Momentum - The Fast Track to Entrepreneurship Program: Focus Session
Description
Dive into customer discovery and learn how to turn curiosity into clarity. In this Momentum session, Hortense will guide you through the process of understanding the people behind your idea — their needs, motivations, and challenges. Through hands-on exercises and design tools, you’ll define your business problem, uncover meaningful insights, and refine your concept based on real user perspectives.
Using frameworks like the Value Proposition Canvas, you’ll learn how to test assumptions, validate your offer, and translate insights into a concept that truly resonates with your audience. This is where purpose meets evidence — where your idea becomes something people genuinely want and need.
By the end of this session, you’ll walk away with a clear, user-informed business model and the foundation of a compelling pitch deck that reflects both vision and validation.
Why should you join?
• Customer Discovery: Learn how to research, interview, and listen to your audience effectively
• Evidence-Based Design: Turn insights into clear opportunities and solutions
• Strategic Tools: Apply the Value Proposition Canvas to refine your business concept
• Market Fit Readiness: Align your purpose with real customer needs and market realities
Speaker Bio
Hortense brings a human-centered and systems-aware approach to innovation and venture creation. She helps teams design ventures that are not only scalable, but truly meaningful — grounded in purpose, behavior, and societal change.
Her work begins with a powerful question:
What’s shifting in society, and what new behaviors and needs emerge as a result?
Specializing in the early stages of venture development, Hortense guides teams through trend exploration, problem reframing, strategic storytelling, and co-creation with users and stakeholders. Her philosophy is built on four guiding principles:
Behavior as a design material
Purpose before growth
Ecosystems over silos
New values as a starting point
Hortense believes that the most relevant ventures of the future won’t just fill market gaps — they’ll create new meaning in people’s lives and communities.
Specialties: consumer insights, customer journey mapping, behavioral change models, business model design, service design, design thinking, agile methods, usability testing, and trend analysis. https://www.linkedin.com/in/hortensekoster/