Mette Lykke took three major risks on her way to becoming a CEO. They paid off

– Risk and reward. Mette Lykke got three of her most influential jobs in nontraditional ways.

First, the Danish executive quit her stable McKinsey position with plans to become a founder—but no set startup idea. Leaving her 9-5 behind was the motivation she and her cofounders needed to come up with an idea they thought would work—a GPS-enabled fitness app.

Then, Lykke became that startup’s CEO after her cofounder quit and Lykke, then chief marketing officer, realized the company couldn’t afford to hire the caliber of CEO it sought.

Courtesy of Too Good To Go

Today, Lykke is the CEO of Too Good To Go, the food platform that allows customers to pick up grabbags of food products that would otherwise be thrown out at the end of the day. Lykke got that job after learning of the new platform’s existence from a fellow passenger on a bus, who was an early angel investor.

My colleague Orianna Rosa Royle dives into Lykke’s career trajectory in a new piece for Fortune. Lykke’s first startup, the fitness app Endomondo, sold to Under Armour for $85 million in 2015. The company she leads today, Too Good To Go, has 80 million customers, 145,000 participating businesses, and 1,200 employees. Its mission is to stop food waste.

Lykke advocates for others to take leaps of faith the way she has. Quitting a job with plans to become a founder, but without a firm startup idea, might sound extreme. “If it’s going to cost $10,000 or even $100,000 to pursue your dream, I actually think that’s pretty cheap,” Lykke argues, although she acknowledges that giving notice in a decent job market with McKinsey on her resume made her risk a bit easier to stomach.

“At least you really had a go at it,” she adds.

Read Orianna’s full story here.

Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe

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PARTING WORDS

"It's much more common than you think."

—Venture capitalist Jennifer Stojkovic on the harassment she received after rejecting a pitch from a male founder. Her husband, who rejected the same pitch, was instead thanked for his time.