How a 20-year Fortune 500 VP of Operations tested whether his skills could scale tech products — across three SaaS companies on three continents — and proved he could not just survive but excel in startup environments.
20 Years Corporate Operations – VP Ops at Fortune 500
Stockholm, Sweden
Role: Head of Operations / Operations Lead
Duration: 3 terms across 18 months
Henrik had excelled in corporate operations for two decades. He'd built processes that saved millions, led teams of hundreds, and earned the trust of C-suites at Fortune 500 companies. But at 48, a question had been growing: could he excel in a completely different world? Corporate operations meant optimising established systems. Tech startups meant building from scratch — scaling digital products, shipping features, operating at a pace no corporation could match. He wanted to know if his expertise transferred. The only way to find out was to test it.
A Kenyan AgriTech company building a farm management and supply chain platform — scaling from 5,000 to 50,000 farmers across East Africa.
A Nordic HealthTech company building a remote patient monitoring platform — scaling operations for a product serving hospitals across Scandinavia.
A Latin American EdTech company building an online learning platform — scaling operations for a product serving universities across South America.
Each term was a controlled test: different industry, different continent, different scale stage. If Henrik could excel across all three, the answer was clear.
"I'd excelled in corporate ops for 20 years. But could I excel scaling a Kenyan AgriTech platform? Three SaaS products across three continents proved I could not just survive but excel building tech at scale. That gave me confidence to make the leap."
— Henrik, Stockholm
After three terms across three continents, Henrik had his answer. He could excel building scalable tech products. He left corporate and became a fractional COO — advising and operating for four SaaS startups simultaneously. The network he'd built across Kenya, the Nordics, and Latin America fed him opportunities. The proven track record across three products gave founders confidence. Henrik had tested the hypothesis and acted on the result.
Henrik's operations expertise was directly valuable in tech, but only because he learned the product development context that made it relevant.
Three terms across different products gave Henrik certainty before making an irreversible career change. The test was the strategy.
AgriTech, HealthTech, EdTech across three continents — the breadth itself became Henrik's unique value proposition for fractional work.
This hypothetical scenario shows how senior professionals can test whether tech product work suits them before making a permanent move. Your testing ground could start today.