This is us.
Meet the Startup Company team.
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David Madié
Founder and CEO
david@growthwheel.com
David Madié is the creator of GrowthWheel and the founder of Startup Company.
As a serial entrepreneur since the age of 15, he never wrote a business plan for any of the businesses he started and grew in Europe, North America, Africa, and Asia. His pioneer work in creating sustainable IT businesses and transfer of know-how in developing countries earned him in 2002 an inclusion among the top 100 Global Leaders of Tomorrow selected by the World Economic Forum.
Since the launch of Startup Company in 2005, he has advised thousands of entrepreneurs, start-ups and growth businesses, taught 300+ workshops and seminars, trained and certified over 500 business advisors, professors, and incubator managers, and written 30+ articles in select entrepreneurial magazines.
He is a regular keynote speaker at entrepreneurship conferences and colleges, where he promotes the only way great entrepreneurs start or grow a business: by making decisions and taking action.
Ada Stein
Partnership Relations Manager
ada@growthwheel.com
Ada Stein discovered her love for entrepreneurship while attending a Venture Capital conference in New York City in 2006. After a diverse work history in business development, media, education, tourism and recreation, Ada earned an MBA at Copenhagen Business School, where at the same time she was winning several awards in the 2007 VentureCup Denmark business plan competition. She has built founding teams around three business ideas and experienced the real-life struggles of starting a company with little or no funding.
Ada works as Partnership Relations Manager at Startup Company, using her international experience and her extensive European and US network to build and nurture strong partnerships.
She earned her BA from the University of Pennsylvania in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.
Ditte Maria Andersen-Hoel
Office Manager
dittemaria@growthwheel.com
Ditte Maria is Startup Company’s office manager. She stays on top of everything from printing materials and accounting to organizing international certification courses and events.
Ditte Maria received her training as a hotel receptionist at Copenhagen Admiral Hotel, and shortly after became the Administration Assistant of Director of Food and Beverage at Copenhagen Marriott Hotel. In recent years she has worked as a marketing coordinator at the publishing house Benjamin Media and as an event coordinator in the famous Danish department store, Magasin Du Nord.
Diana Aguilar
Design & Project Assistant
diana@growthwheel.com
Diana works with our graphic design and strategy, both in branding and tools, from the idea phase through to sending out the final product to our clients. Her passion is to add value to products and services through innovative design improvements that clarifies the Startup Company vision and method. These improvements also help our certified business advisors in communicating and facilitating change more easily for their business owners and entrepreneurs. With Spanish as her native language, Diana also oversees the translation and editing of our material for our Spanish speaking clients in Europe and the Americas.
Diana holds an MA in Design Management at Instituto Europeo di Design in Barcelona, and a BA in Industrial Design and Design Management from the National University of Colombia.
Sophie Rasmussen
Project Manager
sophie@growthwheel.com
Sophie has worn many different hats at Startup Company since her first project in 2007. A trainer at heart, she has previously trained entrepreneurs at University of Copenhagen, Niels Brock Business School in Denmark, the Knowmads in the Netherlands, KaosPilots International, as well as run train-the-trainer programs and various other workshops for Startup Company.
Currently she is engaged in New York in quality assurance of Startup Company’s concept and communication, applying user-driven innovation to the tools based on anthropological studies.
She holds an MSc in Social Anthropology from London School of Economics and a BA in anthropology from University of Copenhagen.
Board of Directors
Torsten Hvidt
Besides from his interest and expertise in corporate strategy and management, Torsten has a passion for history, philosophy, politics, literature, music, and sports. After eight remarkable years with international management consulting companies, he co-founded CoCoCo, now Quartz+Co, in 2002.
Torsten has a broad range of competences specializing in strategy development for international retail chains and branded manufacturers, advising private equity funds and integrating carbon and corporate strategy – placing carbon management on the strategic agenda.
At Startup Company, Torsten uses his remarkable track record to help realise the potential of GrowthWheel.
Torsten holds an MSc in Strategy & Leadership from Aarhus School of Business and attended MBA courses at Yonsei University in Seoul in the process.
Jonas Egebart
Jonas Egebart is an experienced entrepreneur who has started several successful businesses on his own, before connecting to Startup Company in 2009.
His previous businesses include Whyse – a consulting agency working in the field of health technology and quality assurance – and an Internet company that ended up having 6 employees before he decided to sell it after 8 years to make room for other business activities.
Jonas is endowed with exceptional analytical skills that make him capable of detecting the potential in various business ideas and business concepts. He also engages himself in the continuous development and optimization of business models. In addition, he possesses great IT and internet know-how and has utilized these tools in the realization of several companies and products.