Heartcore’s Foundational Principles

At the heart of our devotion to founders and their journey are our three core values: truth, love, and growth.

• Truth: we believe in a shared understanding of reality. We believe in honesty. We believe in integrity, transparency, clarity, accountability. Only truth can be a real foundation for trust.
• Love: we believe in kindness, in magnanimity, generosity, and compassion. We believe in respect, for others and for creation. We believe empathy and humility are at the heart of leadership.
• Growth: we believe in the joint pursuit of excellence, and that to be is to strive. Growth may be an organizational imperative for our portfolio companies, but at its core is the personal journey of our entrepreneurs from startup founders into world-class leaders of category-defining companies.

Truth, love, growth: all else follows.

Founders first. Always.

1. No fear, no greed.
2. We’re the coach, not the athlete.
3. “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.”¹
4. Energy attracts like energy.²
5. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”³
6. “Love people, not things. Use things, not people.”⁴
7. Ask, don’t tell.
8. “Be gentle and you can be bold; be frugal and you can be generous; avoid putting yourself before others and you can become a leader among men.”⁵
9. The best way to teach is to listen. The best way to lead is to be.
10. “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”⁶
11. “Great product wins. Great product is the result of great execution. Great execution is the result of great teams.”⁷
12. “Two things destroy companies: mediocrity, and making it all about yourself.”⁸
13. Every person we meet is our student and our teacher.⁹
14. Face conflict forthrightly in the present.¹⁰
15. The only constant is change.¹¹
16. Every situation is an opportunity for growth.¹²
17. Do or do not; there is no try.¹³
18. Noli timere messorem.¹⁴
19. Make something people want. But also: do something that matters.¹⁵
20. “Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody is going to die.”¹⁶
21. “Let’s roll.”¹⁷

Much love,

Team Heartcore
Copenhagen, Paris, Berlin
February 2019

[1] Antoine de Saint-Exupery (The Little Prince)

[2] Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (iPEC)

[3] Winston Churchill

[4] Spencer W. Kimball

[5] Lao-Tzu

[6] Viktor Frankl (Man’s Search for Meaning)

[7] Bill Campbell

[8] Halt and Catch Fire, S01E03

[9] iPEC

[10] Jordan Peterson

[11] Heraclitus (Cratylus, Plato)

[12] iPEC

[13] Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back

[14] “Don’t fear the reaper”, Sir Terry Pratchett, Knightly Motto

[15] With apologies to Y Combinator

[16] Rick and Morty, S01E08

[17] Todd Beamer, UA93, September 11, 2001