Henrik is 62 years old and started out his career in engineering, but quickly got bored. He ended up joining his family tea company, which he later turned into a private investment company with his brother. They did their first early-stage investment in 1995 when they learned about this new thing called “The Internet”. In 1999 Henrik and his brother sold off the tea business. He currently lives on a farm with his wife, three dogs, a cat and six horses.
1. Walk us through your morning routine. (what time do you wake up, do you dive right into work or no, coffee, etc.)
I am woken up by my three dogs jumping on to the bed at around 7 am. Once I am up, I feed the dogs and horses, read the news, have a good breakfast and then take my dogs for a 1-hour walk.
2. Do you have an exercise routine?
On top of my two daily long walks with the dogs I try to do 1-2 hours of cardio or strength training every day. I’m lucky to have my own gym. I made it my 60-years-old-challenge to complete the Swedish Classic, which is to do a 90 km X-country ski race, a 320 km bicycle race, a 30 km trail run race and a 3 km open water swim race during the same year.
3. What is your favorite way to learn new things?
I read newspapers.
4. Maurten is used by the best endurance athletes today – Jan Frodeno, Eliud Kipchoge, Kilian Jornet, and many more – how involved are Maurten athletes in the testing and product development?
Our elite athletes are very important for product testing and development. Kenenisa Bekele used our prototype Drink mix at Berlin Marathon 2016. That was 8 months before launch. By the way, he won and set a 2-minute personal best. That was the take-off moment for Maurten. The different gel prototypes we had were tested by Swedish elite athletes for more than two years before launch. At least 4 Olympic Golds, in Tokyo two years ago, were taken using our prototype Bicarb System. Kilian Jornet used it at Ultra Trail Mont Blanc last summer. We launched the product in February this year.
A fun fact is that we set out at the beginning, back in 2015, to develop a technology that protected the teeth from the sugar in an energy gel. Through our first athlete testings we found out that it also protected the stomach, which turned out to be a much bigger issue for most endurance athletes and aslo a stronger USP and we quickly pivoted.
5. Maurten is now partnered with Ironman, Boston Marathon, and Berlin Marathon – how did you select which race organizations to partner with and are there other races you are interested in partnering with in the future?
To be honest they all three came to us with the idea for sponsoring. They want to be associated with our brand, which is fantastic. It works well for us to partner with big events with a global audience. We decided when launching in 2017 to try to go global directly. We opened up our web sales in the US shortly after Europe. We therefore never had the resources and personnel to be the local sponsor at smaller events, which is what most of our competitors do. All six Major Marathons are interesting for us. We have considered Tour de France and Vuelta de Espana, but up until now they have been too expensive for us.
6. Which Maurten product was the most exciting to launch and why?
We like to solve problems for our customers. With the hydrogel+carbohydrates we made it possible to take in more energy without GI distress during endurance training and competition. The most exciting though is the launch we made recently, the Maurten Bicarb System, which is hydrogel + bicarbonate. It makes it possible to raise the lactate acid threshold at high intensity exercise. However, bicarbonate is known to cause severe GI distress. We solved the problem. This product will take us beyond endurance sports into almost all other sports.
7. If you could leave one piece of advice for someone younger, what would you share?
Don’t be afraid to change the path in your life. I started out in engineering, then became a tea salesman, then a VC investor and then a farmer, breeding Icelandic horses.
8. Do you have any life mottos or principles you follow?
Life is easier if you only do business with good people.
9. Is there anything that you haven’t done that you still want to do? (this can be personally or professionally)
Professionally I want to, in 3-5 years, make a beautiful exit for Maurten where all our very loyal stakeholders including employees, investors, and partners are happy.
Personally, now that we moved to a smaller farm and gone from 80 horses to 6 horses, I will pick up my golf again and try to come back to the handicap I had in my thirties.