Magnus Rehn is an engineer, turned serial entrepreneur turned coach, investor and advisor. He currently wears many hats, juggling between his many responsibilities masterfully travelling from Sweden to Portugal to Singapore. Early in December 2019, he found his way to Mauritius to visit Turbine and consult with our coaches, incubates and to spark some inspiration amongst Mauritian founders.

To understand the purpose of this visit, it is important to note that one the main value propositions of Turbine is that it is based on the established business model of STING (Stockholm Innovation and Growth). STING is a business incubator & Venture Capital Fund for start-up to seed phases of technology driven, entrepreneurial and fast-growing companies within the international cleantech, ICT and MedTech industries. Magnus’s role at STING is geared towards the sustainability/cleantech sector including renewable energy, energy efficiency, energy storage, water treatment and monitoring, biomass generation and waste management, social/impact innovation and solutions for developing countries.

During the week that he was here, Magnus consulted with our business coaches in order to share and promote the best practices when it comes to coaching start-up founders. He also laid much emphasis on the difference between an advisor, a mentor and a coach. He explains that in contrast to a consultant, advisor or even a mentor a coach’s role is not to advise but to guide the founder’s attention to specific issues and to allow them to find their own path in tackling the hurdles of entrepreneurship. Afterall, it is their company and it every action taken by the company should be the founder’s prerogative.

However, no training is successful until and unless one can make sure that the value delivered is captured. After imparting precious advice to the coaches, Magnus made all of Turbine’s coaches practice their newly learnt coaching skills in order to showcase that guiding a conversation with someone and allowing them to reach conclusions of their own is in fact not easy at all. It requires one to develop an analytical attention when the coachee (person being coached) is speaking. It also requires much patience sometimes to identify what the problem might really be? Is it truly that the business is not functioning up to standards or is it something different, something personal?

By the end of the week, Magnus delivered a well awaited workshop called the Scale Up Workshop. Founders of established startups were invited to come and understand that it takes to scale their businesses successfully. One of the key take-aways from the workshop was that if a founder wants to scale their company, he/she needs to ensure that the processes put in place are scalable. It is certainly acceptable to do certain things at the beginning that might not seem sustainable at first just if the process evolves and becomes better adapted to being duplicated. During the workshop, Magnus also shared important matrices to deeply analyze the different pre requisites in order to be able to scale successfully.

The analysis provides a strategic breakdown of which products are more likely to scale successfully and which are not; it also includes an extensive breakdown of the pre-requisites to scales, from development to marketing to the identification of scaling buddies (strategic partners that allow you to scale) to an analysis of the different markets available to the founder: Every aspect is covered, an accounted for.

This workshop was organized with the hopes of sparking an inspiration and extending the aspiration of Mauritian founders to tackle and explore new markets.

Turbine’s goal is to become the leading entrepreneurs’ hub not only in Mauritius but in the region as a whole. The purpose of a visit like Magnus Rehn’s is to ensure that the budding Mauritian ecosystem bases itself on reputed international standards. As a community of individuals with an insatiable thirst for self improvement, we will be organizing many new activities to spark the right initiatives in the entrepreneurship and innovation industry.