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Marten Mickos

@martenmickos.bsky.social
896 followers 69 following 968 posts

CEO in the service of AI startup CEOs. Former CEO of HackerOne, Eucalyptus Systems, MySQL.

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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
In Germany, it's complicated to start a business. paolino.me/founding-a-c...
paolino.me
Founding a Company in Germany: €11,800 and 7 Months
A timeline of founding a company in Germany: €11,800 spent, two companies registered, 203 days to a VAT ID, and a registration nobody mentioned.
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Great thinking by Reid Hoffman on data centers and AI. reidhoffman.substack.com/p/ai-dual-ma...
reidhoffman.substack.com
AI for All Americans
The current AI debate is failing the American People. AI must deliver economic prosperity for all.
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
What time of year should your fundraise for your startups? The Seasons of Fundraising by Omri Drory of NFX x.com/NFX/status/2...
x.com
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
PMF is not stable anymore, especially for b2b products. www.linkedin.com/pulse/always...
linkedin.com
Always Wartime Now
Or: the 2010s were the glory days, and you didn’t even know it. In the good old days of the pre-COVID era, you could have a good idea for a software product and ride it for a decade.
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Students of Aalto University, students of the world, don't miss the season's first Founder Talk with Vinted's co-founder Milda Mitkuté.
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Don't measure the amount of AI tool usage but the amount of time saved. www.meetsol.com/blog/people-...
meetsol.com
People are the Generative Force in an Organization — Sol
Ask most leaders how their AI investment is going, and you’ll get numbers: adoption rates, hours logged in the platform, seats filled.
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Two alternative email answers: 1. OK 2. No www.entrepreneur.com/business-new...
entrepreneur.com
He Runs a $251 Billion Company and Responds to Emails with Just 2 Letters: ‘I Value Efficiency’
He trained his team to communicate in the same way.
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
AI may make intelligence abundant. It will not make attention automatic. economicsofai.substack.com/p/when-intel...
economicsofai.substack.com
When Intelligence Is Abundant, Attention Is What We Need
How AGI can help us care more for each other
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
The Java Story - finally an official documentary! Must see both for those who were around at the time and those who weren't. Thank you, James Gosling, Kim Polese and everyone else. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqGS...
youtube.com
The Java Story | The Official Documentary
YouTube video by CultRepo
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
How to move at superhuman speed. www.linkedin.com/pulse/team-f...
linkedin.com
The team flies when you are having fun
Superhuman speed With AI, everything digital moves faster. But humans are mammals, not digital creations.
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Happiness in Finland isn’t about feeling giddy. It’s about the absence of worry. www.seattletimes.com/opinion/dont...
seattletimes.com
What can Seattle learn from Helsinki? | Op-Ed
Seattle, where trust in city government has taken hard knocks over a decade of visible struggle, cannot afford many more broken promises.
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Pleasure is from Dopamine, happiness from Serotonin. jordanshlain.substack.com/p/just-one-t...
jordanshlain.substack.com
Just One Thing! Happiness Is Not Pleasure
How to move from instant gratification to deep life satisfaction
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
People who don't take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. - Peter Drucker
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
How to know what kind of software to build, through Deductive Discovery www.deductivediscovery.com/p/why-produc...
deductivediscovery.com
Why Product Discovery Keeps Failing For Complex B2B SaaS
Product discovery treats three different activities as one. For complex B2B software, that confusion leads to expensive trial and error labelled as “best practice.”
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
"We propose a philosophy based on individual empowerment as the source of prosperity," says Mark Zuckerberg. Sounds good, but - remind me again - what philosophy has been guiding Facebook for the last ten years? about.fb.com/news/2026/08...
about.fb.com
The Future is for Everyone
A letter from Mark Zuckerberg on the path to a positive AI future.
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
A new mentorship program by Women in Revenue: womeninrevenue.org/mentorship/
womeninrevenue.org
Thrive - Mentorship | Women in Revenue
Mentorship Program Women in Revenue’s Mentorship Program connects women to share guidance, expertise, and support that fuels personal and professional growth. Join us Share your experiences, 
gain new...
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
China produces a third of the world's electricity - by far more than any other country. Per capita, 16 countries produce more.
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
AI factors are likely responsible for roughly one-third of the recent economic growth in the US, according to Michael Pearce, an economist at Oxford Economics.
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Start at the age of 18 and make half a million dollars hunting vulns. Also learn what university studies or MBAs can't teach you. www.linkedin.com/pulse/road-t...
linkedin.com
The Road Not Taken: What 10 Years and $500,000 in Bug Bounties Taught Me
At age 28, after more than ~10 years and earning ~$500k USD across HackerOne, Bugcrowd and other platforms through bug bounties, it was time to share some thoughts. Below are my absolute raw thoughts ...
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Simple: When you remediate a vulnerability it stops being one. The trick is how to get from finding to fixing - fast. www.hackerone.com/blog/fixing-...
hackerone.com
Fixing the Fix Gap: Introducing H1 Remediation | HackerOne
Validated findings shouldn't stall in a backlog. H1 Remediation delivers source code-informed fix plans directly to your engineering team, automatically.
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
San Francisco remains the most beautiful and consequential city on the planet, and tech reshaped SF in ways that have caused real harm. Both things are true at once. www.christofwittig.com/post/8234024...
christofwittig.com
San Francisco, On the Edge, Still Mine
I just finished Jonathan Weber's City on the Edge, his history of the last few decades of San Francisco. It's a good book, and an unsettling one, because I've lived more than two-thirds of that...
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Sales is changing: 1. Run the business in real time 2. Make every seller an advisor for innovation 3. Redesign revenue workflows 4. Turn customer signal into company advantage www.linkedin.com/pulse/sales-...
linkedin.com
Sales as we know it is over. That’s a good thing.
Sales isn’t going away. The way we’ve been running it is.
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Sprint Coordinator for Aalto Founder School. This role is for someone with high agency, strong execution skills, and ambition to grow. www.aalto.fi/en/open-posi...
aalto.fi
Founder Sprint Coordinator | Aalto University
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Four amazing mathematicians under 40 stand out in harmonic analysis, o-minimality, symplectic geometry, and partial differential equations. www.mathunion.org/imu-awards/f...
mathunion.org
Fields Medals 2026 | International Mathematical Union (IMU)
For his work in partial differential equations, including the rigorous derivation of the Boltzmann equation from hard-sphere dynamics for rarefied gases, the derivation of wave kinetic equations from nonlinear dispersive systems, and probabilistic approaches to nonlinear Schrodinger dynamics.
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Cold calling is dead, but the phone is alive salesandmarketing.com/cold-calling...
salesandmarketing.com
Cold Calling Is Dead, But the Phone Is Not
You have to earn the right to continue a conversation. You do not deserve five minutes because somebody happened to answer the phone. You earn the first 30 seconds, then you earn the next part of the ...
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Excellent blog posts on software pricing for AI solutions drsalonen.com
drsalonen.com
Dr. Petri I. Salonen — Where AI Meets Business Strategy
Pricing strategist, author, and educator writing on AI monetization, software pricing, and the business of technology.
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Founders, initially you own 100%. When you are ready for a liquidity event, you own 10%. Bootstrapping would've kept you at 100%. So go for VC funding only if it allows you to produce more than 10x the bootstrapped business.
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
The Norwegian case for mediocracy: What happened when an aspiring American tiger mom came face to face with Norway’s ‘good enough’ model. (Behind paywall) www.ft.com/content/0fe0...
ft.com
The Norwegian case for mediocracy
What happened when an aspiring American tiger mom came face to face with Norway’s ‘good enough’ model
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
Help for Nordic startups going to America nordusgroup.com
nordusgroup.com
Nordus Group — Helping Nordic Companies Enter and Scale in the US
Nordus Group provides strategic advisory for Nordic companies expanding into the United States. Founded by Henrik Johansson, a Swedish-born entrepreneur with three decades of US market experience.
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
50 leading CROs www.rox.com/50-cros
rox.com
Top 50 CROs Redefining Revenue Growth
Our list of 50 CROs pioneering revenue growth in the AI era.
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
Five traps when pricing Agentic AI products www.linkedin.com/pulse/five-a...
linkedin.com
The Five AI-Agent Pricing Traps I Keep Watching Software Vendors Walk Into
There is a specific kind of silence I have learned to recognize over the years. It settles into a conference room late in a working session, right after a founder has walked me through their impressiv...
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
With $188 billion in valuation, Databricks is signaling they can reduce your AI cost if you let them handle all your data. www.databricks.com/company/news...
databricks.com
Databricks is Raising a Strategic Round of Funding at a $188 Billion Valuation
The new capital will drive AI innovation across Unity AI Gateway, Genie, and LakebaseSAN FRANCISCO, CA — July 16, 2026 — Databricks, the Data and AI company, today announced strategic funding at a $18...
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Xi doing a better job than Trump on the global arena www.pewresearch.org/global/2026/...
pewresearch.org
People in Many Countries Now View China More Positively Than the U.S.
Views of China have improved recently while views of the U.S. have worsened, to the point where China is now seen more positively than the U.S. in most countries surveyed.
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
The Four Quadrant Weekly System. Don’t let your calendar dictate your focus. buildtoscale.substack.com/p/reactive
buildtoscale.substack.com
Get Out of Reactive Mode!
Don’t let your calendar dictate your focus
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Learning about real-world asset tokenization. www.tradingview.com/news/cointel...
tradingview.com
The 5 types of real world assets being tokenized fastest onchain
Standard Chartered head of digital assets research Geoff Kendrick predicted in a recent research note that assets in DeFi could reach $2.7 trillion by 2030.He said that, currently, only 3% of stableco...
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Reposted by Marten Mickos
akshay oppiliappan @oppi.li · 12/07/2026
i am @localfirstconf.com, come say hi! we've just restocked the merch desk, grab tshirts/stickers!
me holding up a tangled tshirt at localfirst conf
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Erling Haaland grew up in a low-cost, high-participation system of youth sports that couldn’t sound any more radical to American ears. “It was always that everybody should play equally—that everybody should have fun. Winning matches at a young age was not important.” www.wsj.com/sports/socce...
wsj.com
This Nation Breaks Every Rule of U.S. Youth Sports—and Built a World Cup Monster
Norway’s Erling Haaland is one of soccer’s most fearsome and competitive stars. He grew up in a place where winning and losing hardly mattered.
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
How to Repair the World. by Mike Olson on his blog Not a Tech Bro not-a-tech-bro.ghost.io/how-to-repai...
not-a-tech-bro.ghost.io
How to Repair the World
I've just finished an excellent book by Theo Baker called How to Rule the World. Baker begins his book in the Fall of 2022, when he was a newly-admitted freshman at Stanford University. He opens with...
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
The President is right that his tariffs are at work—in destroying U.S. jobs and raising prices. The U.S. has lost some 75,000 manufacturing jobs since January 2025. -- the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal www.wsj.com/opinion/how-...
wsj.com
Opinion | How Trump’s Tariffs Really ‘Work’
He hails Toyota’s investment, but what about the higher costs and manufacturing job losses?
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
VitaeMaxx started in response to a large number of international students requesting our help to enter the US job market. vitaemaxx.com
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
15 building blocks in basketball coach John Wooden's classical Pyramid of Success coachwooden.com/pyramid-of-s...
coachwooden.com
Official Site of Coach Wooden
The Official Site of Coach Wooden
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Three primary categories for secular growth: 1. Foundational Technology 2. Replacement Product, Existing Market 3. New Product, New Market AI fits 1 and 2 and 3? www.osterweis.com/insights/AI-...
osterweis.com
AI Is a Secular Growth Unicorn
AI is both a foundational technology and the ultimate replacement product, which we believe explains why it has attracted unprecedented levels of capital and why the investment opportunities are so co...
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
90 new unicorns so far this year techcrunch.com/2026/07/05/a...
techcrunch.com
Almost 90 new unicorns have been minted so far this year — here they are | TechCrunch
With AI igniting an investor frenzy, more startups are achieving unicorn status every month.
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Always listen to Linus Torvalds when you get a chance www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKkE...
youtube.com
Keynote: Linus Torvalds in Conversation with Dirk Hohndel
YouTube video by The Linux Foundation
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
Concentration: 13 companies out of a thousand publicly listed tech companies command 40% of all tech revenue, 56% of total market cap, and 65% of all industry net income. (From linkedin posting by Lak Ananth of N47)
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Reposted by Marten Mickos
Eric Ries @ericries.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
A founder told me he had to pause one of my early podcast episodes halfway through. Here's what he saw.
Reader quote card: Mark Selleck, founder of 360Insight, recalls pausing an Eric Ries podcast episode in complete shock at hearing that the purpose of corporations is to maximize human flourishing.
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Live on an island. Build a global company. Fintech company Enfuce is a rapidly growing global credit card and payment processor. www.alandliving.ax/en/portrait/...
alandliving.ax
I can build a global company even though I live on a small island
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
WSJ: What Kind of Leader Makes for a Great President? 1. The importance of character 2. The importance of soft power 3. Compromise with principles 4. Learning from failure www.wsj.com/politics/pre...
wsj.com
What Kind of Leader Makes for a Great President?
We asked historians, journalists and others to identify one lesson from the legacies of the most-consequential president and first ladies.
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Claude Science with over 60 curated skills and connectors pre-configured for genomics, single-cell, proteomics, structural biology, cheminformatics, and more. www.anthropic.com/news/claude-...
anthropic.com
Claude Science, an AI workbench for scientists
Claude Science is a customizable app that integrates the tools and packages researchers most often use, produces auditable artifacts, and provides flexible access to computing resources.
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Marten Mickos @martenmickos.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Who needs the World Cup when there are the Swamp Soccer World Championships? suopotkupallo.fi/en/
suopotkupallo.fi
Swamp Soccer World Cup
Register now tournament service The rules of Swamp Soccer differ significantly from traditional football, and the unique playing field—a swamp—makes the game a completely different experience.
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