In January 2024, Natalie Koster and Dr. Carsten von Blohn von Blohn founded the Healthonauts, combining the best aspects of pharma consultancy and agency work, specifically targeting companies in the rare disease.
Now, half a year into the foundation of the business, the founders Natalie Koster and Carsten von Blohn are taking stock:
❓ Reflecting on the past six months, what key milestones and achievements have defined the Healthonauts’ journey?
✔ Carsten: Already in the first months, we won a pitch, and we think it’s due to our unique combination of competencies. At the moment, we work for nine clients, including orphan disease small companies and big pharma, covering not only existing projects from our respective networks but also several new clients.
✔ Natalie: Internally, we have aimed at and achieved transparent and structured ways of working together. Along with the team, we have defined our company values, feedback and learning processes, and we are still in the process of defining key workstreams.
❓ Founding the Healthonauts, was there anything that you didn’t expect?
✔ Natalie: We had anticipated moving more slowly but were surprised by the steep uptake, so we decided to grow the team earlier than we had originally planned.
✔ Carsten: We were convinced of our goals when founding the Healthonauts but were surprised by the immediate positive feedback from our networks on the concept of “the best of two worlds.”
❓ Can you share an anecdote from the founding phase?
😅 Natalie: We wanted to be really quick in setting up the company, so we chose a “neobank” for a company bank account. But it turned out that instead of the anticipated couple of days, the “neobank” needed several weeks to set up our account and did not respond to questions. So we turned to a traditional bank instead, which actually proved to be much quicker.
❓ With a growing team of consultants who all work remotely, how do you keep the group spirit at the Healthonauts?
☕ Carsten: We set up structures and processes to meet and get familiar with each other. For example, we have a weekly coffee chat and we make a point of taking any opportunity to meet in person, e.g., in Hamburg, Berlin, Cologne, or wherever we have more than two Healthonauts in one place.
❓ Are there any learnings that you would give someone else aiming to found a company?
✔ Natalie: My advice is not to underestimate the amount of time you need to spend on organizational tasks – that really eats into your workday! Plus, spend some effort on setting up your structure as this will save you time in the long run.
✔ Carsten: Founding a company is a “people business.” Typically, the strategic approach is strategy-structure-people. In founding a small consultancy business, you need a nucleus of dedicated people and build the business around that founding team.
Product Development, Energy, and Project Management Leader
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