What happened after Tørn — and what I’m doing now
Most of you know me — or have crossed paths with me somewhere along the way.
Some of you know what happened after Tørn. Others don’t.
When Tørn collapsed, I did what I’ve always done after big moments: tried to make sense of it.
Even back in my university days, after every exam when everyone else went out to celebrate, I stayed home, cleared the desk, sorted my notes, and thought about what worked — and what I’d do differently next time.
That habit never left me.
It’s how I process things. I look for patterns underneath what seems chaotic.
After Tørn, I wanted to understand what had really gone wrong.
At first, it looked simple: we ran out of money. Our largest customer left us. We were hit by a downturn in the building and construction industry.
But when I stepped back, I realised that most of these reasons weren’t the root cause — just symptoms.
It’s the same story behind most startup failures.
Around 60–80% of technology-based startups don’t make it past year five. The explanations sound familiar: 42% cite no real or prioritised customer need, 29% run out of cash, 23% point to team misalignment, and 18% to pricing or cost structure issues.
All valid — but most of them trace back to something deeper: lack of strategic clarity.
We were moving fast, but not always in the same or right direction. The model looked solid, but the value development and exchange — and customers’ willingness to pay for that value — wasn’t.
Somewhere in that process, I also realised something else.
This ability I’ve always had — to see patterns in chaos and turn them into clarity and models that I can use to guide my own decisions — wasn’t just how I make sense of things. It was something other founders needed too.
Most rarely get the time or distance to do that kind of thinking, yet it’s exactly what can change the outcome of a company.
That realisation — that I could turn my way of seeing patterns into something useful for others — slowly became the starting point for my new work.
I began working with other startups, and saw the same pattern again and again.
Teams mostly think they only need more funding, more traction, or/and more people.
But what they really need first is clarity — in concept, customers, and business model. Once that foundation is in place, growth becomes not just possible, but predictable.
That realisation turned into my new work.
These days, I advise post-MVP startups through short, focused sprints — helping teams land a clear strategy and go-to-market, understand why customers really buy, and design small, quick experiments that lead to real traction.
It’s the process I wish I’d had myself in 2022.
The more teams I work with, the more rewarding it becomes — both for them and for me.
There’s always that moment when things click and a founder and leadership team realise, “Now we see it — let’s double down on what actually works.”
That moment never gets old.
Going forward, I’ll be sharing short reflections from my advisory work — patterns I see, lessons that keep repeating, and thoughts that might help founders or investors spot blind spots earlier.
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You can read more about my work at anjali.no, and feel free to forward this to anyone who might find it relevant.