Johan Hedevåg: Ex-Director of Product at Kry, Founding Partner at 4scale Ventures, Professional Poker Player

Things we talked about

• Why Johan first worked as a doctor but then left the hospital because working as a doctor doesn’t scale and it’s hard to have a larger impact
• Why it’s hard to change a hospital from inside
• His first job (scholarship) after leaving the hospital which was about identifying problems in hospitals and how to solve them
• Building his first own Healthtech company producting wearable sensors for patients in hospitals
• Being a professional poker player, doing that during medical school, and what made him stop
• How the knowledge of poker is useful in other aspects of life
• Why he didn’t aim for good “grades” in exams
• What a product manager actually does and how to learn it
• Why many doctors underestimate their usefulness
• “The rise and fall of Europe’s largest telemedicine provider”
• Working at Kry while it grew from 60 to 1.200 people
• In which areas you could build successful Healthcare companies now
• What he’s doing at his own company, 4scale, now
• The pros and cons of venture capital (VC) funding for startups

Links As Mentioned In The Podcast

• Johan on LinkedIn.
• Johan on Substack where he publishes his writing: Big world - Small world and Mini mental models.
• 4scale Ventures: Johan’s company which he co-founded. They support companies to reach their ambitions on growth efficiency and leadership. They also invest in companies and offer consulting and coaching.
• womanly: The female health ecommerce startup which Johan is currently building.
• Kry: Telemedicine company where Johan was the director of product. Kry is available in Sweden, Germany, Norway, France and the UK (slight correction here as I didn’t mention the UK in the podcast).