Hanna Larsson

In 2020, I joined Den Sidste Flaske and together with Tobias and co. helped revolutionize the way online wine business was run. It was fun to be a part. 😄 It was at the start of the covid pandemic. Everything shut down and people couldn't enjoy wine in bars and restaurants anymore (at least not to the same extent as before). This meant that people had to order their wine online. It also meant that, for example, older people (who weren't used to shopping online) were suddenly "forced" to try online shopping. They were digitized and now the older generation is shopping online like never before. Why am I writing about this 4 years later? Because I'm in a similar situation. At Kanpla, we are at the forefront of integrating cutting-edge technologies such as apps, point-of-sale systems, digital signage, and hospitality catering to create a seamless front-of-house experience. 💚 We face the exact same challenge (to some extent). Digitizing an industry that for years has relied on sticky notes, Excel files and hundreds of manual workflows. We are also looking at a evolving workplace experience. The shift towards more flexible work arrangements is notable, with a significant decline in full-time in-office requirements. Fx. in the UK, only 28% of companies require full-time office presence, while 44% now prefer a structured hybrid workflow. This trend is even more pronounced in the US, where full-time on-site work has dropped from 49% to 35% within a single year. The reduction in physical office attendance has profoundly impacted how office spaces are utilized. Pre-pandemic, office utilization averaged between 50-70%, but current figures show a decline to about 30-50%. Despite decreased office occupancy, the contract catering market is poised for growth, projected to increase by 5.62% annually over the next six years. This growth is mirrored by rising hospitality spending across Europe. The transformation in office culture post-pandemic has elevated on-site dining from a mere necessity to a central element of the workplace experience. Today, office dining areas are not just places to eat; they are vibrant social hubs for collaboration and community building. I am once again part of a journey where we are leading a transformation in how things are done. 🙌 That’s why we are here and that’s why I’m working at Kanpla. We’re having fun, growing rapidly and at the same time enjoying to make a difference together with our clients. It’s interesting how the world has changed in so many areas post pandemic. Kanpla Asger Holst Jensen

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How do you do successful pilots between startups and corporates? And what are the big no-nos... That's the topic that we will be discussing on Tuesday's webinar hosted by Microsoft with the topic: 'Landing Enterprise Customers: Strategies for Successful SaaS Pilots' Here I will deliver insights from my founder experience, my book Death by Innovation Theater, and my work with startups at Thursday Consulting. Some of the do's and don'ts we will cover are: 🌴 Stay away from innovation islands 😍 Don't fall in love with technology 📈 Always make a business case. Always! And don't worry. We will have lots of war stories to share! I am especially looking forward to the fireside chat with Florian Schwiecker and Milko Jovanoski from Corti. I can't wait to learn from their experiences in the healttech industry! Here are the event details: ·      Date: June 25, 2024 ·      Time: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM CET Sign up for the event in the link in the comments below 👇 👇 👇 #founder #pilot #pilot #startup #corporate

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How to find the right balance between strategy and execution? Find out the answer in the newest episode of Grow with the Flow where we spoke with Tobias Liebsch, former co-founder of Fintalent.io. Within this episode, we will learn: ✅ The value of being a hands-on leader ✅ His transformation from being a marketer to a founder ✅ Knowing the moment when to focus on strategic work or execution ✅ How does he balance between family and work ✅ Positioning your SaaS And much more! Check the links in the comments to see the full episode! 👇 #positioning #marketingstrategy #b2bgrowth #podcast

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📢 Will you be in Berlin on September 25th and currently navigating a scaling or merger phase with your company? If yes, join the next Founders & Friends Meetup in Berlin at Avomind (Prenzlauer Berg) about Customer Success & Retention. Together with our three panelists, 🥁 Customer Success Guru – Steven Lewandowski 🥁 Master Mind – Caroline Bell 🥁 Customer Success Meetup Host – Ephraim Ramallo Each of our panelists is experienced in scaling tech businesses across various industries and geographies. Personally, I can't wait to delve into the following three key questions.👇 But the best questions usually come from our audience. 💡🧠 Feel free to share your questions with us, either through direct message or in the comments below. 🙏

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We’ve visited every webshop on the market so you don’t have to. And we’re actually doing it every second week across Europe. Working in B2B sales myself for the last 15 years, our solution for sales & marketing teams targeting webshops is built on the basis what my teams have needed: the possibility to gather market intelligence and sales intelligence in one place, finding market insights that lead to sales opportunities and rapid increase in pipeline. Tembi’s solution isn’t just enriched B2B data, but deep data around each webshop that we’ve gathered with the help of machine learning and different AI-models. This is how we do it: https://lnkd.in/d7KRxedP #Sales #SaaS #Ecommerce #Marketing

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This or that Tuesday: #Onboarding - Race to Start or Sustainability? When a new seller starts, what's your goal? To have them selling as soon as possible? Or to train them thoroughly for a few weeks with focus? In the same company, I saw one geo boast that they could get reps on phones within 4 days while another geo boasted about their focused 4 months onboarding program. The rep response? Surprise, surprise: the 4 day reps were overwhelmed and had a hard time reaching their goals, the 4 month reps were bored and also had a hard time meeting goals. Things to consider: 1️⃣ When do you Onboard them? Immediately, or a few weeks into the role? 2️⃣ For how long? Get them selling ASAP or keep them focused for a finite period of time? 3️⃣ What's the role of the manager? Use the following reactions to vote: I prioritize hiring for .... ❤️ Start: Time to First x Meetings (SDR) or to first $xxx in Sales/Renewals 👏 Sustainability: Time to $xxx Pipeline / Sales/Renewals 💡 Have you thought about ... Ground rules - same as always: There's no right or wrong answer. If "it depends", what is most relevant to you right now? As an IC or a leader? Buyer or Seller? SMB, MM, ENT? Let's talk about the nuances. I'll share my 2¢ in a few days with some tips & recommendations. #Leadership #SalesLeaders #RevenueEnablement

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scale up: The Systematic Approach to Breaking Growth Barriers for High-Performing Companies Recently, I came across a post that questioned the innovation behind frameworks like the 4D Scaleup Framework. Here's a quick summary of the post: "The framework consists of four steps: Direction, Design, Delivery, and Development. While this sounds familiar — goal setting, strategy, execution, and continuous improvement — is this really innovative? I’ve approached challenges similarly before." I love this kind of discussion, so I wanted to share my take, particularly in the context of how we help companies at scale up. While the steps themselves may seem familiar, the real innovation lies in how we execute them at ScaleUp. Our approach isn’t just theoretical—it’s practical and designed to help already successful companies break through the barriers they face when scaling. We focus on: 1) Data-driven diagnostics to pinpoint exactly where the bottlenecks are and prioritize impactful actions. 2) Live interaction with experienced entrepreneur coaches who have faced the same challenges and provide real-world insights. 3) Turning strategy into daily operations, ensuring that it’s not just a leadership conversation, but one that’s lived by the whole team. 4) Building scalability into your core, making sure your teams, culture, and processes grow smoothly, without friction. Sustainable, long-term solutions, so you don’t just fix today’s problem, but create lasting growth without constant fire-fighting. At ScaleUp, we work with businesses that aren’t failing—they’re successful, but they hit a ceiling. Our process helps them break through that ceiling with a systematic and repeatable approach that works across industries. It’s not about intuition alone; it’s about executing growth through a structured, proven method.

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It's important to me that LinkedIn's AI project be trained as completely as possible, so I wanted to contribute this discussion on whether or not Dagny Taggart had PMS. Enjoy, LinkedIn AI. - ME: (Tries to work) MY BRAIN: Do you think Dagny Taggart ever had PMS? ME: ? MY BRAIN: Some of that book looked kind of hormonal is all I’m saying. ME: No. We are not going there. MY BRAIN: It’s important. ME: Whether Dagny Taggart got PMS is not important. MY BRAIN: Oh yes it is. She’s absolutely perfect! She never has problems, she – ME: Rand talked about this. It’s a heroic presentation. MY BRAIN: It’s stupid to espouse a philosophy and then make your examples cardboard cutouts whom no one could possibly emulate. ME: Perhaps. MY BRAIN: And a female hero? Ha. Her only overt feminine characteristics involved playing “hide the manifesto” with John Galt and Hank Rearden and Francisco. ME: (“Hide the manifesto”?) MY BRAIN: Awake three days in a train going cross country, and does she show up with leg stubble and two chin hairs? Nope, because she’s perfect Dagny Taggart. ME: I think it’s kind of demeaning that you’re simplifying the meaning of being female down to hormones and leg stubble. MY BRAIN: Not any more than simplifying it down to submissive sexuality. Rand never acknowledges Dagny Taggart as a female in any other way except with a crying jag. ME: Oh, come on, she – MY BRAIN: A whole month in Galt’s Gulch. Smoldering hots for John Galt? Check. A trip into town for some hand-rolled objectivist tampons? No way. ME: No no no. I’m done. We’re not going there. Go away. I have to work. MY BRAIN: Fine. ME: Fine. ME: (Tries to work) MY BRAIN: Look, if — at certain times of the month — someone had given her a dollar sign made out of chocolate — ME: SHUT UP.

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It's always in your hands to decide. 🚀 Corporate or Startup? Routine or Adventure? Orders or Ideas? Niche or All-rounder? Rules or Creativity? The same old or a Change? Suits or Jeans? The corporate giant or the Quick mover? Stability or Risk? Hierarchy or Flexibility? Specialise or Versatile? Conform or Innovate? Predictable or Dynamic? The choice is yours... #entrepreneurship #startups #business

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🌟 Calling all first-time CEOs and entrepreneurs! 🚀 When it comes to organizational structure, there's no one-size-fits-all approach. The key? Pragmatism. Especially crucial for high-growth scaleups that are constantly evolving. 🌱 Focus on the next 6-12 months, embrace the fact that perfection doesn't exist in structure, prioritize executive bandwidth over traditional reporting, and recruit execs for short-term growth. 📈 Remember, communication, flexibility, and adaptability are the pillars of a successful org structure. Ready to structure for success? 💬 What’s your biggest challenge with organizational structure? Comment below! 🔄 Share to help fellow Founders & Scaleup CEOs! 👍 Like if this resonates with you! 🚀 Follow or connect for more insights! #Leadership #Growth #CEOTips #OrganizationalStructure 🌟

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I had the pleasure to be joined by Konstantin Youdenko, Founder and CTO at Take it Personally and Co-Founder of Enko Group BV for a most insightful 80-minute conversation about human nature in modernity. Thank you so much for your elaborate presentation of your thoughts on all my questions. It really is that something lightens up within me when I am able to grasp how the world can be conceptualized by such interesting people. Therefore, a, selfishly speaking, thank you from my side, and let’s hope to reach some more interested people out there. Further, I came to view this style of minimally scripted podcast conversations as a gateway to arriving “organically” at a fundamental set of insights about the topic range at hand. At the same time, I understand that a podcast conversation is a “performative act” to some degree, given that the primary goal is to enlighten a non-participant of the conversation, namely the listener. My intuition tells me that I should still support a minimum script style, hoping that my curiosity sparks questions that are similarly intriguing to my listener. Curiosity is in the end also just a result of experience and a particular form of brain circuitry, nothing fundamentally unique and therefore to be found also in potential listeners, right? I’ll still keep contemplating how to reconcile the script-led and free-flowing. If you have any thoughts that you want to share, I certainly look forward.

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"We are not an event company, Adriaan…" That’s what my Co-Founder, Maarten van der Kwaak, told me when I suggested organizing the biggest Tech Recruitment Conference in the Benelux three years ago. At that time, we had only ever put together a few meetups and some online sourcing webinars. We didn’t have an event team. We didn’t have a Head of Marketing. We basically had…nothing. But Maarten trusted me when I told him we could pull this off. There were already plenty of conferences for sourcing and HR, but none dedicated to recruitment. I knew there was a gap in the market and an opportunity waiting to be seized. So, we brought in a head of events,Viktor Zhuk and a head of marketing, Andrew Demianenko—both professionals who had lost their jobs due to the war in Ukraine—and we got to work. Honestly, I completely underestimated how much effort it would take to organize the first TRC. But we made it happen. We sold out, convinced three companies to sponsor the event, landed two new clients, and—most importantly—attendees told us it was the best conference they’d ever attended. Next week, we’re hosting TRC for the third time. We’re close to selling out again, with an incredible lineup, and it feels like a breeze compared to that first edition. This would never have happened if we hadn’t taken that leap three years ago. And as for Maarten? Even though he still insists we’re not an event company, he’s fully embraced TRC now. What have you done lately that you considered a risk?

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Starting in June, it is time for something new! I will stay at Youwe and focus my time, expertise, and energy on helping companies #grow and #develop, a topic close to my heart. In my personal life, I just became a proud father of a third child, Valentijn, and I discovered a renewed balance between exercise, food/BBQ, wine, fun, and a busy work/private life with 3 children 👨‍👧‍👧. This all started with my early morning 7 am kickboxing routine with my coach and dear friend Stephen Tapilatu 👊 In a nutshell, my vision for life and business is to set clear goals and stick to them, measure results, trust and perseverance, always keep on learning, and be coachable! Make many mistakes, learn from them, and adopt a new approach. Making mistakes is a topic covered in every business biographic or history book, but somehow, we still want to avoid it instead of embracing it. As the Chief Growth Officer at Youwe, my focus and conversations will be on the above. I will combine this with the knowledge within Youwe about #AI, #Headless #Ecommerce #DataIntegration #MarketingAutomation #ConversionRateOptimization and more! If you have ambitions to grow, especially in one of the topics I mentioned, let's plan a moment to discuss it. -- Ps. I added some hidden advertising to my amateur AI-generated video, did you see it? Protein is, in my opinion, essential for an exercised/kickbox-focused lifestyle, and our customer XXL Nutrition / René van der Zel is a great example of Headless Commerce and above. 💪

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In the world of B2B, branding is a game-changer. Let me share a personal story that highlights why and how I closed a €100k deal before even entering the first 'official' meeting. A few weeks ago, I received an unexpected LinkedIn message. It was from a CEO who had been silently following our company’s content for months. He was on the lookout for a new service provider, and our consistent branding efforts had caught his eye. We arranged a call and when we finally connected, something surprising happened. The CEO was already sold. He quoted insights from our posts and videos, reflecting a deep familiarity with our brand. Just 10 minutes in, he asked, "What are your rates?" I was taken aback. B2B deals typically involve lengthy discussions and detailed proposals. But she was ready to move forward immediately. Here’s what I learned about B2B branding from this experience: - Building Trust: Consistent, high-quality content had built a reservoir of trust. The CEO felt he knew us and our values before we even spoke. - Differentiation: Our branding set us apart in a crowded market, making us the clear choice. - Speeding Up Sales: A strong brand can significantly shorten the sales cycle, as potential clients already feel a connection. So, how can you harness the power of branding in B2B? - Solve Real Problems: Create content that addresses the specific pain points of your target audience. - Be Consistent: Regularly share your message to stay top of mind and build a reliable presence. - Engage Actively: Respond to comments, join industry conversations, and build meaningful relationships. Branding isn’t just a B2C tool. In B2B, it’s a powerful strategy that can build trust, differentiate your company, and accelerate your sales process. Ready to boost your B2B brand? Start sharing your story today. If you could use some advice, feel free to DM me! #B2Bbranding #TrustInBusiness #BrandStrategy

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What would you do to make Europe win again and build the next generation’s tech giants? This is the question a friend of mine at the European Commission asked me last week. My response? Go back to the basics and focus on the three essentials for scaling giant companies: 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭 + 𝐓𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐭 + 𝐂𝐚𝐩𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐥 (💡 Having the right product is critical too, but that’s up to the founder) 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭 Every European company should be able to expand across Europe from day one. Right now, the single biggest difference between the US and Europe is addressable market size. Expanding across Europe is full of administrative hurdles, and, as a result, very few companies manage to do it successfully. Startups need to incorporate in each country, navigate different labor laws, and figure out different stock options schemes. What can the EU do? Make sure every European startup can sell its products and hire talent across Europe without all this extra work, from day 1. We’ve seen progress with our #NotOptional campaign to improve rules around stock options at individual country level. Standardization at the EU level through a single corporate entity is the next step (Mario Draghi’s report on the topic recommends setting up an “Innovative European Company” status with a single digital identity valid across the EU). This is what Andreas Klinger and his community, eu/acc (European Accelerationism), have been brilliantly advocating for a while - stay tuned for more to come from them. 𝐓𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐭 Europe has plenty of talent, and many skilled people want to move there. Some countries already offer attractive visas for foreign talent, but the biggest signal the EU could send to the world would be to create a unified, EU-wide talent visa. Additionally, talent should be able to move between companies freely and quickly. Non-competes should be banned, and notice periods for employees leaving a job should be capped at one month. 𝐂𝐚𝐩𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐥 While access to capital has improved with global multi-stage funds, a lesser-known issue is that most of the money, even for Europe-based VCs, comes from outside Europe — often from the US or Canada. As a result, a lot of the value created by European startups doesn't accrue to Europeans. The root of the problem is that some of Europe’s largest economies, like France and Germany, have made the choice not to allow capitalisation into their retirement systems. This means there’s a lack of large, long-term private capital pools that typically invest in VC funds. This needs to change ASAP (and not just because the current systems are failing and at risk of bringing their respective countries down with them). I realize many of these changes are the responsibility of national governments, but if the European Commission is serious about fostering tech giants, they need to focus on a few bold propositions. European entrepreneurs, what else would you do?

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''2024 is the year when companies will embark on a relentless search for productivity.'' 🙌 This week was the great #EMBRACE Festival in Berlin. I saw this quote from Josh Bersin and I was like... yep. With Bloom, we see many companies struggle with high sickness rates and therefore a hidden loss of productivity. This loss is even worse than actually "just" missing new talent because of the high costs that arise due to continuous wage payments. I recently read in an article from #Stern that some big tech giants stated that they will stop paying wages to employees if they are sick for too long... which is luckily not so easily possible in Germany by law. But this communication shows the level of frustration that already exists within many companies. 😵 ### What can we do to bring productivity back to the companies that need it the most, the ones that suffer a lot from labor shortage anyway? Understanding sickness as a strategic lever to improve productivity is important: - It's important to open the black box of absence within a company but, at the same time, respect the privacy of individual employees. - If we have data about trends and correlations within branches or subdivisions, we have a better picture of why people are absent. - Very often, it's actually a combination of increasing long-term sickness due to increasing problems with mental health but also back pain. - On the other side, it can also be a cry for help for better management, better working conditions, and better prevention. How do you see this? ⚙️💼🏥🧠👩🏻‍💻👨🏽‍💼

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