Monthly Archives: September 2016

entrepreneurship, Events, speaking, startup

Pitching the state of NRW for Startups in Moscow, Russia

So that’s what my name looks like in Russian

Recently I was invited by the city of Düsseldorf (the capital of NRW) and NRW.INVEST to be a part of a delegation with the Lord Mayor of Düsseldorf, Thomas Geisel and others, to spread the gospel about why the German state of North-Rhine Westphalia (NRW – where I have now been living for the 12 last years) is a great place for startups in Moscow, Russia (sister city of Düsseldorf).

Talked a little bit about why NRW is a good place for startups, the biggest exits we’ve seen and which startups who could be having the next big exits here

As you might know, this has been a pet peeve of mine for years and I was delighted to be able to help shed some light on why this region has a lot to offer and why I have been staying on here as a foreign startup founder all these years.

Some impressions:

Yup. That guy again…

Fun fact; Turned out Sigmar Gabriel was also staying at Ritz Carlton Moscow – so we photobombed his press conference

Here are the slides I used:

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corporate entrepreneurship, innovation, Lean Startup, speaking

Why Corporates Engage with Startups @ Henkel

Henkel HQ, Düsseldorf

Recently I was invited by Henkel to keynote at “Henkel Startup-Day”, an internal innovation event at their HQ with +300 participants about why and how corporations engage with startups (and sometimes vice versa).

A participant describing my Keynote:

[…] Vidar Andersen, asked us to talk to a person we don’t know at all. A fairly easy task: I turned to the left and talked to a guy that was doing a dual course of studies with Henkel. At that moment he was writing about collaboration between companies and startups. Stunning, his enthusiasm and concentration paying attention to every single detail that was said. Andersen made one point clear that big companies have to be faster and adapt flexibly to startups’ pace in order to be successful. He also mentioned a splendid quote from Claus Schwab: “In the new world, it’s not the big fish that eats the small fish. It’s the fast fish that eats the slow fish”. With his funny sayings he made the audience laugh their ass off.  – Amina Mrad on Medium

These these were the slides I used:

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