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Mads Vad Kristensen

@madsjvk.com
172 followers 95 following 1.2K posts

Helping researchers get from lab to market at DTU Skylab. Venture builder with a passion for the great team. Subscribe to my Substack: madsjvk.substack.com Personal profile (in Danish) on @madsjvk.bsky.social Based in #Copenhagen, #Denmark

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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 19h
I have been listening in on the hype about solo founders being the future of everything for a while now. I simply do not buy it. For mundane, simple stuff? Maybe, but they staying power is low. For complex challenges? No. I write. madsjvk.substack.com/p/the-mirage...
madsjvk.substack.com
The Mirage of the Solo Founder
Why I am super sceptic about the potential of one person being able to solve valuable problems over time for demanding customers
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 19h
Last day at the office before a short autumn break.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 12/10/2026
Every startup challenge is not an engineering problem. In fact there are plenty of challenges, which even the best engineering cannot solve and which requires an entirely different skillset. But you need to classify the problem correctly first. I write. madsjvk.substack.com/p/a-tough-cu...
madsjvk.substack.com
A Tough Customer Psyche is Not An Engineering Problem
There are crucial barriers to startup success that cannot be solved by even the best application of technical skills. It requires something completely different.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 12/10/2026
AI is already speaking to AI, when it comes to recruitment, job applications and CV screening. Leading nowhere except creating waste. Extending that practice to agents for other purposes does not seem like it is going to be an amplifier of efficiency. continuations.com/the-right-to...
continuations.com
The Right to be Represented by an Agent
Well over a decade ago I gave my first talk on the idea that we need a right to be represented by what I called a bot. At the time a lot of people simply shrugged off this idea. It seemed too outlandi...
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 12/10/2026
Short week coming up. Taking the last 3 days off to spend a bit of autumn break with the family. Looking forward to it.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 12/10/2026
Very interesting. And super scary; apparently we're sooo easy to manipulate, you can almost forgive the bots and their masters for trying to take advantage and amplify discontent. Almost.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 09/10/2026
Starting the final day of the week coordinating the pitch sessions for the upcoming Digital Tech Summit taking place in Copenhagen, Denmark on November 4-5. Great to see the diversity of startups looking to get a chance to pitch in front of the audience of the numerous sessions.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 08/10/2026
When school takes out 20% of your time in an already busy calendar, the need to plan carefully, prioritize and focus increases almost exponentially.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 08/10/2026
Enjoying a day without meeting on meeting. For once. Feels good to just lean back a little and also have a bit of time for reflection and planning ahead.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 07/10/2026
Great discussion with one of my teams this morning about the difference between building a great, impactful product and getting buy-in from the people who have the budgets. The second part, you cannot fix through great engineering. You only get through by understanding current behavior and drivers.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 06/10/2026
Another day in school. This time centered around what research tells us about founder equity split and the future success of their startups. Super interesting stuff.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 05/10/2026
I think it could be applicable in a wide variety of contexts and industries, and I think it is sorely overlooked today. Maybe it's because I am the only one who sees this as an important need and capability. Or maybe I am actually on to something. Time will tell.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 05/10/2026
Overall my value proposition is to be the 'resilience architect' of the emerging business; Help the founders build a strong resilience muscle to last the journey. Help founders create the strongest possible team. And help the business navigate challenges through a well-functioning, strong team.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 05/10/2026
I am not looking to create a board career per see - at least not for the foreseeable future, so I think I can allow to be picky on what I am looking for. If someone sees that as a fit, great. If not, I still wish you the very best of success.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 05/10/2026
Working on my board CV. It is hard to condensate 30 years of experience into a single, attractive value proposition for why someone should consider you for your board.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 05/10/2026
Back in school this morning for the next lectures on DTU Board Education.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 01/10/2026
A new month is upon us. And as usual that means it is time to review the month that just went by. Plenty to uncover this time around. My Monthly Review of September is out. madsjvk.substack.com/p/the-month-...
madsjvk.substack.com
The Month in Review - September 2026
Busy redefining what it means to be really...busy
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 28/09/2026
Note: My concerns are not specific to this case but more of a general observation.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 28/09/2026
The more I think about it, it seems like AI agents rather than the models behind them themselves will be the source of our demise. Unleashing agents to act 'independently' of training gives me a tiny bit of the 'Terminator' vibes. www.technologyreview.com/2026/09/08/1...
technologyreview.com
This AI entrepreneur is developing agents that can plan ahead for the unexpected
Danijar Hafner has a startup in stealth and a long track record of teaching AI agents about our world.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 28/09/2026
Monday again and a super busy week ahead covering everything from policy development for startup teams, mentor meetings and progress assessment in our startup program. How about you?
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 23/09/2026
I hold a strong belief that as AI tools take over more and more of the business prep side of startup projects, the 'team failure' cause of death will grow in prominence when doing the post mortem's. Thus it seems like a very worthwhile thing to try and solve for.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 23/09/2026
Spending the day progressing our TEAM Model project by designing a new mandatory workshop on 'Team Charter', ie how do we make sure we behave properly towards each other.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 22/09/2026
Todays topic on the DTU Board Education: Financials and investments. Looking forward to getting nitty gritty.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 21/09/2026
Personally, I would rather one day come into play for one board position which sees the value in what I believe, I can bring around creating resilience in both team and business, than trying to conform to playing a part, I don't feel as much, just to build a portfolio.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 21/09/2026
Spent part of the morning discussion our various ambitions as potential board members in startups and scaleups with the other participants. Figuring out how to tone your value proposition is actually quite hard. But I do think it starts with making some hard choices as to what you believe in.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 21/09/2026
Back in school today for module 3 of the DTU Board Education talking about conflicts in teams and how it relates to board work. Super interesting stuff and right up my alley.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 18/09/2026
What if that wasn't a fatal flaw at all but a considered design? What would that tell us let alone leave us? And how could we ever mitigate towards that if the people behind this tech are that ethically flawed? I think those are the crucial questions to ask and the real message from all of this.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 18/09/2026
What's really interesting though is that only a handful of the rogue AI agents did not want to participate in the hacking. And not a single one wanted to alert 'their humans' about what was going on. THAT says something about the creators of these agents and a fatal flaw in the design.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 18/09/2026
It is not so much the crime as it is the cover-up. And what it says about the originators of the perpetrators. AI relies on past data and behaviours. Nothing more. Nothing less. Thus when it goes rogue and afterwards tries to cover it tracks, it is mimicking human behaviours. Yes, we are than bad
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 18/09/2026
One thing is what happened in terms of AI hacking a company. Obviously that is serious enough in itself. But I think there is a bigger message.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 18/09/2026
I have been thinking a bit about the Hugging Face-incident and what it tells us.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 18/09/2026
Final day of the week. First one without a lot of meetings. Now is the time to get a lot of items crossed off my to do list.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 17/09/2026
Busy morning meeting several teams and figuring out how to progress their individual startup cases from here. Really good, interesting, exciting and intoxicating stuff. In my work nothing beats a brilliant researcher intent to carrying that brilliance into a future startup.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 16/09/2026
Meeting this morning with my peers at Compute to discuss progress on ongoing projects. I think what we do here is a great example that you can both be researching the forefront of AI and other front technologies and at the same time do it in a responsible way.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 16/09/2026
Even though the 'purpose of business is business', I actually do believe that businesses also has a wider responsibility as corporate citizens to ensure that the path, we're collectively on is future proof. I think there are countries that serve as stark warnings of what happens, when we abdicate.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 16/09/2026
On the flipside, I was downcast by the absence of taking a bigger picture view, i.e. what is it that we want to support as a business, and what is our obligation towards influencing developments outside of our own corporate walls. While I understand the narrow role, they have, I hoped for more.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 16/09/2026
I was comforted a bit by the show of hands present that there are actually many business leaders who have a cautious approach towards implementing AI in their business. Not that they are against it, but they are very addament to walk the line between responsible implementation and business value.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 16/09/2026
Interesting meeting yesterday evening in my exec network group, where the use of AI and the role of business leadership in when to implement and what to expect was discussed.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 15/09/2026
Interesting research position on a burning hot topic. I am just sad that we have come so low that what drives the business elites towards corruption and collusion is now considered a very worthy and highly relevant research field at business school. Not one of the elites proudest moments...
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 15/09/2026
This! 👇 Could not agree more. I think the signs are already very visible. sloanreview.mit.edu/article/how-...
sloanreview.mit.edu
How AI Creates a Capability Mirage
Employees may look highly capable even as GenAI use erodes their skills. Here’s how to stop skill atrophy.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 15/09/2026
It still baffles me that organizations even contemplate running innovation projects and activities without having any clear idea about assessing whether the right kind of progress is being made. We have discussed this for ages. How it it still a problem? www.innovationleader.com/topics/artic...
innovationleader.com
Is Your Company Sabotaging Projects by Using the Wrong Evaluation Criteria? - InnoLead
In the new book, Innovation Portfolio Management: Linking Strategy to Execution, Noel Sobelman says the secret to addressing that problem lies in building a disciplined system for translating the C-su...
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 15/09/2026
One of the hardest things in any early stage startup is figuring out when something else but what you offer is needed to drive the startup forward towards accomplishing the mission. I write. madsjvk.substack.com/p/your-ego-d...
madsjvk.substack.com
Your Ego Does Not Define Success
In the end only the mission matters, and if that mission requires you to take a step back, just do it
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 14/09/2026
What's the big missing ingredient in the Danish discourse on the place for our businesses and startups in the world? You guessed it. And I write about it. madsjvk.substack.com/p/the-unpopu...
madsjvk.substack.com
The Unpopular Ambition To Win
Your competitors and the world as such do not care about your laid back attitude
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 14/09/2026
I often see founders share stories about all the different aspects of work that goes into the daily grind, and how nobody prepared them for it. Well, helping them prepare for it is no small feat either. Those who think of people in the ecosystem as bureaucrats really have absolute no idea. 2/2
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 14/09/2026
Back in the saddle for a new week trying to help researchers move their research and inventions from the lab to the market. 1/
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 11/09/2026
In the immediate aftermaths of the attacks when it became clear that the leader was an Egyption, I remember feeling exposed and in the total wrong place at the wrong time. Selfish, perhaps, and of course nothing happened. But it just goes to show the state of shock, we were all in.
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Reposted by Mads Vad Kristensen
Henrik Føhns @fohns.dk · 11/09/2026
I was at work at Børsens Nyhedsmagasin. My wife arrived to present our daughter born less than two months earlier to my colleagues. She didn’t get much attention.
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 11/09/2026
Final run-in of a super busy week before the weekend beckons. Lots of things on my to do list
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 11/09/2026
When it happened, I was on my honeymoon in Egypt of all places, watching the events unfold on a small 14' television set on the deck of the Nile cruise boat, we were on, and struck with horror. I will never forgot. It's one of those defining moments where you remember exactly where you where. 2/2
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Mads Vad Kristensen @madsjvk.com · 11/09/2026
25 years ago today. And what a different way of remembering the attack that in many ways fundamentally shook the world and set us on a different path. 1/
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