Henrik Werdelin
Entrepreneur and startup studio founder who cofounded BARK and Prehype, the studio behind companies including Ro and Audos.
“There's a difference between building a product and building a business… I think what most people find when they build a product is that that doesn't make them a business. That just makes them a cool website that nobody might ever see.”
Mostly Human with Laurie Segall · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · November 2026
Context
Asked how his platform Audos works for a newcomer, Werdelin says AI coding tools have made building a product easy. The hard part, which Audos focuses on, is finding a customer and a problem and getting traction.
Transcript
…And so I don't think it's one or the other, but I do think it's important that both stories are available. And so I've read a lot about these one people unicorns. I think it's intellectually interesting. I think it's better for society if we can also make a million people make a million dollars.
…are like, what are they talking about? Like, how exactly does it work? Like, if you could, like, I pretend I know absolutely nothing and I go and I am a small business owner and I want to start a company based on my expertise. I just don't really know how. How exactly would I go about using Autos?
…between building a product and building a business. I think what we made a bet on a few years ago was that building a product would increasingly be easier. And I think that bet has really paid off. I think after Claude Code, it became clear that a lot of the foundational models now build code incredibly well. And so I think there's a lot of different places where you can go and build a product. I think what most people find when they build a product is that that doesn't make them a business. That just makes them a cool website that nobody might ever see. And so what we do is that we try to take people by the hand and then walk them all the way through the whole path of saying, I don't know what to come up with yet. Let's kind of like figure out a customer you'd like to serve. We have this framework called the five Ps, which is basically ways where you can kind of figure out who might be a good customer for you to serve. We wrote a book about it…
Wow. That's super interesting. And it just, it's almost just kind of like a, you know, and it's hard to explain it to people who are listening and can't see it, but it is. It's like a co-founder that kind of takes you through like as if you had a group of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors…
For sure. And I think that is the big point. Now, this doesn't make it easy peasy, right? Like I think a lot of people build stuff and then interesting happens when you go from idea to actual execution. Like I was helping somebody who wanted to build a business helping people find like a good care…
And so how do the finances work for you guys? Because you're not a venture studio. This isn't a venture capital business. These aren't venture capital outcomes. What's in it for you?
More from Mostly Human with Laurie Segall
