Startup consulting · Munich area
I help founders get their startups off the ground.
I'm Henrik Grünfeld, an independent startup consultant in the Munich area. From first email to final handover you work with me directly, and your startup gets my full attention.
Who I am
I got here the unusual way. Seven years as an emergency medical technician, including medical escort work with UN IOM. Then international incident response at Everbridge. Somewhere along the way I started building companies and didn't stop: AIDY Health, IntelliSense, and HG Connect UG, where I now build Kogsy. Technology for aging is a gap I first saw up close as a medic, watching what happens when small signals get missed.
I've pitched on Shark Tank Hungary, and I host "Aging. Growing", an interview series on aging on its own terms.
When I work with founders, it's from that seat: someone who has started companies, run them, and done the unglamorous operational work himself, not an advisor who has only watched from the outside.
What I do
I work with early-stage founders, usually before launch or just after. Not slide decks. Decisions. The expensive mistakes happen early, and most of them are avoidable.
Pressure-test the idea
Before you spend two years and your savings finding out the hard way. We put your idea in front of real customers cheaply and fast, and you decide with evidence instead of hope.
Get to first customers
Cut the version one down to what actually needs to exist, ship it, and sell it. I've done this in hard, regulated markets: health, care, cross-border trade. Places where "move fast" alone doesn't work.
Build the company around it
The unglamorous machinery: entity setup, compliance, operations, selling into the EU. The things that sink startups quietly while everyone is looking at the product.
How I work
- 01
We talk
You tell me where your startup stands and where it's stuck. If I can't help, I say so in the first conversation, not after three invoices.
- 02
We agree on one thing
Small, defined engagements with a clear outcome: a decision reached, a launch done, a problem closed. No open-ended retainers.
- 03
Then you don't need me
I work hands-on, transfer what I know, and the engagement ends. The goal is a founder who can do the next round without me.
Selling into Europe from outside the EU?
My company, HG Connect UG, gets foreign companies legally selling in Europe.
Get in touch
Tell me where your startup stands and where it's stuck. I read every message myself.