Aalborg Sustainability Festival 2018

A Look Back at Lyras’ Participation at Aalborg Sustainability Festival 2018

17 September, 2018

Last week, Lyras participated in different events at Aalborg Sustainability Festival, which Centre for Green Transition Aalborg had arranged. The festival has influenced Aalborg Municipality through various events and initiatives with sustainability on the agenda. This year, Lyras was represented in three out of the many green events and initiatives.

Student Talks
Student Talks took place on Aalborg Sustainability Festival’s opening day. Rasmus Mortensen spoke at the event and told about how it was to go from being a student to green entrepreneur. He focused on the challenges that he experienced in the beginning as an entrepreneur. He also talked about he went from being alone with an idea to suddenly involving three co-founders in Lyras. Moreover, Rasmus spoke about cold pasteurization, and the options for implementing Louis in production. He also told about which positive attributes cold pasteurization contributes to as e.g. energy savings and reducing the carbon footprint.

Dreaming of starting your own business with a sustainable angle?
At Aalborg Sustainability Festival, Lyras participated in the inspirational startup event “Dreaming of starting your own business with a sustainable angle?”. Network for Sustainable Business Development North Denmark arranged the event and had two presentations and a workshop on the agenda. Jesper Helleskov Sørensen from SEA presented a “Startup Crash Course” that aimed to inspire newly established startup entrepreneurs to develop their ideas. Subsequently, Rasmus presented how he had started his own sustainable company, and how he became an entrepreneur. In his presentation, he particularly focused on the importance of asking for help from outside sources:

“In the beginning, I did not have any idea about what I was doing, but I was stille confident that my idea needed to be brought out to the world. Then, I started asking for help and had a lot of meetings where I, among others, spoke to a lawyer. My best advice is to reach out if you are in doubt, and remember to ask for help every day.”

Rasmus also emphasized the importance of gathering a team, and how he found his co-founders:

“Last year, I pitched at Løvens Grønne Hule where two guys came up to me to ask if they could help and develop Lyras with me. They are now co-founders. On LinkedIn, we found our third co-founder, because we needed someone who knew a lot about marketing. Suddenly, I got extra hands, which meant that I could focus on the technology and also have fun with other work mates.”

The inspirational startup event finished with a workshop, which was facilitated by Louise Byrge from Aalborg University. The workshop was based on the concept “The Creative Platform” developed by Aalborg University. In interdisciplinary groups, the participants discussed ideas on how to optimize the waste sorting at Nibe Festival. The group with the best idea had come up with a waste sorting app including a point system.

Løvens Grønne Hule
At this year’s Løvens Grønne Hule, Rasmus was a judge together with four business people from Northern Jutland, because he won last year’s competition with his cold pasteurization technology. This year, six different entrepreneurial companies pitched their green business model. They had five minutes to ask questions and provide feedback. The entrepreneurial company ReBuyBaby won with their sustainable luxury baby clothes concept.

This year, Aalborg Sustainability Festival has been very eventful and educational, and we hope that we have contributed to expanding the participants’ horizons regarding sustainable entrepreneurship.