INTERVIEW
MICHAEL STAUSHOLM
C E O and Founde r of S prou t Wor l d INTERVIEW BY LESLEY SAMMS Please tell us a little about yourself and your background My name is Michael Stausholm and I was born and raised in Denmark. I began my career in the shipping industry, working for A.P. Møller/Mærsk and travelled to Indonesia in 1993, where I lived for 14 years. My greatest interests are green entrepreneurship and sustainability. Was there a moment, person, or place that has influenced you or set you on the journey to where you are now? Actually I’ve got two and they are two early ones. The first one was seeing the plantable Sprout pencil on Kickstarter.com back in early 2013. It was the world’s first pencil that you could plant after use and grow into herbs,
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vegetables or flowers. Wow. Having worked with sustainability for some years, a subject everyone was talking about but no one could really define, the Sprout pencil came along as an amazing tool to illustrate sustainability. The second one was 10 months later when sales were going wild in Denmark and starting to gain traction in Europe also. I was suddenly spending full time on the “project” but still not making money, and a friend advised me to get a real job and worry about my family etc. After careful consideration I had an absolute Eureka moment when I realised that this was such an amazing idea with a patent behind it, and this was something that could really inspire people to make small changes in their everyday lives, and I decided that I would go all in on the Sprout pencil.
