This Founder Raised $55M To End Traditional Research with AI

In the entrepreneurship world, stories often begin in predictable places: classrooms, tech hubs, or corporate boardrooms. Casper Henningsen’s tale, however, takes us to the soccer field.

As a former professional soccer player in Denmark’s top league, Casper pivoted from the high-stakes world of elite sports to the equally demanding landscape of business and startups. At the peak of his career, he was ready to take his life to the next level.

This blog post dives into Casper’s journey, from his early days on the field to building GetWhy, a groundbreaking customer insight company. Along the way, we’ll explore his insights on discipline, resilience, the art of raising capital, and tackling a well-defined market.

Listen to the full podcast episode and review the transcript here.

The Early Days: Chasing a Dream

Born in Denmark, Casper grew up in modest circumstances with his single mother and sibling. Life wasn’t easy, but it fostered a deep sense of imagination and the drive to create a better future. From the age of five, soccer became his escape and his dream.

“I learned to construct a reality I didn’t live in but could feel emotionally,” Casper recalls. He remembers becoming relentless and dedicated to achieving his goal of becoming a professional soccer player.

By 15, that reality became tangible when Casper signed his first youth contract, and by 20, he was playing professionally in Denmark’s highest league. Not quite an adult, he felt like he was developing a superpower, but signing the actual contract wasn’t much like he anticipated.

Casper remembers feeling a sense of responsibility to deliver. But his path was not without challenges. “There were distractions, defeats, and no’s along with different hurdles,” he admits.

Yet his unwavering focus and discipline carried him through. “Only 1% of youth academy players make a living in football. You have to trust your input will compound quality into outcomes.”

The Turning Point: A New Game to Play

At 25, while many players peak financially, Casper found himself reassessing his career trajectory. As he continued to scale through the ranks, teams, and positions, he started to look at the top players. He noted that at 25, most players develop their breakthrough in earning years.

“I was progressing, but not at the pace I needed to compete at the level I wanted,” Casper explains. He could have stayed in the game and used the next 10 years trying to write a new chapter. Or, he could leverage his learning to write a new chapter in the business side of the Champions League.

Casper made the bold decision to pick the second option and hang up his boots. Zooming out to examine the competition and the intense environment of his present career made the choice easier.

From the Field to Consulting

Without a business degree, Casper’s transition to consulting was unconventional since he only had an education in soccer. Most people would typically have a master’s and an MBA before getting recruited by a consulting firm.

However, Casper found a mentor in the founder of Kunde & Co., who recognized the transferable skills he brought from professional sports—discipline, resilience, sportsmanship, self-motivation, and a hunger to learn.

“Elite sports is harder and more intense than business,” Casper shares. “In sports, you must remove friction weekly, or you’ll lose on Sunday. In business, it’s about patience, communication, soft skills to bring people together, and leadership.”

Casper also learned to acquire skills by being more powerful with his input, which wasn’t much different from training and building skills in sports. He understood the direct correlation–that he could be insanely good at something and write a new narrative with enthusiasm and dedication.

During his consulting career, Casper mastered problem-solving. “The ability to break down complex problems and generate momentum among a group was my biggest takeaway,” he says. These lessons would prove invaluable in his entrepreneurial journey.

As Casper sees it, having a skill set and being able to articulate it can result in exceptional success and productivity. Learning to solve problems is like orchestrating an architect and designing solutions for the entire team.

The Leap to Entrepreneurship

As a senior partner in the consulting firm, Casper oversaw multiple units, including one focused on insights. His job was to build an appealing proposition around insights and make that tangible and attractive for the business and its customers.

Over four years, Casper developed a passion for this domain and identified inefficiencies that he believed could be solved. “Living that problem firsthand made me realize I wanted to address it sustainably,” he says. And so, GetWhy was born.

GetWhy: Reinventing Customer Insights

GetWhy operates in the customer insight space, an industry traditionally dominated by service-first approaches. Casper’s company takes a revolutionary path by leveraging technology and advanced models to produce great insights into rich video and unstructured data.

Next, it distributes these insights into decision-making and workflows at the operating units of a company. In this way, GetWhy puts a different proposition to market. They have built the first and only synthetic digital researcher.

GetWhy has a technology stack that replicates the workflow of a researcher. It also has proprietary models to create content in that workflow. Casper underscores that GetWhy does not sell software but delivers long-term advantages and customer experiences at disruptive prices.

Customers pay for the work completed—insights delivered on demand. “Our Digital Researcher can work at night, on weekends, or anytime,” Casper explains. “We charge for the insights it delivers, not the tool itself.” Customers buy a subscription for the amount of work they need.

Lessons from Fundraising

Starting a company is one thing; raising capital for it is another. As a first-time entrepreneur, Casper found fundraising to be one of his biggest challenges. He started by learning to design and construct a long-term cap table.

“The process is brutal, but my biggest learning is to design the narrative of your startup around the problem you’re solving,” he advises. This approach resonated with investors, enabling GetWhy to secure the funding needed to scale.

The company has raised capital worth $50M, including the last series A round of $35M raised by PeakSpan. Casper reveals that the total raise is $55M, including equity and $15M in debt.

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Casper follows the rule that the company should not get into debt if it is operational. Equity is for having a sustainable operating unit, and debt should be used to achieve acceleration and other essential tasks. GetWhy has now scaled to more than 40 employees.

Vision for the Future of GetWhy

Casper envisions a world where companies and consumers or customers are in alignment. If all innovations and products are in sync with the market needs, we can reduce tons of waste and make work meaningful for the company.

Casper sees a company that operates with consumer and customer centricity at the heart of their decision-making. To do that, they need a new insight capable of integrating with companies’ operations.

Reflections on Leadership

Casper’s journey from soccer to startups underscores the power of transferable skills. From discipline and resilience honed in the field to problem-solving and leadership developed in consulting, he has drawn from every chapter of his life to shape his entrepreneurial path.

In Casper’s words: “You can write a new narrative for yourself. If you focus on high-quality input and remain patient, the outcomes will follow.” Entrepreneurs tend to focus more on the finish line and forget about the journey that gets them there. That mindset needs to change.

Casper advises aspiring entrepreneurs to develop the right orientation, be laser-focused, and create an appealing, passionate, and robust narrative. They should embark on their journey and take ownership of their destinies.

Businesses should be built in sequences and with control over the cap table. An ambitious perspective is good, but segmenting into small chapters and completing each before starting with the next is also good.

Entrepreneurs should be brutally honest with themselves when identifying their weaknesses and areas of improvement. Building on these capabilities and developing his leadership skills have helped Casper keep pace personally and grow with the company’s growth.

Conclusion

Casper Henningsen’s story is a testament to the value of adaptability and perseverance. Whether facing down an opponent on the field or tackling a market challenge in business, his philosophy remains the same: trust the process, stay disciplined, and never stop learning.

As entrepreneurs, we can all learn from Casper’s ability to pivot, his focus on problem-solving, and his relentless pursuit of excellence.

Listen to the full podcast episode to know more, including:

• Building a professional soccer career from childhood taught Casper Henningsen resilience, focus, and the importance of a long-term vision.
• Recognizing his limits in soccer at age 25, he transitioned to consulting to maximize his best years and acquire new skills.
• Traits like discipline, grit, and team dynamics from sports proved invaluable in the business world.
• Consulting honed his ability to break complex problems into actionable solutions, a foundational skill for entrepreneurship.
• GetWhy’s synthetic researcher revolutionizes customer insights by delivering large-scale, actionable insights.
• Monetizing “work done” rather than software features aligns directly with client value creation.
• Building investor relationships and crafting a clear vision were critical to securing funding for his first venture.

 

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