radio plays the same music over and over again, and I think Despacito aired four times on average per day on various radio channels. I quickly shifted to audiobooks, and I really enjoyed the “double learning”.
• 5.4 square meters is all you need: In the van, you have a kitchen, living room, bedroom, shower, toilet, heater, fan, 5x solar panels, battery, 60+30L water tanks, cabinets, and gas tank. All my bare necessities could fit in the space. I even took my penny board!

& & 

See you later folks!

1) Give up on the unhealthy lifestyle
– Eat healthy and exercise
2) Give up on the short-term mindset
– Set long-term goals and make good habits
3) Give up your excuses
– Own your life and be responsible for it
4) Give up the fixed mindset
– Acquire new knowledge and learn new skills
5) Give up multi-tasking
– Be present and fully committed to one task
6) Give up saying yes to things that do not support your goals
– Sacrifice instant gratification, say no to others, yes to YOU!
7) Give up on toxic people
8) Give up your need to be liked
9) Give up dependency on social media
– Direct time towards things that enrich your life

What a week! It is amazing how many things you can get done once you gather six brilliant minds and work 20 hours a day. It is definitely not a sustainable way to work that many hours a day, but it definitely works out for a shorter period.

Let’s take it from the top with some facts about the MIT Global Entrepreneurship Bootcamp: 6000+ applications, 123 persons admitted, 5 days, 12 hours of sleep (in total), 6 people in one team, 100 solutions (to one problem). 5 pivots, 1 final presentation!

What is my key take away from this week? It is all about the team! We were a team of six, and we worked on a concept similar to my project Trashnology.

What if we could incentivize people from developing countries to pick up their trash, and give them money in return for the trash collected? Not only will we clean up the earth, we will also give everyone an opportunity to earn their own money!

The idea is still just a concept, but I do truly believe there is a market for it. We did plenty of research on the topic, and we even had an expert in waste management on our team! The next step is to find the right market to launch the product in. We found out that Sierra Leone (targeted marketed) has a great potential in terms of impact, but might be difficult to implement the idea. Next step is to find a feasible market for Trashnology and co-founders! Hit me up if you are keen on working with Trash.

#FromTrashToCash #Trashnology #trashtag

The challenge: Come up with a moonshot idea to help mitigate climate change (+ it must have a positive impact on 1 billion people). Easy.

I sat down and did a quick brainstorm. Solving climate change is not really my domain, as most my ideas are oriented towards people and how we can improve their lives. I looked into the meat industry, and how much resources it actually takes to produce one patty. Then I looked into plastic pollution and especially ocean plastics, and how it affects our world. It is such a great initiative to clean up the ocean for plastics, but it does not really solve the problem we have with platics today. We need to dig deeper and talk about human behavior in terms of usage, consumption, and disposal of it.

I clearly remember the streets of Dhaka, Bangladesh and in Kathmandu, Nepal, where all the trash is just laying around in the streets. It was really terrible. I needed to solve that problem, but how? I spent quite some time to come up with a sustainable for-profit model! I came up with the idea Trashnology – an incentivized waste management system. People in developing countries collect trash in the streets and get paid per kilo for the waste collected! Not only do we clean up the streets, we also try to nudge people and incentivize them to recycle/clean up for money! We do it to some extent in Denmark with our deposit on plastic bottles. What if… we could use the same model in developing countries and on other plastics too!

I believe this is an idea that can impact our environment and help millions of people in developing countries. I now have my idea for Danske IDéer, now I just need a lot of data and validation from Bangladesh for the idea.

Last week, I participated in the Global Solutions Program, Danske IDéer 2017, which was facilitated by SingularityU Denmark and sponsored by the Danish Industry Foundation. A big shout out to the fantastic organizing team behind that made it all happen! I am grateful to have had the opportunity to take part in such an amazing mind-blowing program.
At the program, there was a focus on creating a positive impact through the use of exponential technologies. The world faces several grand challenges and this workshop focused on climate change. Up until now, the earth lost 52% of its species due to climate change. 64 innovators were gathered to look for opportunities and massive inefficiencies. How can we help as many people as possible? We, as humans, are built to think in a linear way. This is not sustainable as we live in an exponential world. In order for us to understand the challenges we are currently facing, a five days’ program were packed with amazing speakers and mind-boggling discussions. I still cannot wrap my head around all the amazing things that are currently going on. We had several workshops on robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology and biotechnology (transhumanism, CRISPR). Some of the things that amazed me were:

1. Scientists are bringing back the mammoths!
2. You can now record your dreams. This is currently being tested on rats, where scientists discovered that your dreams appear to be 6x faster than reality. Being a vivid lucid dreamer, I am super stoked to hear about this.
3. Biolab on a chip that can diagnose diseases from a single drop of blood in a few minutes. I had a similar idea, andI wanted to use the technology behind to tailor-made meals/vitamins supplements based on the blood sample.

Apart from learning about the new technologies, I also met a fantastic crowd of human beings. All of these wonderful people wanted to contribute to saving the world. I have always been a firm believer of Maersk McKineys quote: “Den der har evnen, har ansvaret” (= The one who has the ability, has the responsibility). It was wonderful to meet like-minded people who felt the same way. I feel grateful to have had the opportunity to be a part of such an amazing program.

To add a cherry on the top, I got one of the five finalist spots. I was chosen by my peers, and it is such a great honor! Next step is a pitch March 31st. Unfortunately, I cannot be there in person, as I am pitching an idea at the MIT bootcamp the same day. Luckily, the time difference works to my advance. With the use of technology, I can even beam myself in! I praise that we live in a world with technology that is at such an advanced stage, where you can communicate in real time with persons on the other side of the earth. I am curious to see what the future brings, and I do hope that I will be able to teleport myself from one place to another… or maybe we should just start with the hologram.

The last two weeks were intense, as I had lots of materials I wanted to read prior to the two bootcamps. Danske IDéer 2017 kicks off on Tuesday, and I am now reading up on exponential technologies, and how they might affect our society moving forward. Once I dive into a topic, I can easily sit in front of my laptop screen for 13 hours straight – time just fly by. It is, therefore, important to me that I get out of the apartment and work from different places, so I won’t take root in my office chair at home. This week I went to four different places:

SingularityU Copenhagen: This is a new space that just opened up this week! It is going to be a new innovation hub, and it seems to be very promising. I visited my friend, Jesper, at Ideanote, and got a small tour around the place. It is a vast space with more than 5000m^2. The place is committed to making a positive difference by creating initiatives for entrepreneurs and students for impact activities. Awesome! I have the feeling this is not the last time, I will enter this building.

SOHO: Wednesday, I had a presentation at 10 AM for the Bestseller Foundation on the strategy moving forward with the African company Ogojiii. I really like SOHO (Small Office Home Office) due to the diversity of people and companies. I found a spot on the first floor and began to read about the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”.

The Black Diamond: I love working from here. I often used to go here to study for my exams. The vibe is great, and their reading rooms allow me to sit down and focus. There are two reading rooms in the building: East with 142 seats and Noth with 99 study desks. The only downside is the opening hours, as they close at 8 PM. My stomach does appreciate it, though, so I will head back home to raid the fridge.

CIID: Today, I am working from Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, where I am visiting my two friends David and Asger at M-Payg. It is great to be able to catch up with friends and work at same time.

Wish you all a lovely weekend!