Mette Lykke took three major risks on her way to becoming a CEO. They paid off

– Risk and reward. Mette Lykke got three of her most influential jobs in nontraditional ways.

First, the Danish executive quit her stable McKinsey position with plans to become a founder—but no set startup idea. Leaving her 9-5 behind was the motivation she and her cofounders needed to come up with an idea they thought would work—a GPS-enabled fitness app.

Then, Lykke became that startup’s CEO after her cofounder quit and Lykke, then chief marketing officer, realized the company couldn’t afford to hire the caliber of CEO it sought.

Courtesy of Too Good To Go

Today, Lykke is the CEO of Too Good To Go, the food platform that allows customers to pick up grabbags of food products that would otherwise be thrown out at the end of the day. Lykke got that job after learning of the new platform’s existence from a fellow passenger on a bus, who was an early angel investor.

My colleague Orianna Rosa Royle dives into Lykke’s career trajectory in a new piece for Coins2Day. Lykke’s first startup, the fitness app Endomondo, sold to Under Armour for $85 million in 2015. The company she leads today, Too Good To Go, has 80 million customers, 145,000 participating businesses, and 1,200 employees. Its mission is to stop food waste.

Lykke advocates for others to take leaps of faith the way she has. Quitting a job with plans to become a founder, but without a firm startup idea, might sound extreme. “If it’s going to cost $10,000 or even $100,000 to pursue your dream, I actually think that’s pretty cheap,” Lykke argues, although she acknowledges that giving notice in a decent job market with McKinsey on her resume made her risk a bit easier to stomach.

“At least you really had a go at it,” she adds.

Read Orianna’s full story here.

Emma Hinchliffe
[email protected]
@_emmahinchliffe

The Broadsheet is Coins2Day’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Today’s edition was curated by Joseph Abrams. Subscribe here.

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- A place of their own. As China’s housing market looks down a deep abyss, a historically underrepresented customer base is surging. Single women, who want the economic independence and gender equality that comes with owning a home, are packing into apartments and houses in a reversal of gender norms. New York Times

- Pressure for parity. Norway’s wealth fund is upping demands for more women on the boards of companies it invests in. Carine Smith Ihenacho, the chief governance and compliance officer of the fund, said that initial action on this pursuit could involve gender quotas, particularly in Japan. Reuters

- Speaking up. A new study found that for every female speaking part in last year's most popular movies—35% of all speaking roles—there were more than two male counterparts. This disparity hasn’t changed much in recent years, either: 34% of speaking roles were female in 2019 and 32.8% were female in 2008. AP

- In the driver's seat. It’s been nearly 10 years since Mary Barra became the first female CEO of General Motors, a company she joined as an intern. Now, with a decade of CEO experience under her belt, she sees a future where GM is more tech-heavy, cars are powered by A.I., and the sales process is better adapted to female customers. Cosmopolitan

ON MY RADAR

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An open-source platform brings circular tools to designers in Africa Vogue Business

PARTING WORDS

"It's much more common than you think."

—Venture capitalist Jennifer Stojkovic on the harassment she received after rejecting a pitch from a male founder. Her husband, who rejected the same pitch, was instead thanked for his time.