When did Paul Nybo Andersen work at Vitalityguard?

Paul Nybo Andersen worked at Vitalityguard from 2016-2018 as CTO & Co-founder.

Which technologies were used at Vitalityguard?

Adobe, Android Studio, Apache/ NGINX, Apple iWork, Apple Xcode, App Store, Bitbucket, Bootstrap, CSS/ CSS3, Data compliance (GDPR), DPO, Digital Ocean, Final Cut Pro, Forge, Foto (DSLR) + Billed behandling (RAW), Google Play Console, HTML/ HTML DOM/ HTML5, Illustrator, jQuery, JSON, Laravel, LinkedIn Marketing Solution, Mailchimp, Meta Business Suite + Manager, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Azure, MySQL, Photoshop, REST API, Sass/SCSS, SEM+SEO, Slack, Trello, Vimeo, XML, YouTube

Vitalityguard – CTO and Co-founder 2016-2018

Name: Vitalityguard – video
Uploaded: 2018-01-01T00:00:00+01:00
Duration: 2 min 28 s
Description: We ran the Lifeguard platform white-labelled through a joint venture with Dansk Sundhedssikring. Maersk was the biggest client.

Role: CTO & Co-founder
Period: 2016-2018
Now: FIDIMI

Vitalityguard – CTO and Co-founder 2016-2018

Summary

We ran the Lifeguard platform white-labelled through a joint venture with Dansk Sundhedssikring. Maersk was the biggest client.

Description

Six weeks after founding Lifeguard, we set up a joint venture with Dansk Sundhedssikring. The deal was in place almost before our own company had got going. The aim was to deliver Lifeguard's services and platform to Dansk Sundhedssikring's customers as a white-label solution we called Vitalityguard.

Technically, Vitalityguard was the same platform as Lifeguard. The same codebase, the same LifeScore calculation, the same coaching flow – with an entirely different visual identity on top. It is a cheap way into a new market, but it demands that the platform be built so the identity can be swapped without the code forking in two. It was also what later made it possible to split the source code when the partnership was dissolved.

At that time, Dansk Sundhedssikring was new to the market and had experienced potential growth through an aggressive sales strategy. We grew together, and I experienced being given more resources for development. At the same time, we made the back office available, and with all the opportunities this gave us, we were able to focus on core tasks.

This meant that Lifeguard's development and roadmap were transferred to Vitalityguard. It is worth owning: we moved the direction of our own product into a company we only half owned.

That is the hidden price of a joint venture. You gain access to a sales operation you could never have built yourself, and to resources a bootstrapped startup cannot afford – but you pay with control over what gets built when. As long as both parties want the same thing, you do not feel it. It is only when they do not that the price becomes visible.

My Energy

It did not take long before Maersk came on board. A client of that size brought demands on security and documentation that lifted the platform – and an onboarding on an entirely different scale.

To carry it outward we drew up a shared communication strategy we called MyEnergy.

The name outlasted us. Maersk kept MyEnergy running as the umbrella for their whole health programme – still alongside Danica Pension – and later had a standalone intranet built on the brand. It is quietly satisfying: the platform is gone, but the concept held.

The model tested

The zone system and the two-consent model were inherited from Lifeguard, but this is where they were put to the test. Danica's healthcare managers were the ones who acted on the optional consent: they could see personal data on the employees who had given permission, and reach out to those heading for the red zone. Maersk only ever got the anonymised figures for the workforce as a whole.

It is a model that only holds if all three parties respect it. An employer pushing to see individual numbers would have brought the whole construction down. That did not happen – and frankly, it was the single most important precondition for anyone signing up at all.

Splitting up

It worked for two years. Then we started pulling in different directions.

Dansk Sundhedssikring wanted to build broad and slow: more features, larger clients, a platform that could carry their whole portfolio. We wanted to sell what we already had, to whoever would buy it now. Every time the roadmap had to be prioritised, those two wishes were set against each other – and the roadmap sat in the joint company.

The disagreement was about sales strategy, but behind it lay two different economic realities. Dansk Sundhedssikring had capital behind them and could afford to build slowly towards a larger market. Lifeguard was bootstrapped and had to earn money now – not in two years. Neither of us was wrong; we simply could not afford the same thing.

In 2018 Vitalityguard was split in two. An agreement was made on shared source code, and we left with a sum of money to keep Lifeguard running. It was a decent ending – no lawsuit, no locked codebase – and it was only possible because the platform had been built from the start so the identity could be separated from the logic.

Two years later, covid closed the market we had been arguing about.

My tasks

The role was the same as at Lifeguard: I wrote the Laravel code, did the UX and design, and ran the dev team. It was the same platform, after all. What changed was who set the requirements.

VitalitySync

The app followed the same white-label logic as the platform: at Lifeguard it was the Lifeguard app, here it was VitalitySync. The job was the same – to bridge. The chain was long: the wristband only spoke to the manufacturer's own app, Mi Fit, and from there steps and sleep data had to travel on into our platform. VitalitySync sat in the middle and translated.

Maersk

With Maersk came a security regime we had not met before. We had roughly a month to meet – and document – a set of requirements well beyond anything we had imposed on ourselves. It was uncomfortable, but it was also what lifted the platform: demands from a client that size are a free security audit, if you take them seriously.

At the same time we had to onboard large groups of employees at once. That asks something different from taking one user at a time: of the technology, and of the digital support that has to catch the ones who stall.

GDPR

Regulation (EU) 2016/679 was adopted almost as we founded the company, and we had two years to become compliant. That work happened here, under Vitalityguard, where we could afford to have the law firm Bech-Bruun at the table.

We built data protection and privacy into the business processes, the value chain and the product lifecycle, and a technical setup to support it. It was thorough, it was expensive, and it was worth it – not least because Maersk arrived shortly afterwards with demands we could not otherwise have answered.

Resources

In return we got something a bootstrapped startup rarely has: more developer resources and a back office that took the administration. It is hard to overstate what it means not to be doing the bookkeeping and invoicing yourself when you are also the one writing the code.