Belgian startup Husky on what they learned from the Nordic startup culture
Husky is a Belgian startup, designed to bundle marketers’ needs in one digital tool. It is made by marketers, for marketers. A digital platform like Husky allows you to plan and organize quickly. Managing tasks, projects and communication gets easier. In a recent talk, CEO Peter Desmyttere explains what he learned from the Nordic startup culture.
By Robbe Desmyttere
“To begin with, our brand name. Husky is a metaphor for the three promises we make to our customers: a clear overview (like the scenes in Lapland), insight (provided by the smart dog Husky is) and communication. These promises are the reasons why our tool has been built. A Husky is a hard worker. Not only is the Husky, a sled dog, popular in the Northern parts of the world, our logo was also inspired by Scandinavian design. It aspires minimalism and simplicity. Two values that we try to implement in our way of working. The goal of Husky is to make marketing way easier, and by doing so we want to give our customer a simple and clear tool to work with.”
Putting sustainability first
“Sustainability is a core value in our startup. We did not plan to raise as much money as possible from multiple resources. By limiting our number of stakeholders, we are making it easier to set realistic goals and growing towards being a healthy startup. We have always valued quality over quantity. Marketing planning isn’t new, but the digitalisation of it is. We’re only at the beginning of this trend, so we want to capture this momentum.”
“Focusing on people is the most important factor at Husky. Not only do we have a very warm and open culture (inspired by Hygge), our customers are being comforted by coaching and training with our tool. Our first goal is to inspire marketers. We provide our users with guidance throughout their journey with us. Dealing proactively with the needs of our clients not only gives them a significant advantage but also turns out to be valuable to us. We create a constant stream of feedback, making it possible to optimize our product to the need of every marketer. We believe that the success of technology is not made by the technology, but by the people and processes behind it. We try to translate this into a clear focus on people and services to accompany this.”
“Implementing these values gives us a strong competitive advantage in Scandinavia. Not only is there a big interest in our product coming from Denmark, Sweden and Norway, when Nordic consumers hear about our way of working, focusing on people rather than on processes, they are more eager to work with us. After the Benelux, our home market, Scandinavia is the fastest growing market for us.”
