Talk to your potential customers and next talk to more of them
Topics: startups, communities, healthcare, innovation
Leo is an expert on creating business opportunities by bringing domains together. He is the founder at westartup – a community of over 3,500 first-time entrepreneurs, co-founders, mentors and investors. As partner in HealthStartup, he organizes acceleration events for startups in healthcare and HackForHealth hackathons designed to create brand-new startups.
Leo is the founder, chief indoctrination officer, business architect, all-around marketing guy, business developer, product manager, copywriter and occasional janitor at westartup – a community of first-time entrepreneurs, co-founders, mentors and investors.
He’s also partner in Healthstartup, organizer of a series of events in Europe that bring together web and mobile entrepreneurs, healthcare professionals, policy makers and investors. HealthStartup also tracks emerging trends in health-tech and builds an international network of healthcare experts and decision makers. Hack for Health brings together a group of enthusiastic software developers, healthcare professionals, designers and project managers for 2 days of intense collaboration on health-related challenges and datasets. It’s a very powerful, efficient and proven way to create innovative solutions to Flemish healthcare problems.
In addition to his work at westartup and HealthStartup, Leo is founder and co-organizer at Bizcamp Belgium. He introduced Startup Weekend in Belgium, and co-organized four Startup Weekend events over the years. He managed the Microsoft Innovation Center’s Boostcamp startup acceleration program and coached over 30 startups. Last but not least, he created BetaInvest – a matchmaking service of BetaGroup that puts startups in direct contact with relevant investors.
Leo Exter holds an MBA in General Management from Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School (Belgium), and a Bachelor’s degree in Marketing from Valdosta State University (USA). He speaks fluent English and Russian, and has a working knowledge of French.
Leo’s career began at The Coca-Cola Company, where he acquired an in-depth knowledge of Consumer Research in a variety of roles in Moscow and Brussels. As a Product Manager at Info2clear – a small company in the sunset years of the dot-com boom he was for the first time exposed to the mysteries of product creation, and took that knowledge with him to his job as the Marketing Manager Europe for Mio Technology. In that role, Leo has created a new brand of portable GPS devices in Europeand led it to the 3rd position in the highly competitive, dynamic market. After Mio, Leo served as Managing Director at the Belgian branch of Trimedia, a Pan-European public relations consultancy. In this capacity Leo provided communications consultancy to clients as diverse as an oil company (LUKOIL), a media buying agency (Mediaedge), and a number of FMCG and Fashion clients.