Thomas Petersen (@Hello_World) is a serial entrepreneur and startup expert in Service & Product Design, Innovation, Branding, UI/UX and just generally building great innovative Start-Ups from scratch. He has worked with hundreds of different organizations spanning from early stage startups all the way to large Fortune 500 companies. Thomas also co-founded Hello Group in 2006 which was sold to NOA Group in 2018, while spending time with a company called 80/20 before they were acquired by Square in 2012.

He was the Creative Director at Square for 5 years, where he developed some of the core products and services that exist there today, taking it from a start-up idea all the way until their successful IPO.

He is now the Co-Founder and CEO at First Principle, a Creative Venture Studio focused on starting, helping and funding businesses, including founding several companies such as WeekendHacker and Ghostnote. At First Principle, Thomas and his team help entrepreneurs and corporations create category defining products around the world. Some industry leaders they’ve worked with to build these startups, include: Adobe, Intel, Verizon, HP, Fidelity, Sony, Google, CitiBank, Nokia, Amazon among many others.

In this episode we cover:

-Creative Venture Studios: what they do

-Validating your ideas as quickly as possible

-Ranking idea products that are most profitable

-Underrated growth strategies for startups to utilize when starting off

-The importance of design principles

Subscribe to the School Of Startups Channel on YouTube

Get in touch with Thomas:

Thomas' Twitter

Links and mentions:

First Principle

More About Akeel:

Twitter

LinkedIn