Startup Notes: Recent Episodes
Gunnar Froh is Founder & CEO of Wunder Mobility. Based in Hamburg, Germany, the startup is one of the globally leading technology providers for new mobility solutions. With its platform, the company enables startups, corporations, and governments in 100+ cities around the world to launch, scale, and analyze shared transport solutions.
Founded in 2014, Wunder Mobility pivoted twice to find its optimal business and operating model. Today, it is the fastest-growing company in its sector in Europe. The tech startup has also successfully raised $70m from notable investors like Blumberg Capital and Piton Capital along the way.
In this episode, Gunnar shares why the founding team decided to pivot Wunder Mobility and how to successfully manage such a wide-ranging task when building a startup.
Gunnar Froh is Founder & CEO of Wunder Mobility. Based in Hamburg, Germany, the startup is one of the globally leading technology providers for new mobility solutions. With its platform, the company enables startups, corporations, and governments in 100+ cities around the world to launch, scale, and analyze shared transport solutions.
Founded in 2014, Wunder Mobility pivoted twice to find its optimal business and operating model. Today, it is the fastest-growing company in its sector in Europe. The tech startup has also successfully raised $70m from notable investors like Blumberg Capital and Piton Capital along the way.
In next week’s episode, Gunnar shares why the founding team decided to pivot Wunder Mobility and how to successfully manage such a wide-ranging task when building a startup.
Katharina Jünger is Co-Founder & CEO of TeleClinic. The Munich-based startup is one of the leading digital health companies in Europe. Its vision is to provide better healthcare for everyone through online doctor visits.
Raised in a family of doctors, Katharina knew early on about the advantage of medical advice that is always available - something that she wanted other people to benefit from as well.
For this, TeleClinic is building a platform that is a digital one-stop-shop for all health-related questions. With its app, it enables simple and secure communication between doctors and patients anywhere in Germany. Like this, patients can consult physicians, get prescriptions, and sick notes in just minutes.
Since the startup was founded in 2015, TeleClinic has raised 9m€ from Digital Health Ventures and renowned Idinvest Partners, which has notable success cases like Onfido and Zenly in its portfolio.
In this week’s episode, Katharina shares how TeleClinic reacted to the COVID-19 crisis and why she thinks that the ongoing pandemic will help the digital health sector to leapfrog five years of market development. You’ll also find out about her biggest learning as a first-time entrepreneur and how to navigate in a highly regulated market.
This week, we have a special episode with some great entrepreneurial insights from Silicon Valley. We had the pleasure to talk to Ilya Volodarsky, Co-Founder & President of Segment, a few months ago. Once close to failure, the Y Combinator-backed tech company was pivoted twice on its journey to unicorn status.
Based with its HQ in San Francisco, Segment is the world’s leading customer data platform (CDP) that democratizes access to reliable data for all teams and offers a complete toolkit to standardize data collection, unify user records, and route customer data into any system where it’s needed. More than 20,000 companies like Intuit, FOX, Instacart, and Levi’s use Segment to make real-time decisions, accelerate growth, and deliver compelling user experiences. Amongst others, leading VC firms like Accel, e.ventures and GV (formerly Google Ventures) belong to its investors.
In this episode, you’ll find out how founders can and should use analytics to drive their company towards success.
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Apologies for the below-average audio quality of this episode!
Next week, we’ll have a special episode with some great entrepreneurial insights from Silicon Valley. We had the pleasure to talk to Ilya Volodarsky, Co-Founder & President of Segment, a few months ago. Once close to failure, the Y Combinator-backed tech company was pivoted twice on its journey to unicorn status.
Based with its HQ in San Francisco, Segment is the world’s leading customer data platform (CDP) that democratizes access to reliable data for all teams and offers a complete toolkit to standardize data collection, unify user records, and route customer data into any system where it’s needed. More than 20,000 companies like Intuit, FOX, Instacart, and Levi’s use Segment to make real-time decisions, accelerate growth, and deliver compelling user experiences. Amongst others, leading VC firms like Accel, e.ventures and GV (formerly Google Ventures) belong to its investors.
In next week’s episode, you’ll find out how founders can and should use analytics to drive their company towards success.
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Apologies for the below-average audio quality of this episode!
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Olivier Ramel is Co-Founder & CEO of Kymono. The Paris-based startup has developed into Europe’s leading „culture design“ company. As its core product, Kymono offers customized clothing for startups that is affordable, high-quality, and of the highest ethical standards. Companies like Airbnb, Zenly, Google, and LVMH are already wearing its clothes. Kymono’s ultimate vision goes further though: It wants to help its clients to infuse a company’s particular spirit into every object and space like their office.
Not even 30 years old, Olivier is a true young serial entrepreneur. Already while he was a student, he started his entrepreneurial endeavours. Before co-founding Kymono together with The Family in 2017, he has started and led 4 other startups.
In this episode, we talk with Olivier about his journey as an entrepreneur, why company culture is so important, and how to land your first customers.
Martin Bell is a global startup advisor, angel investor, and Founder & CEO of Bell Ventures. He advises corporates, investors, governments, and start-ups. He is a thought leader and a keynote speaker on the topic of company building within organizations.
Martin was previously with Rocket Internet and helped to build ~50 companies. At Rocket Internet, he was the chief architect of a 100-day launch process through which he took 20 companies. Moreover, he led more than 100 due diligences for 25 growth-stage companies and was an interim executive in 5 companies, including great success cases like Zalando, Delivery Hero, and Foodora.
In this episode, we talk about Martin’s journey in the startup world and dive deep into his „100 Task Playbook“ for setting up, launching, and scaling a tech company.
Thomas Wilke and Alex Meyer are the founders and General Partners of VC firm 42CAP. Based in Munich, they are currently managing two funds with a focus on seed-stage investments. Their portfolio includes investments into startups like Kaia, CrossEngage, and MoBerries.
Thomas has a vast background as a technology & product leader for complex marketing and e-commerce applications. He was a founder of eCircle, which was sold to Teradata in 2012.
Alex has a longstanding experience in scaling SaaS companies and exec-level M&A transactions. He was the initial VC investor in eCircle and quickly after that joined the company as its CFO.
In this episode, Thomas and Alex tell us about their journey of building 42CAP from scratch over the last years. Among others, we discuss their VC approach and outlook on the current market for tech investments.
Since 2014, Sebastian Stricker has been a true trailblazer of social entrepreneurship. First, by founding award-winning app ShareTheMeal that collaborates with the UN World Food Programme and helps to feed children in poverty and crisis situations around the world through donations. And for the past two years, by building startup 'share' that is showing that an FMCG business can also create a direct positive social impact.
The concept behind share is simple, yet unique: If you buy one of its high-quality consumer products like snack bars or soap, another one of it gets donated to people in need. The startup’s '1+1' principle is the foundation for the 'social consumption' approach it is bringing to the FMCG industry.
In this episode, we speak with Sebastian about his learnings from building a social FMCG startup. Among others, we talk about mistakes he made, why scale matters, and how luck plays an important role in being successful.
We already once spoke to Sebastian about social entrepreneurship back in 2017 when he was still CEO of ShareTheMeal. Listen to his thoughts back then on why the timing for social startups has never been better here: bit.ly/2uxpxqM
Being a serial founder and investor, Frank Thelen has an impressive track record over the last 25 years with having reached 100+ million consumers in 60 countries, receiving several awards, and becoming not just a renowned keynote speaker but also one of the leading voices of the German startup scene.
As CEO of Freigeist Capital, Frank invests in early-stage tech startups as well as promising companies in the food industry. Notable investments and ventures as a founder include among others ip.labs (sold to Fujifilm in 2008), Scanbot, MyTaxi, Wunderlist, Lilium, Pitch, and Little Lunch. In 2014, Frank joined the prime time TV show "Dragons’ Den", broadcasted in Germany as "Die Höhle der Löwen", making him known also to the wider public. His bestselling autobiography “Startup-DNA” was published in 2018.
In this episode, moderator Christian Miele (Partner at e.ventures) and Frank elaborate on different exit options, whether founders should have an exit strategy from the beginning or not, the process of selling your startup, and how to negotiate the right price for your company.
“From Scratch” is an exclusive series of masterclasses produced by Startup Notes and McKinsey Digital in Berlin that brings together Europe’s top entrepreneurs, investors, and innovators to give exclusive lectures on digitalization.
Kaya Taner is Co-Founder & CEO of Honeypot. The startup offers an innovative online recruiting platform for the best tech talent out there. It makes it easier for specialists like software developers or product owners to find new jobs that actually match their expectations as companies have to present and pitch themselves to them instead of the traditional other way round.
Recently, Honeypot got acquired by Xing (the leading online business network in German-speaking markets) for a sum of reportedly up to 57m€ only 4 years after it was founded.
In this episode, Kaya shares what it takes to find, hire, and retain the best talents to build world-class tech teams from scratch.
Daniel Stammler is Co-CEO & Co-Founder of Kolibri Games. Founded under the original name Fluffy Fairy Games by a group of IT and Business students in 2016, Kolibri Games is a vibrant mobile gaming studio based in Berlin. The team developed its first title Idle Miner Tycoon in just eight weeks, following the startup’s signature lean approach.
By now, their games Idle Miner Tycoon and Idle Factory Tycoon have cumulatively reached over 100 Million downloads. With a team of more than 100 dedicated engineers, artists, and game designers, the startup is raking in millions in recurring revenue and has been profitable since Day 1 - without having raised any VC funding.
Kolibri Games’ exceptional growth story has been recognized several times: LinkedIn added the company to the 2018 list of Top 25 startups in Germany; Red Herring placed Kolibri Games among the 2018 Top 100 Global and Deloitte awarded the company with a first place in the "Rising Stars" category of 2018’s Deloitte Technology Fast 50.
In this episode, we speak with Daniel about how to create hits in the gaming industry. Among others, Daniel shares Kolibri’s philosophy of developing games closely tied to user feedback and why the startup has declined all offers by VCs so far.
In our 11th #FromScratch masterclass, Johannes Reck (Co-Founder & CEO of GetYourGuide) taught our audience how to grow and scale fast.
Johannes is one of Germany’s premier startup founders. As Co-Founder & CEO of GetYourGuide, he has built a truly global a tech unicorn out of Berlin over the past 10 years. Recently, the travel startup raised one of the largest financing rounds the tech scene in Europe has seen so far by collecting $484m in its Series E led by SoftBank. Based on a personal need, Johannes founded GetYourGuide by chance when he was still at university with the original intention to pursue a career in academia. Having evolved from an idea of a group of students into the leading booking platform for attractions and activities that serves millions of travelers anywhere in the world, Johannes credits especially to the team’s attitude for “infinite learning” at a high speed.
In this episode, moderator Christian Miele (Partner at e.ventures) and Johannes discuss the right timing for starting to grow quickly, share best practices on how to accelerate growth, analyze the roles of product and marketing, and define what kind of people a company needs to scale as fast as possible.
“From Scratch” is an exclusive series of masterclasses produced by Startup Notes and McKinsey Digital in Berlin that brings together Europe’s top entrepreneurs, investors, and innovators to give exclusive lectures on digitalization.
Til Klein is Founder & CEO of Vantik - a Berlin-based PensionTech startup. Launched in 2017, it is the startup’s vision to provide a simple and secure private pension that is as flexible as life itself. Vantik aims to inspire millennials to start saving for their future.
Recently, the promising tech company that was founded by Til and Lara Hämmerle raised a seed round led by STS Ventures, Atlantic Labs, Seedcamp, and prominent business angels (like N26 Co-Founder Maximilian Tayenthal), bringing its total funding amount to over 2m€.
In this episode, we speak with Til about how to use early user feedback to build a great product. Among others, we cover how to design a product depending on your users’ motivation to use it, do customer interviews the right way, and translate feedback into features.
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In our 10th #FromScratch masterclass, Michael Brehm (Founder & CEO of i2x) taught our audience how to build a sales-driven organization.
Michael Brehm is one of the most influential people in the German startup scene. As former Executive Director and investor at social network startup studiVZ, he left his mark already in the early 2000s. Over the course of his career, Michael has built several companies, successfully sold some of them to Google and eBay, and taken one venture public. Michael is one of the cornerstones of the Business Angel scene in Germany, having invested in more than 50 startups and being the launchpad for a lot of entrepreneurs. He is also a Partner at VC firm Redstone, which has helped corporates to invest in over 200 tech startups. In 2017, Michael decided to found a new tech company himself: With i2x, he is leveraging his renowned expertise in sales and marketing, bringing real-time AI-powered speech analytics to companies for improving their sales calls.
In this episode, Michael and moderator Christian Miele (Partner at e.ventures) will elaborate on why sales is a numbers game and how you can build the right sales funnels in an organization. Michael will share best practices of building sales teams including setting up efficient structures and the right KPIs, creating incentive schemes, and how to train and motivate a sales team.
“From Scratch” is an exclusive series of masterclasses produced by Startup Notes and McKinsey Digital in Berlin that brings together Europe’s top entrepreneurs, investors, and innovators to give exclusive lectures on digitalization.
In our 9th #FromScratch masterclass, Tamaz Georgadze (Co-Founder & CEO of Raisin) taught our audience how to build a sustainable high-performance culture.
Backed with more than 170 million EUR by prominent VCs like Index Ventures and corporates like PayPal, the FinTech startup is the leading European marketplace for investments and deposits. More than 10 billion EUR have been deployed by Raisin’s customers throughout Europe since the startup was founded in Berlin in 2013.
In this episode, Tamaz and moderator Jan Miczaika (Partner at HV Holtzbrinck Ventures) - who kindly jumped in for our usual host Christian Miele (e.ventures) on short notice - discuss how to build a sustainable high-performance culture in a startup. The two elaborate on how first employees shape a company’s DNA, how to create high-performing teams and increase internal efficiency, as well as the importance and ways to measure your company culture.
“From Scratch” is an exclusive series of masterclasses produced by Startup Notes and McKinsey Digital in Berlin that brings together Europe’s top entrepreneurs, investors, and innovators to give exclusive lectures on digitalization.
Inspired by numerous requests of our listeners, we created some special episodes based on different key themes. We have put together the best pieces of timeless advice that we found most insightful from all the conversations with founders and VCs that we have published so far.
In our third special episode, we focus on what makes great teams and company cultures. Find out what successful startups do right in this regard - we hope you enjoy!
01 - Uwe Horstmann (Project A Ventures)
[01:33 - 06:12] Who you should hire first when starting a company
[06:13 - 07:31] How to best set up the compensation scheme for your team
02 - Florian Heinemann (Project A Ventures)
[07:36 - 09:35] What type of expert your first marketing employee should be
[09:36 - 11:50] The background and experience your first marketing employee should have
03 - Friedrich A. Neuman (MAKERS.do)
[11:55 - 12:59] The ideal setup of a founders team
04 - Benedikt Franke (Helpling)
[13:04 - 15:20] The conditions for making it work to start a company with a friend
05 - Niklas Jansen (Blinkist)
[15:21 - 21:23] When and how to build a strong company culture
Inspired by numerous requests of our listeners, we have created some special episodes based on different key themes. We put together the best pieces of timeless advice that we found most insightful from all the conversations with founders and VCs that we have published so far.
In our second special episode, we focus on the traits of great founders. Find out what successful entrepreneurs have in common - we hope you enjoy!
01 - Christoph Gerber (Talon.One, former Lieferando)
[01:52 - 03:46] What mindset entrepreneurs should have
02 - Uwe Horstmann (Project A Ventures)
[03:50 - 05:34] What traits and skills of founders stand out for early-stage VCs
[05:35 - 07:57] The #1 trait of great entrepreneurs
[07:58 - 12:02] What startup CEOs must do and what they should not
03 - Julian Riedlbauer (GP Bullhound)
[12:06 - 14:43] Being ahead of the market and knowing when to change roles
04 - Jasper Masemann (HV Holtzbrinck Ventures)
[14:48 - 16:52] How founders leave a lasting positive impression with VCs
05 - Friedrich A. Neuman (MAKERS.do)
[16:56 - 18:47] Which traits founders need to bring to the table
Inspired by numerous requests of our listeners, we have created some special episodes based on different key themes. We put together the best pieces of timeless advice that we found most insightful from all the conversations with founders and VCs that we have published so far. In this first episode, the particular focus is on one of tech’s most important topics: Raising money from venture capital investors. We hope you enjoy!
01 - Pawel Chudzinski (Point Nine Capital)
[01:38 - 03:15] Why tech startups usually need to raise money
[03:16 - 05:02] Criteria that Point Nine Capital assesses when making investment decisions
[05:03 - 06:47] On the importance and best practices of a good pitch deck
02 - Philipp Pausder (Thermondo)
[06:52 - 07:45] Why VCs invest more into complex business models nowadays
[07:46 - 08:19] Large markets that have lots of potential and VCs like to invest in
03 - Julian Riedlbauer (GP Bullhound)
[08:24 - 10:03] How founders can leave a lasting impression with their pitch
04 - Claude Ritter (Cavalry Ventures)
[10:07 - 11:55] Soft factors that influence an investment decision
05 - Jasper Masemann (HV Holtzbrinck Ventures)
[11:59 - 12:59] How founders can differentiate themselves and positively ‚wow‘ VCs [13:00 - 14:03] What not to do when pitching to VCs
06 - Luis Hanemann (e.ventures)
[14:07 - 16:41] Personal learnings of a founder who turned VC
The siblings Pia and Cornelius Frey started Opinary in 2013. The Berlin-based startup has established a new way for users to share their opinion in online content. Its technology helps millions of monthly users to share their view with a tap and understand opinion trends at a glance. Publishing partners (like The Times, HuffPost, and NBC) use Opinary to engage and monetize their audiences, while global brands and corporations boost attention, create high conversions and generate insights.
By now, Opinary has raised 4m€ in funding from renowned investors like Project A, Global Founders Capital, and Rolf Schrömgens (Founder of Trivago).
In this episode, Pia and Cornelius explain what it is like to start a company with a close family member, the way Opinary helps its clients to gain valuable insights, and how they bootstrapped the startup from a side project into one of Germany’s hottest tech companies.
Michael Cassau is Founder & CEO of Grover. The startup is one of Europe’s market leaders in technology rentals, bringing the access economy to the consumer electronics market, by offering a simple, monthly subscription model for the best in tech. Via its website Grover.com, it makes new technology products accessible to everyone while breaking the linear way of consumption, questioning the meaning of ownership, and offering a real alternative to financing.
Since it was started in 2015, Grover has closed 60m€ in funding by prominent investors like Circularity Capital, Commerzbank, Samsung NEXT and Global Founders Capital (Rocket Internet).
In this episode, Michael explains in detail the reasoning behind founding Grover, what the future for the sharing economy holds, and how to find the right investors that share your vision for global growth.
In our 8th #FromScratch masterclass, Josef Brunner (Founding Investor & CEO of relayr) taught our audience how to leverage corporate-startup partnerships.
Relayr enables its clients to digitize physical objects for harnessing the power of the Internet of Things. In 2018, the startup was sold to Munich Re (Group) for €300M. Partnering with corporations has been key for its success.
In this episode, Josef and moderator Christian Miele (Partner at e.ventures) discuss the criteria to evaluate the suitability of corporate partnerships, the right timing for starting such collaborations, and what the common reasons for failure are.
Florian Hübner is Founder & Co-CEO of Uberall. The startup has developed a cloud-based platform to let small and large businesses get listed and market themselves across multiple location-based services. Uberall has raised more than $50m by leading VCs like Project A and HPE Growth Capital since it was founded in 2012.
Originally started in Berlin, the startup by now has a team of 250 employees with offices in San Francisco, Cape Town, Paris, London and Amsterdam.
In this episode, Florian shares his key learnings on internationalization.
In our seventh #FromScratch masterclass, David Okuniev taught our audience how to build a product that users love.
David is Co-Founder of Typeform. Based in Barcelona, the startup is making the filling in of forms and surveys awesome by helping users to collect data in a conversational way. A passionate creative and musician, David is a full-fledged product designer specialized in UI & UX design. As technical director for the product, he focuses on further developing the successful SaaS platform. Typeform has raised more than $50M in funding from investors like Index Ventures since it was founded in 2011.
In this episode, David and moderator Christian Miele (Partner at e.ventures) elaborate on the approach of designing for a „human experience“ (HX), the right data for assessing your product-market fit, and how to align your team to deliver a product that customers build an emotional relationship with.
Dmitri Uvarovski is Co-Founder & CMO at Homeday. Started in 2014, the Cologne-based startup is on a mission to revolutionize the way people sell and buy property. With its platform, Homeday offers data-driven pairing between real estate agents and private property owners to ensure a more transparent, efficient and overall smoother experience for all parties involved. Supported by prominent VCs like Project A Ventures, Paua Ventures, Picus Capital and Axel Springer Digital Ventures, the company has raised more than 20m€ in funding so far.
In this episode, Dmitri shares his insights on how he and his team are changing the way people buy and sell properties, the challenges, and opportunities that he sees in the real estate sector, and the role of legislation for enabling innovation.
Tobias Tschötsch is Founder & Managing Director of Contorion. The Berlin-based startup offers a B2B online marketplace for maintenance, repair and operations products. Started in 2014 with the help of investor Project A Ventures, Contorion exited only 3 years later in a presumed $100m+ acquisition to high-quality tool producer Hoffmann Group. Previously, Tobias was Co-Founder & COO of Groupon UK.
In this episode, Tobias shares his insights on how to successfully make an exit with your company. Among others, we discuss exit strategy, how to make a deal, and founders' incentivisation.
Susann Hoffmann is Co-Founder of EDITION F, the first business-lifestyle platform for career-interested women in Germany. Started by Susann and Nora-Vanessa Wohlert in 2014, EDITION F has grown into a community-focused platform with 600,000 unique users per month that provides women with the insights, tools and network they need to grow both professionally and personally.
In this episode, we talk to Susann about her journey with EDITION F, the differences between men and women when it comes to building companies, the challenges for women to balance family and career, and how to foster female entrepreneurship.
Daniel Krauss is Co-Founder & CIO of FlixBus, which is one of Europes's biggest recent startup success stories. After starting operations in 2013, FlixBus has quickly established itself as Europe’s largest intercity bus network provider that offers an affordable, alternative, and green way to travel. The startup recently entered the US market and started to also offer travel options via FlixTrain. FlixBus has raised several funding rounds from leading VCs like Silver Lake Partners, HV Holtzbrinck Ventures and General Atlantic.
Before founding the company in 2011, Daniel worked in different roles at e.g. Siemens and Microsoft. He is also active as a Business Angel, including an investment into klarx.
In this episode, Daniel shares the story of FlixBus' success and explains how to put your customers first, use your data the right way, and grow faster than your competition.
Dr. Sophie Chung is Founder & CEO of Qunomedical, a digital health platform that provides its clients access to affordable high-quality healthcare worldwide. With Qunomedical, patients can e.g. find information about procedures, doctors, hospitals, pricing, and destinations. Among others, users can obtain quotes from the hospital of their choice directly through the platform. Based in Berlin, the startup has raised around 2m€ in funding from top-notch VCs like Project A Ventures, 500 Startups and Kima Ventures since it was founded in 2015.
In this episode, we discuss with Sophie why healthcare is lacking innovation compared to other industries, the opportunities that exist for entrepreneurs, and how better legislation can foster the digital transformation of healthcare.
Jörg Rheinboldt is a legendary serial tech entrepreneur and investor that has played an integral part in setting up and financing some of Germany's most successful online companies, such as Alando.de (which was acquired by eBay only six months after launch) and N26. He also founded non-profit betterplace.org, which makes donations possible for various causes. Today, he continues to help building companies and making things happen in his role as founding CEO of APX (an accelerator by Axel Springer and Porsche).
In this episode, Jörg shares his extensive experience of over 20 years in the digital tech scene. Among others, we discuss what it takes to turn a dream into a successful company by delivering solutions that people actually want and need.
In our sixth #FromScratch masterclass, Florian Heinemann taught our audience how to acquire first users and build a marketing machine when starting a company.
Florian is Europe’s number one online marketing expert. Since 2012, he is a Founding Partner of the operational VC firm Project A Ventures. Prior, he was Managing Director of Rocket Internet. In this role, he was instrumental in building Zalando, Global Fashion Group, and eDarling. Before joining Rocket, Florian co-founded several startups and exited two of them (i.e. to Amazon). Florian has been a business angel and founding investor in close to 100 startups including Trivago, Zalando, Home24, CityDeal, Audibene, Affinitas/eDarling, ClassPass, AdScale, Mimi, Bitbond and Movinga.
In this episode, Florian elaborates together with moderator Christian Miele (eventures), on how to understand who your key customers are and tailor your product around them. He explains why it is key to start collecting business analytics data from day one and find the right approach between quantitative and qualitative marketing.
Felix van de Sand is Co-Founder of COBE, a digital agency focused on UX design. COBE provides a variety of services to its clients, ranging from design thinking to coding. Mobile and web app development agency COBE.tech also belongs to the group as well as popular Fantasy Football Manager Kickbase, which was initially only built as a design project but ended up becoming one of Germany's most popular apps among football fans.
In this episode, we discuss with Felix best practices and common mistakes in UX design. We will especially look into how to design an outstanding UX for startup success.
Ralf Wenzel knows how to build successful digital ventures inside out. As CSO of Delivery Hero, he is responsible for the strategic growth of the Berlin-based tech company that IPO'ed in 2017. He also stil serves as CEO of Foodpanda (sold to Delivery Hero in 2016), an international online food delivery marketplace, and worked in leading senior positions at Skrill and Jamba. Ralf is also active as an angel investor.
In this episode, we are exploring the key elements of B2B sales with Ralf. We will discuss the importance of building scale for international growth, the value of networking, and why you first have to invest in various ways to conduct B2B sales successfully.
In our fifth #FromScratch masterclass, Gloria Baeuerlein and Christian Vollmann taught our audience how to raise money.
Working as a Principal at Index Ventures in London, Gloria knows the VC industry inside out. In her role, she primarily focuses on growth stage investments across all sectors in Europe and Australia.
Being one of Germany’s most influential entrepreneurs, Christian Vollmann (CEO of nebenan.de) also invests in other founders' companies. By now, he has been involved in more than 70 startups like eDarling, trivago, StudiVZ and Researchgate. In 2017, he was voted as the German „Business Angel of the Year".
In this week's episode, recorded during our fifth #FromScratch masterclass, Gloria and Christian take a deep dive into raising capital for startups. Together with moderator Christian Miele (Partner at e.ventures), the two elaborate on techniques to determine the amount of money needed, how to structure the fundraising process, and the best practices and tactics to find and convince the right investors.
Melikshah Ünver is the CEO and Co-Founder of Taledo, a curated online recruiting platform that connects top 10% talents with the best open positions in Germany's digital startup ecosystem.
After working as a consultant and heading the Group Development sector of well-known HitFox Group in Berlin, Melikshah and his co-founders wanted to start their own venture and founded Taledo to help ambitious professionals find digital roles at market-leading companies.
In this episode, we are discussing Taledo's approach of matching applicants with the right employers, the state of the art of recruiting for startups, and the needs of ambitious talents today.
Jens Woloszczak (CEO) and Karl Sponholz (COO) are heading one of Germany’s most exciting FinTechs: Spotcap. Based in Berlin, the startup offers access to flexible finance and operates as a direct lender to small and medium-sized companies in the UK, the Netherlands, Spain, Australia and New Zealand. Backed by investors like Rocket Internet and Holtzbrinck Ventures, the company has raised more than 100m USD in funding so far and continues to grow quickly.
In this episode, we discuss with Jens and Karl challenges and best practices for internationalization, how to build a product that users love, and why it is important to fail fast.
Valentin Stalf is Co-Founder & CEO of N26. Over the past five years, he has become one of the world’s most influential founders in FinTech by building one of the fastest growing challenger banks in Europe. Today, N26 has 1 million customers in 17 countries. Having raised a total of $215 million over the years, Valentin is on a mission to bring modern personal banking to users around the world.
In this episode, recorded at our fourth "From Scratch" masterclass, Christian Miele (Partner at e.ventures) and Valentin discuss how to balance gut feeling vs. data analysis when building an MVP, the importance of building an "MLP", and how N26 itself was the outcome of a big pivot.
Pawel Chudzinski belongs to the most renowned VCs in Germany and Europe. Working and living in Berlin, he is Co-Founder of early-stage venture capital firm Point Nine Capital. The firm is focused on early-stage investments related to SaaS and digital marketplaces. Startups like Revolut, Typeform, and Delivery Hero belong to its portfolio.
In this episode, we are talking to Pawel about best practices on how to raise early-stage funding, stand out among the startups that ask for investments, and what the ideal relationship between VCs and founders should be like.
Full list of topics that we discussed with early stage investor Pawel Chudzinski:
[00:48 - 03:56] Introduction of Pawel and his professional background
[03:57 - 09:15] The ‚secret sauce‘ behind the success of Point Nine Capital
[09:16 - 11:33] On the right timing for raising funding at an early stage
[11:34 - 13:57] How to find the right balance between bootstrapping and raising VC money
[13:58 - 16:20] Point Nine Capital’s criteria when evaluating investment opportunities
[16:21 - 18:45] How Point Nine Capital assesses startups with B2B/B2C products
[18:46 - 21:15] On the importance and best practices of a good pitch deck
[21:16 - 26:15] How to balance honesty and over-selling your startup when pitching
[26:16 - 29:12] How to stand out among all the startups that are seeking funding
[29:13 - 31:46] Why the valuation of startups is very subjective
[31:47 - 35:00] What to be aware of regarding liquidation preferences
[35:01 - 37:45] How to choose the right VC as a founder
[37:46 - 39:29] Open positions at Point Nine Capital and its portfolio companies
Uwe Horstmann is one of the people that truly stand out in the Berlin startup scene. Only in his early 30’s, he has been Managing Director at Rocket Internet in the past and started his own VC firm that follows a special approach - Project A Ventures does not only invest into startups but also supports them operationally with its own team of experts. Uwe knows what qualities to look for in founding teams to increase the chances of making it to the top.
In this episode, recorded at our third "From Scratch" masterclass, Uwe and moderator Christian Miele (Partner at e.ventures) take a deep dive into the underlying elements of startup success with a special focus on the traits of founders that accomplish great things together.
„From Scratch“ is an exclusive series of masterclasses organized by Startup Notes in association with Digital McKinsey. It brings together Europe's top entrepreneurs, investors, and leaders to give their personal insights on becoming digital winners. The lectures are presented by Business Punk.
Dr. Fabian Heilemann rose into the spotlight of the European startup scene after founding DailyDeal together with his brother Ferry. In 2011, they sold the company to Google for $114m. Later, they went on to found FreightHub, which recently raised $23m. Currently, Dr. Fabian Heilemann serves as Partner at renown VC firm Earlybird.
In this second lecture of “From Scratch”, our moderator, Christian Miele (Principal at e.Ventures), and Fabian listed the criteria of great business ideas, explained how to identify them in a structured way, and outlined which future trends are offering business opportunities for future entrepreneurs.
„From Scratch“ is an exclusive series of masterclasses organized by Startup Notes in association with Digital McKinsey. It brings together Europe's top entrepreneurs, investors, and leaders to give their personal insights on becoming digital winners. The lectures are presented by Business Punk.
Charles von Abercron is the Founder & former CEO of GLOSSYBOX. Started in 2011, GLOSSYBOX is an online subscription service that delivers high-end beauty products directly to its users’ doorstep. Founded by Charles with the backing of Rocket Internet, the startup was successfully sold to The Hut Group in 2017. Having been been responsible for all of the company's operations, including brand management, strategy development and marketing concepts, Charles successfully developed GLOSSYBOX into an international role-model business for subscription commerce and led the startup until 2015. Prior, he was Vice President for International Online Marketing at Groupon International. In this episode, we talk to Charles about the importance of timing when starting a company, the particularities of the beauty industry and advice for increasing one’s personal productivity as a founder.
Finn Age Hänsel is one of the most notable personalities in the German startup scene. Based in Berlin, he is Managing Director of Movinga - an online startup that was founded with the ambition to globally disrupt the moving services industry and is backed by renowned investors like Earlybird Venture Capital, Index Ventures and Global Founders Capital.
Before joining Movinga in 2015 and turning the struggling high-growth startup around, Finn was MD of EPIC Companies (a company builder). Prior, he made a name for himself as Co-Founder of THE ICONIC (Australia’s biggest online fashion retailer), which he built up for tech powerhouse Rocket Internet in Sydney. Since 2013, Finn is also Co-Founder of a craft beer brewery called „Berliner Berg“.
In this episode, we are discussing with Finn the different phases of a startup’s lifecycle, how to manage a turnaround when your company is struggling, and why founders should not focus too much on their competitors.
This is the full list of topics that we discussed with turnaround expert Finn Age Hänsel:
[00:37 – 05:21] Introduction of Finn and his professional background
[05:22 – 08:07] Finn’s recommendation on working in consulting before becoming an entrepreneur
[08:08 – 11:02] Why the moving services industry is one of the most exciting ones for Finn
[11:03 – 16:15] On managing the turnaround of a struggling startup
[16:16 – 21:05] How to find the right balance between growth and building a robust organization
[21:06 – 24:47] How Finn managed the turnaround of Movinga
[24:48 – 29:18] On the partial takeover of Move24 after it folded
[29:19 – 35:00] Why founders shouldn’t focus too much on their competitors
[35:01 – 37:22] Finn’s best advice for aspiring entrepreneurs
[37:23 – 39:32] Recruitment opportunities at Movinga
Christoph Gerber belongs to Germany's best-known tech entrepreneurs. Back in 2009, he started Lieferando — one of the first online food delivery startups in Germany. In 2014, Christoph and his co-founders sold the company for €62.9M to the Dutch Takeaway.com Group, which went public only two years later for a valuation of almost €1B. Only shortly after selling Lieferando, Christoph already started from scratch again by founding Talon.One - a SaaS company with a powerful API that enables businesses to create, manage and analyze promotional marketing campaigns.
On 27 March 2018, Startup Notes hosted the first event of its new „From Scratch“ masterclass series on digital entrepreneurship in collaboration with Digital McKinsey. Hosted at the McKinsey Experience Studio in Berlin, moderator Christian Miele (Principal at e.ventures) and Christoph Gerber together took a deep dive behind the scenes of the often glorified tech world.
In this episode that was recorded at the event, Christoph demystifies entrepreneurship by sharing insights on how he started Lieferando and takes a sweeping swipe at what he calls „Rocketpreneurs“ (life-style entrepreneurs) who either found a company just for the fame or the money. He discusses good and bad reasons to start a company as well as how important it is to take breaks. This episode is brought to with the support of Business Punk.
Chanyu Xu is a seasoned entrepreneur from Berlin. After co-founding several food startups like EAT ÜBER and Eating with the Chefs (backed by star investor Peter Thiel), she became the Founder & CEO of ONO Labs in 2017. ONO LABS creates individualised and life stage-tailored fast moving consumer goods for women by using natural ingredients and smart data. The startup delivers 100% natural nutrition for women before, during and after a pregnancy.
In this episode, we talk to Chanyu about trends and success factors in the foodtech space, her plans for ONO Labs, and how to get started with a MVP and make hiring decisions.
Sascha Weiler is Founder & Managing Director at Homebell. The Berlin-based startup has taken on the challenge to digitalize home improvement and living space projects by offering reliable craftsmen services at a fixed quote and fair prices via its platform. Most recently, Homebell successfully raised 11m EUR.
Before founding Homebell, Sascha was Co-Founder at Hem, a design studio creating a new generation of sustainable furniture, accessories and lighting. Prior he worked for Rocket Internet and was part of the founders team of Casacanda, which was successfully sold to Fab.com for $10m. After the exit, Sascha served as Executive VP Europe at Fab.
In this episode, we are making a deep dive with Sascha into marketing operations. He shares his advice on how to proper set up your online marketing campaigns, startup fundraising efforts, and how to put learning experiences over making money in the short term.
Seth Pierrepont joined the international VC firm Accel Partners in 2013. At Accel, he focuses on investments in software, consumer marketplace and mobile businesses. He helped lead Accel’s investments and ongoing work in CallSign, Carwow, Kry, and Soldo. Prior to Accel, Seth invested in European companies with Vision Capital and advised technology and media companies on strategy with Oliver Wyman in San Francisco. Originally from America, he is based in London.
In this episode, we are talking to Seth about the potential of the European startup scene, Accel’s investment criteria, his best VC advice for founders and why entrepreneurs should show that they are really passionate about what they are working on.
Michael Brehm is one of the biggest names in the German startup scene. As former Executive Director & Investor at social network startup VZnetzwerke (with its brands studiVZ, schülervz, meinVZ), he forever influenced the society in his home country in many ways in the 2000’s before industry giant Facebook even entered the local market. Having built and sold several companies (e.g. to Google and eBay) and taken another one public in his career, he is especially a renowned expert on sales & marketing. Among his notable ventures was e.g. Rebate Networks, which has rolled out couponing websites all across the world.
Since 2014, Michael is a Partner at Redstone - a first of its kind venture capital firm with the approach of „VC-as-a-service“. Moreover, in the past years, he has been involved in supporting startups like Bonaverde as a member of the supervisory board and also working on launching new ventures.
In this episode, we are doing a deep dive with Michael into startup marketing & sales. Among others, we are talking to him about how to implement a coherent startup culture (especially in relation to sales efforts), the development of studiVZ back in the days, the importance of paying detailed attention to your product & customers, the qualities that make a great CMO nowadays as well as useful marketing tools and how to combine them. He is also sharing insights about his new startup i2x that he kept in stealth mode for the past two years.
Yassin Hankir is one of Germany’s FinTech stars. After a few years as a Consultant at McKinsey, he co-founded vaamo, a digital wealth management solution, and in 2015 started savedroid - an innovative personal savings app.
This interview is a special one - being Startup Notes’ very first follow-up episode. One year after our first conversation with Yassin on FinTech in Germany, we talked to him again triggered by some really exciting developments at savedroid. The startup recently entered the cryptocurrency space.
More specifically, savedroid is currently staging its own ICO to raise money for its vision to democratize access to cryptocurrencies. Savedroid wants to enable users to get easy access to smart crypto-savings plans and superior crypto-investment opportunities without any technological adoption barriers - leveraging savedroid’s existing core assets of AI and great UX.
In this interview, we talk about Yassin’s view on the future of cryptocurrencies, regulation in the space and we dive into the topic of ICOs. There’s definitely some really great insights in here - both for people who are new to cryptocurrencies, but also more knowledgeable members of the community.
More info on savedroid’s ICO: http://bit.ly/2FqgewB (main sale ends 9th March 2018)
Our first episode with Yassin from February 2017: http://bit.ly/2CiOSKr
Anna Alex belongs to Germany's top female entrepreneurs. Since 2012, she and her co-founder Julia Bösch have been disrupting the fashion industry with OUTFITTERY. The startup offers a curated online shopping experience for men that allows their clients to save time while receiving professional style advice by its stylists. OUTFITTERY is operating in eight European countries, employs 300 people and has raised roughly 50m EUR in funding so far (e.g. from well-known VC’s like Mangrove Capital and Northzone).
Prior to starting her own business, Anna was Head of Product Management & IT at a Swiss online company and also worked for German startup powerhouse Rocket Internet as well as Smava. She holds a Master’s degree in Economics.
In this episode, we are talking to Anna about her entrepreneurial journey of building OUTFITTERY from scratch, the reasons for the low number of female founders in Europe, the power of good storytelling, and collecting and analyzing the right data for delivering your clients the best product and experience possible.
Here is the full list of topics that we discussed with fashion industry disruptor Anna Alex:
[01:06 – 1:36] Introduction of Anna and her background
[01:37 – 02:17] Explanation of OUTFITTERY’s business model
[02:18 – 03:28] On OUTFITTERY’s different growth stages and focus topics so far
[03:29 – 04:21] One thing that people would be surprised to know about OUTFITTERY
[04:22 – 04:49] The split between different roles among OUTFITTERY’s staff
[04:50 – 06:51] Anna’s worst management decision and her learnings from it [Listener Question]
[06:52 – 08:23] OUTFITTERY’s unfair advantage in comparison to its competitors
[08:24 – 08:56] Anna’s view on provocative media coverage [08:57 – 10:02] What the future holds for OUTFITTERY in 2018 & 2019
[10:03 – 13:05] How the fashion companies of the future will be based on technology
[13:06 – 14:57] The role of Amazon in the fashion ecommerce space
[14:58 – 18:00] Anna’s opinion on the importance to address the topic „female founders“
[18:01 – 22:00] On the power of good storytelling when building a startup
[22:01 – 27:01] Anna’s best practices on structuring her work day [Listener Question]
[27:02 – 27:49] The KPIs to track for retaining great talent for your startup
[27:50 – 28:12] The one must-read book for founders
[28:13 – 29:43] The best life advice that Anna has been given
[29:44 – 30:55] Startups that former employees went on to found
[30:56 – 31:19] One thing that Anna fundamentally disagrees on with other people
[31:20 – 32:30] Advice that founders should write down on post-it notes and always remember
[32:31 – 34:10] Anna’s ultimate vision for OUTFITTERY
Since 2014, Eckhardt Weber has been one of the key people behind Berlin-based company builder HitFox Group and especially its FinTech-focused branch FinLeap, which has seen some tremendous success in recent years with him leading it as its Managing Director. Having a background as a corporate lawyer and being specialized in business development within highly regulated markets, he was especially instrumental in creating solarisBank - a well-reputed FinLeap venture that managed to obtain a full banking license in Germany within just 9 months.
Since summer 2017, Eckhardt is focusing on creating new tech ventures in the healthcare industry under the umbrella of newly founded company builder Heartbeat Labs, which also belongs to the HitFox Group. Up to five startups per year shall be created and supported with the company builder’s help that Eckhardt co-founded and again leads as Managing Director.
In this episode, we are talking to Eckhardt about how he made his way from being a lawyer to building companies in the FinTech and healthcare sector, his best practices for being productive and efficient, the reasons for FinLeap’s success, his plans for Heartbeat Labs and mistakes that he sees founders make over and over again.
Here is the full list of topics that we discussed with hands-on company builder Eckhardt Weber:
[00:02 – 01:49] Introduction of Eckhardt and his background
[01:50 – 03:06] One thing people would be surprised to know about Eckhardt
[03:07 – 05:37] What a typical day in his life as an entrepreneur look like
[05:38 – 06:57] Eckhardt’s best practices for daily routines
[06:58 – 08:49] How to best plan your tasks ahead
[08:50 – 13:26] On the reasons for FinLeap’s success as a company builder
[13:27 – 16:01] What Eckhardt is doing differently now building Heartbeat Labs in comparison to his time at FinLeap
[16:02 – 19:20] The first tasks to tackle when setting up a company builder
[19:21 – 23:07] Why Eckhardt is still bullish on the business model of a company builder
[23:08 – 27:49] Why it makes sense for founders to start a startup with a company builder
[27:50 – 30:15] How founders can ‚wow‘ Eckhardt to convince him for investing into a startup with Heartbeat Labs
[30:16 – 32:48] One challenging question that Eckhardt asks when founders seek for funding
[32:49 – 35:09] On the most innovate service that will likely be launched in the health industry within the next 5 years [Listener Question]
[35:10 – 38:22] Eckhardt’s view on the challenges of starting a health startup in Germany
[38:23 – 43:26] The ‚secret sauce‘ of the company culture behind the success of FinLeap and Heartbeat Labs
[43:27 – 45:46] One mistake that founders do over and over again when starting a company
[45:47 – 49:07] Advice that founders should write on some post-it notes and remember at all times
Doreen Huber is one of the most respected female entrepreneurs in Germany. As the Founder & CEO of LEMONCAT, she is successfully digitalizing the market for business catering since 2016. After starting out as an entrepreneur in various companies with a strong focus on sales already in her twenties, she especially left a mark in the European startup scene (and beyond) in her roles as CSO at Lieferheld and subsequently COO of Delivery Hero (EUR 1bn IPO in 2017) from 2011-2013. Living and working in Berlin, Doreen is also an active angel investor in various companies. She holds a degree in Literature, Art History and Media Science from Humboldt University in Berlin.
LEMONCAT makes it easy for businesses to access convenient, fresh and delightful caterers all over the world by bringing the fragmented catering industry together in a digital one-stop solution. In Germany, the startup offers the country’s largest caterer network with more than 500 curated caterers to its clients, which are companies like airBnB, Salesforce and Adidas. Since its start, LEMONCAT has already served several hundred thousands of guests in 250 cities. The startup has more than 40 employees and successfully raised 9m EUR in funding so far.
In this episode, Doreen shares some behind-the-scenes insights and learnings of the crazy early days at Delivery Hero, discusses LEMONCAT's business model, assesses the current tech trends that will shape the future of the food industry, talks about the topic of 'women in tech' and gives her best advice to (female) entrepreneurs.
This episode was recorded at the McKinsey Experience Studio in Berlin on 12 December 2017 during Startup Notes’ first-ever live event, which was organized in partnership with Digital Shapers - a joint initiative between McKinsey and six corporate partners (Airbus, Bertelsmann, Lufthansa, Metro, SAP, and Zeiss).
Here is the full list of topics that we discussed with sales expert and catering industry disruptor Doreen Huber:
[01:38 – 08:00] Introduction of Doreen and the milestones of her career so far that led to founding LEMONCAT
[08:01 – 09:48] On the blurred lines between work and private life as a founder
[09:49 – 12:25] The customer journey of LEMONCAT
[12:26 – 13:21] On what makes LEMONCAT special within the catering industry
[13:22 – 16:00] The future trends and developments within the FoodTech industry
[16:01 – 18:20] Doreen’s learnings from the crazy early days at Delivery Hero in Berlin
[18:21 – 21:54] On the ‚secret sauce‘ of Delivery Hero’s success
[21:55 – 25:54] Doreen’s view on the topic of ‚women in tech‘
[25:55 – 28:36] Three pieces of advice for aspiring entrepreneurs
[28:37 – 30:17] Doreen’s worst management decision so far [audience question]
[30:18 – 31:48] On the potential synergies between B2C and B2B sales within the catering industry [audience question]
J. Allie Morse is a seasoned entrepreneur who has lived and worked in Sierra Leone, Singapore, Nigeria and San Francisco with close ties to the European startup scene. She was the founder and former CEO of Jumia House (formerly Lamudi) in West Africa, which is an online real estate market place backed by German tech giant Rocket Internet and belongs to its Africa division Jumia (formerly known as Africa Internet Group). In 2016, Jumia became Africa's first unicorn startup valued at over $1 billion. Most recently, Allie joined San Francisco-based startup Postmates as Head of Expansion. Being originally from Canada, she is a McGill University alumnus and also graduated with a Master’s degree in Global Politics and Gender Studies from Oxford University.
Postmates was founded by German entrepreneur Bastian Lehmann and is an on-demand logistics company. It is one of Silicon Valley's fastest growing startups and is transforming the way goods move around cities by enabling anyone to have anything speedily and inexpensively delivered on-demand. The startup’s Urban Logistics platform connects customers with local couriers who can deliver anything from any store or restaurant in minutes. Like this, Postmates empowers communities to shop local with no waiting, and also empowers businesses through its API to offer delivery. In total, 65,000 couriers work for Postmates in 44 cities across the US. By the end of 2016, the startup raised $140m in its latest funding round at a $600m valuation.
In this episode, we are talking to Allie about how she made her way into the startup world without a business degree, what it’s like to build a company under extremely challenging conditions like in Africa, and making the jump to Silicon Valley.
Here is the full list of topics that we discussed with hands-on startup builder J. Allie Morse who is not afraid to be a tech pioneer in challenging markets like Africa:
[01:27 – 02:51] Introduction of Allie and how she made her way into the startup world
[02:52 – 03:52] Allie’s favorite things to do besides building startups
[03:53 – 09:14] How Allie figured out that entrepreneurship is what she wants to do in life
[09:15 – 11:36] Why not having attended a business class is not a disadvantage for building companies
[11:37 – 15:12] On the challenging times of setting up Lamudi in Nigeria
[15:13 – 16:21] The most important skills to have as a founder
[16:22 – 18:12] Why building a startup in emerging markets like Africa is a big opportunity
[18:13 – 20:03] The reasons for Allie joining Postmates in the Silicon Valley
[20:04 – 22:06] How the experiences gained in Africa benefit Allie for working in the Valley
[22:07 – 24:54] Why Allie is passionate about evolving markets and what to do when you want to expand into new markets with your startup
[24:55 – 26:54] The reasons for Postmates being successful
[26:55 – 30:25] On Silicon Valley being the special place for tech innovation that it is
[30:26 – 32:18] How to make the jump from Europe to Silicon Valley
[32:19 – 33:58] Allie’s best piece of advice to aspiring entrepreneurs [33:59 – 35:34] The industry and location that Allie would found a company in nowadays
Stephan Heller is a true execution-driven entrepreneur of the digital economy who knows how to start a company from scratch and grow it successfully. Since the beginning of 2017, he is Founder & CEO of FinCompare and before had the same role at Watchmaster (a digital marketplace for buying and selling luxury watches that has secured a total of 16m€ in funding). Prior to founding his own companies, Stephan worked at well-known startup Groupon in various roles. As Head of Merchant Marketing & Inbound Sales EMEA helped Groupon to grow tremendously in Europe. After university, he first started his career at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants from where he was recruited by Rocket Internet to join Groupon. Stephan holds a Master in Management degree from ESCP Europe and is active as an Angel Investor (e.g. in Talon.One). He is also a backer of the Founders Pledge.
Based in Berlin, FinCompare is a FinTech startup with the vision to become Europe’s leading financing platform for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It is using technology to offer small businesses and entrepreneurs a convenient one-stop destination for all their financing needs - enabling their clients to find, compare and close financing options from over 200 lenders. Supported by strong investors, the startup has successfully begun to reform the B2B financing market. Having raised 2.5m€ in funding and provided millions of Euros in financial products to their clients already, FinCompare is well on its way with dynamic growth.
In this episode, we are talking to Stephan about his exciting time at Groupon and the crazy stories that one can hear about the startup’s journey in Berlin, why he started FinCompare, and what aspiring entrepreneurs should be aware of when it comes to execution and operations in a young company.
Here is the full list of topics that we cover with execution-driven entrepreneur Stephan Heller:
[00:29 – 02:42] Introduction of Stephan and the milestones of his career so far
[02:43 – 04:49] Why Groupon produced so many entrepreneurial talents that went on to start their own companies
[04:50 – 06:24] What made Groupon special when Stephan worked there
[06:25 – 09:24] On the type of stories that happened behind the scenes at Groupon [Listener Question]
[09:25 – 13:02] On Stephan’s journey with Watchmaster and why he left the company [Listener Question]
[13:03 – 16:49] The key entrepreneurial learnings that Stephan had at Watchmaster
[16:50 – 20:15] On the importance of fast-paced execution in a startup
[20:16 – 23:23] How to improve execution skills as a founder for quickly building a company
[23:24 – 27:03] Best practices for structuring the early operations in a startup
[27:04 – 30:25] On how to balance fast-paced execution with building a great team culture [Listener Question]
[30:26 – 35:03] Why Stephan switched from E-Commerce to FinTech when founding FinCompare
[35:04 – 36:36] Open job positions at FinCompare and ways to get in touch
[36:37 – 39:28] Stephan’s best pieces of advice to aspiring founders
Alexander „Alex“ Frolov is a truly pan-European entrepreneur and venture capital investor. Originally from Russia, he has spent the last five years building up the international VC firm Target Global, which is a comprehensive family of funds and offers investments and support to companies of all stages (from seed to growth). With offices in Berlin, Tel Aviv and Moscow, the company covers the European startup market in great depth - but also bridges the local and US startup scene by having an additional office in San Francisco. Target Global focuses primarily on fast-growing digital-enabled B2C and B2B companies in marketplaces, FinTech, software and mobile segments. The VC firm aims to identify and support great teams that execute on phenomenal opportunities to create true success stories. Since 2012, Target Global has invested into more than 40 startups and currently has more than $500 million in assets under management. Well-known companies like Delivery Hero, Blue Apron, Book A TIGER and Auto1 belong to Target Global’s portfolio.
As a General Partner, Alex works on all aspects of the VC business and tries to create sustainable returns on investment and support startup success cases alike. Prior to joining Target Global, he worked at the VC firm DFJ Esprit in London and led several private and corporate tech startups himself. Alex started his career as an analyst at Troika Dialog Asset Management, where he covered the telecom and IT sectors.
In this episode, we are talking to Alex about what makes Target Global unique as a VC, the questions that he asks startups when they seek funding, how entrepreneurs can impress him during an investment pitch, what current industry trends he sees in the European startup scene and what people might not know about the tech scene in Russia.
Here is the full list of topics that we cover with international venture capital investor Alexander Frolov:
[01:25 – 02:19] Introduction of Alex and his professional background
[02:20 – 04:14] On the founding story behind Target Global
[04:15 – 05:04] The one thing that people don’t know about Alex
[05:05 – 06:49] What Alex fundamentally disagrees on with other people
[06:50 – 08:52] On Target Global’s ‚unfair advantage‘ as a VC
[08:53 - 10:08] On the definition of the term „hustler“
[10:09 - 12:07] How Target Global assesses if a founder has what it takes to be successful
[12:08 - 12:52] On Delivery Hero being Target’s most successful exit to date
[12:53 - 15:14] The ‚secret sauce‘ for Delivery Hero’s success
[15:15 - 18:01] How the founders of their portfolio companies convinced the Target team to invest
[18:02 - 22:38] On the investment into Hello Fresh’s US rival Blue Apron
[22:39 - 23:38] Alex’ view on Amazon being a threat to e-commerce startups
[23:39 - 27:33] Target’s screening process for identifying opportunities and making investments
[27:34 - 29:14] How long it takes on average from an introduction to transferring the money for an investment
[29:15 - 30:46] On the KPIs that Target Global uses to measure its own performance
[30:47 - 31:12] One question that founders teams should be prepared for to answer during a pitch
[31:13 - 34:23] Target’s operational involvement in their portfolio companies
[34:24 - 36:54] How entrepreneurs can ‚wow‘ Alex during an investment pitch
[36:55 - 38:39] Alex’ worst investment decision as a VC
[38:40 - 39:44] The best advice that was given to Alex as a VC
[39:45 - 41:54] The promising industries that Alex himself would found a startup in
[41:55 - 44:30] What people don’t know about the Russian startup scene
Roman Kirsch is one of the exceptional talents in the German startup scene. After graduating from business school, he started Casacanda in 2011 and sold it to Fab.com after only six months at a presumed valuation of $10m. After leaving Fab, he started his second e-commerce startup Lesara in 2013 - at the time being only 25 years old. As a digital store for trendy fashion and lifestyle products that is able to identify trends online and to manufacture and ship new products accordingly within only ten days, Lesara is successfully disrupting the fashion industry. The startup delivers latest brand quality products at unbeatable prices, making exclusive fashion and lifestyle trends affordable and available to everyone. Lesara is active in 24 countries and reaches 1.5m active clients with its 100,000 listed products. The company has by now raised funding of 55m€ - among others from well-known VCs like Mangrove Capital Partners, Vorwerk Ventures, Cherry Ventures and Northzone.
In our episode, we are talking with Roman about his lessons learned from Casacanda's exit and building up Lesara at high speed. Roman explains how he and his team managed to start and sell Casacanda within just six months and why company culture is an important factor for Lesara’s growth and competitive advantage. He also shares his view on the current trends in the e-commerce space and gives insightful advice to aspiring founders.
Here is the full list of topics that we cover with e-commerce expert and fashion industry disruptor Roman Kirsch:
[00:59 – 01:33] Introduction of Roman and his background
[01:34 – 03:02] Who the entrepreneur behind Lesara is in his private life
[03:03 – 04:38] What Roman fundamentally disagrees on with other people
[04:39 – 08:55] On the behind-the-scenes process of selling Casacanda to Fab.com
[08:56 – 10:44] What founders should be aware of when they try to sell their business
[10:45 – 13:31] On the decline of Fab.com
[13:32 – 17:58] The disruptive concept of Lesara explained
[17:59 – 19:25] Advice on how to create a great company culture
[19:26 – 21:30] On the challenges of setting up a team in China [Listener Question]
[21:31 – 23:41] How Roman structures his work day and how that has changed over time [Listener Question]
[23:42 – 25:23] On Lesara’s 45m€ investment into an own distribution centre in Germany
[25:24 – 26:26] On the VC funding raised by Lesara and the startup’s exit potential [Listener Question]
[26:27 – 28:12] Current e-commerce trends with big future potential
[28:13 – 30:25] What to consider when creating an e-commerce company nowadays [Listener Question]
[30:26 – 32:00] Roman’s advice to aspiring entrepreneurs and first-time founders
Claude Ritter is one of Germany’s online entrepreneurs who can be labelled as to have been quite successful in his career so far. He co-founded online food delivery startup Lieferheld in 2010, which was later sold to the widely known Delivery Hero Group. At Delivery Hero, Claude served as CPO and was in charge of global product and engineering. Law suits, police raids and almost getting into fist fights with his rivals at other Berlin-based food delivery startups were part of that job experience - having him go through extremely tough times and fierce competition while trying to make it as a founder. Prior to his work in the online food delivery market, Claude had already been active as an entrepreneur - he started Aionics (a Swiss-based web agency) and co-founded two companies (The NetCircle, DUQI) in China where he lived for 5 years.
In 2014, Claude started his latest venture: As co-founder & CPO of Book A Tiger, he is working on digitalizing the cleaning service market ever since. Besides this, he also is a Partner at Cavalry Ventures, a Berlin based (pre-)seed fund, and invests into early-stage startups as a business angel.
In this episode, we discuss Claude’s journey and his learnings as an entrepreneur so far, how to start a startup and his work on Book A Tiger. During our very insightful conversation, Claude gives advice for aspiring founders, answers some of our listeners’ questions, talks about mistakes and also describes his criteria for investing into early-stage startups as a business angel.
Here is the full list of topics that we cover with serial entrepreneur and angel investor Claude Ritter:
[01:20 - 03:33] Claude’s background and the steps of his career as an entrepreneur so far
[03:34 - 04:10] Why he disagrees that you can learn to be a founder
[04:11 - 06:19] On the fierce competition in the online food delivery market in Germany in the early 2010’s
[06:20 - 07:19] What made Lieferheld and Lieferando both a success after all
[07:20 - 08:14] How the competition in digitalizing the moving services industry today is only a somewhat similar situation
[08:15 - 09:39 ] On the key moments and actions that defined Lieferheld’s successful journey
[09:40 - 11:57] The difference between BOOK A TIGER and its competitor Helpling
[11:58 - 12:45] The competitive advantage that BOOK A TIGER has by employing their cleaners directly
[12:46 - 14:45] What Claude would do differently if he started over with a new company again
[14:46 - 16:49] Claude’s advice on how to choose your first job in the startup industry [Listener Question]
[16:50 - 18:02] Why he would not want to work in the FinTech industry
[18:03 - 20:08] How business school graduates should get started if they want to found a company
[20:09 - 22:45] How to identify promising markets and business models
[22:46 - 23:21] The most common mistake that young founders make over and over again
[23:22 - 25:21] How founders can ‘wow’ Claude as an investor during a pitch
[25:22 - 27:08] The best way to get in touch with Claude for pitching your idea to him
[27:09 - 29:26] His advice on when to best contact potential buyers for exiting your company [Listener Question]
[29:27 - 30:33] Claude’s most successful investment to date [Listener Question]
[30:34 - 32:29] The most important advice he can give to aspiring founders
[32:30 - 34:41] Open job positions at BOOK A TIGER
Niklas Jansen co-founded one of the hottest companies in Berlin. His startup Blinkist summarizes the key insights of over 2,500 bestselling non-fiction books in short 15-minute reads and audio format. With this idea that resulted from a personal problem (Niklas and his co-founders wanted to read more books but just didn’t have the time to read them completely), Blinkist has raised over 15 million US$ from German and international VCs (e.ventures, Greycroft Partners) and already reached over 3 million users all around the world.
Apart from its impressive growth, Blinkist is known for its outstanding company culture. On Glassdoor and on Niklas’ personal LinkedIn profile, you can find comments like “I love going to work every morning” and “This environment helped me to explode in terms of personal development”.
In this episode, we accordingly dive deeply into the topic of “company culture” with Niklas being the architect of Blinkist’s HR philosophy. We talk about why culture is so important for Blinkist, how they measure it and how the startup’s culture impacts hiring and firing.
Here is the full list of topics that we cover with successful ‘startup culture’ expert Niklas Jansen:
[01:05 - 03:12] On Blinkist and the founding story behind it
[03:13 - 06:04] How Niklas as a founder of Blinkist defines “company culture”
[06:05 - 10:36] Why culture is so important for Blinkist and how the founders came up with theirs
[10:37 - 12:36] How the company culture at Blinkist is managed
[12:37 - 15:10] The KPIs that Niklas and his team use to manage their company culture
[15:11 - 17:36 ] On the importance of being intentional about culture to be successful as a company
[17:37 - 19:30] How culture influences business decisions like hiring
[19:31 - 22:38] How Blinkist executes the importance of its culture during its hiring process
[22:39 - 24:14] What it means when ‘everyone owns the culture’ in a startup
[24:15 - 27:41] Niklas’ view and best practices on firing decisions
[27:42 - 31:12] How Blinkist fosters personal development among its employees
[31:13 - 34:03] On how to to give feedback the right way
[34:04 - 35:37] Open job positions at Blinkist and tips on how to apply
Sebastian Diemer is one of the rockstars within the European startup scene. As one of the founders of Kreditech, he helped to shape the continent’s FinTech scene for years to come by creating a real-time scoring technology that enables 100% automatized, scaleable and big data-based scoring decisions worldwide and 24/7. After leaving the company in 2015, he went on to found his next FinTech startup Finiata, which is an automated European lending platform with the purpose to finance small businesses and freelancers. Supported by leading VCs (Point9, DN Capital, Fly Ventures and RedAlpine), the startup is currently growing at a monthly rate of 80%.
With Kreditech’s latest financing round of 110m EUR in May 2017, Sebastian eventually also made his personal exit as a shareholder from the company. Being a true entrepreneur by passion, he is using his personal success also to support other founders. As Founding Investor, he helps to build up Digitalkasten - a niche SaaS business that digitalises physical mail and quickly became profitable. Business school-trained, he also invests into cryptos and bricks.
In this episode, Sebastian discusses ‘everything FinTech’ from founding Kreditech to Bitcoin, explains why speed in execution matters, gives tons of advice for aspiring founders and describes why he wishes he would have read the book ‘The Lean Startup’ earlier.
Here is the full list of topics that we cover with FinTech and execution expert Sebastian Diemer:
[00:29 – 05:56] On the different stages of his career so far
[05:57 – 12:14] His learnings from Kreditech and what he is doing differently now with Finiata
[12:15 – 15:46] On Finiata’s service and its vision
[15:47 – 22:15] The impact that a ‘AAA’-rated investor like Peter Thiel has on a startup
[22:16 – 27:36] On the importance of execution skills and ways how to improve them
[27:37 – 31:25] Best practices to structure early operations in a startup
[31:26 – 36:52] On Bitcoin and Blockchain
[36:53 – 41:10] Sebastian’s advice for taking risks as an entrepreneur when you are looking for growth opportunities
[41:11 – 44:50] Open job positions at the companies that he is involved in
Luis Hanemann is without a doubt one of the biggest names in the European startup scene when it comes to online marketing and growth. Since 2015, he is a partner at venture capital firm e.ventures. Based in the VC’s Berlin office, he develops and implements strategic growth initiatives and provides operational support for e.ventures portfolio companies around the world to ensure their competitive advantage. As a global VC firm, e.ventures invests in early stage and growth stage emerging technology companies across the US, Europe, China and Brazil. The portfolio of e.ventures includes well-known startups like Azimo, Groupon and Angie’s List.
Prior to e.ventures, Luis served as Chief Marketing Officer at German online startups giant Rocket Internet. While at Rocket, he helped to identify and build proven Internet business models, which were then transferred to new, underserved or untapped markets where he scaled them into leading online companies.
Before joining Rocket Internet as CMO on a global level, Luis worked for several e-commerce companies like smava and eDarling and also managed own web projects. During his time at Rocket, he additionally founded the online marketing agency Trust Agents, which he still is a Partner of. Given his broad experience, Luis is a regular speaker at industry conferences in the fields of digitalization, internationalization and digital marketing.
In this episode, Luis talks about ‘everything online marketing’ - giving advice on SEO, sharing his view on the current trend of influencer marketing and answering some of our listeners' questions. He also describes why being a VC is a privilege and shares his learnings from each stage of his career so far with lots of tips for aspiring founders.
As founder & CEO of the company builder MAKERS, Friedrich A. Neuman truly knows how to start and scale companies and take ideas ‘from zero to one’. Originally from Brazil, he came to Europe at the beginning of his twenties to study Business & Economics in Switzerland. Afterwards, he moved on to Berlin where quickly started to make a name for himself as a serial entrepreneur. Among others, he joined Rocket Internet and co-founded the social gifting platform Dropgifts in early 2012. In the same year, he went on to found e-commerce marketing platform Run a Shop that generates a gross merchandise value of $1bn by now. In 2013, he eventually decided to focus his entrepreneurial spirit within MAKERS, helping other aspiring entrepreneurs to found startups ever since.
Makers is a Berlin-based investor and company builder that builds and invests in tech startups, offering an ecosystem where founders can focus on shipping early product versions quickly. The company builder gives founders access to seed capital, office space, startup incorporation & accounting, software development, marketing & communications, recruiting & HR and product design.
In this episode, Friedrich talks about how MAKERS works and identifies companies it would like to support, the challenges of a company builder, exciting industries and the qualities of great founders.
Olaf Jacobi is a textbook example of a VC. For eight years, he was a partner and co-owner of Munich-based venture capital firm Target Partners. In 2015, he went on to join Capnamic Ventures to build up its Berlin office. With more than 20 years of experience as a manager, entrepreneur and investor, Olaf has invested in emerging entrepreneurs in the Internet and IT sector. Before switching sides and becoming a VC in 2007, he founded and established multiple prosperous startups, which led to several successful exits.
With Tim Koschella, Startup Notes is hosting a true serial entrepreneur. He founded his first company (e-learning video platform Lecturio) in 2008 and has been involved in the startup world ever since. As a founding partner of Berlin-based HitFox Group and co-founder & CEO of AppLift, Tim is a true advertising and online marketing expert who has by now worked with 500+ app companies to acquire users for their apps. It is his goal to enable more efficient and beautiful mobile ad experiences for publishers, users and advertisers alike through AdTech products in the mobile ecosystem. His company AppLift is a leading mobile ad tech company that empowers mobile app advertisers to take control of every stage of the app marketing lifecycle. The HitFox Group is a fast-growing platform for entrepreneurship. Its team builds digital companies together with exceptional entrepreneurs on a global scale. The company’s announced growth markets are Digital Advertising, Big Data and FinTech. In this episode, Tim shares the ups and downs of his path as an entrepreneur so far, talks about bad investor advice, emphasizes on being patient when it comes to hiring the right people and also talks about his companies AppLift and HitFox Group in more detail.
As the founder of ShareTheMeal, Sebastian Stricker is a true role model entrepreneur. One that does not put profit first though - but a social cause by trying to fight global hunger. Together with the United Nations World Food Programme, ShareTheMeal enables people to ‘share their meals’ with those in need in different places of the world. Being the first truly mobile non-profit fundraising app, the users of ShareTheMeal can donate €0.40, which is the global average cost of feeding one child for one day. Founded in 2014, ShareTheMeal has provided millions of meals to people in need and received numerous awards, including Google’s Best Apps 2015 collection and the Lead Award 2015 for Startup of the Year in Germany. Sebastian started his professional career as a consultant for The Boston Consulting Group. Later on, he worked for the Clinton Foundation and the United Nations World Food Programme before starting ShareTheMeal during a sabbatical. In this episode, Sebastian talks about his learnings throughout his career so far, people that impress him, the startup story behind ShareTheMeal, why it is the golden era of doing good through social entrepreneurship and also remembers us that living in Europe is a privilege. Content of the podcast: [01:06 – 03:01] On the milestones of his professional life until now [03:02 – 06:11] The key learnings during the different milestones of his career before starting ShareTheMeal [06:12 – 07:31] The most inspiring people he met so far in his career [07:32 – 08:31] What he fundamentally disagrees on with other people [10:28 – 09:59] One thing that people get wrong about the donation market [10:00 – 10:35] On ShareTheMeal and the positive impact it has made over the years [10:36 – 12:02] His vision for ShareTheMeal and other social projects beyond [12:03 – 13:35] The spark that led to founding ShareTheMeal [13:36 – 14:24] On the collaboration with the UN World Food Programme [14:25 – 15:05] The marketing channels that were most successful for growing ShareTheMeal [15:06 – 16:14] His view on the market of social entrepreneurship [16:15 – 16:42] On VCs and accelerators that focus on social entrepreneurship [16:43 – 17:53] Why it is not a contradiction to build a successful startup and ‘doing good’ at the same time [17:54 – 19:31] What he is doing differently now with his new social startup than with ShareTheMeal [19:32 – 21:36] On interesting use cases and business opportunities for social entrepreneurship [21:37 – 23:12] On different approaches to found a social startup [23:13 – 23:44] The best advice that he was given as a founder [23:45 – 24:59] The best advice that he can give to aspiring founders [25:00 – 26:12] Open job positions at ShareTheMeal [26:13 – 27:17] EXTRA: The jogging route he took through Rome when he came up with the idea for ShareTheMeal
Uwe Horstmann is truly one of the big names of the German startup scene. In 2012, he founded Project A Ventures, an operational VC firm that invests in tech startups in Europe and around the world. In his function as a Partner, he is responsible for dealflow, product and IT. Before founding Project A Ventures, he was a senior manager at well-known company builder Rocket Internet since its start in 2007. He served as Rocket’s Managing Director from 2009-2012, focusing primarily on international rollouts. Being engaged in the support of NGOs like Oxfam and working on his PhD thesis in Entrepreneurship, Uwe is actively sharing his knowledge outside his daily work. In 2016, he was named to Forbes’ Europe ’30 Under 30’ list. Based in Berlin and Sao Paulo, Project A Ventures has assets under management with a total value of 260m€. With a focus on digital technologies, the VC has invested into more than 45 startups, including companies like Catawiki, Tictail and ZenMate. In addition to financial assistance, its team of 100 experts also support its portfolio companies operationally with e.g. software development, performance marketing and business intelligence. In this episode, Uwe Horstmann talks about how his career evolved, his work as an operational VC, key qualities of successful founders, the competitive edge a company can gain through ’hyper learning mode’ and why luck is an essential part of startup success.
Jasper Masemann is Principal at one of Germany’s most iconic Venture Capital firms - Holtzbrinck Ventures. Like many founders and VCs before him, Jasper first worked in consulting learning the ropes of the business world before starting his own company. He founded and served as CEO for greatcontent.com, a leading text production platform facilitating copywriting in 18 languages for thousands of renown clients worldwide. In 2015, he joined Holtzbrinck Ventures where he continues his work of being a business angel for years and as a VC helps founders to achieve their companies’ growth potential. Holtzbrinck Ventures is known for having identified and invested in some of Germany’s most successful online startups early on like Zalando and FlixBus. As one of the most successful European venture capital firms, with more than € 735m under management, it has been supporting exceptional founders in building market-leading internet companies for over 16 years. In this episode, Jasper talks about his work as a VC, shares great tips for founders that are seeking funding, explains why Zeitgold as one of his latest investments is an exciting role model for other startups and tells where he sees the current development of the European startup scene heading towards to.
Benedikt Franke is an alumni of Rocket Internet’s ‘golden generation’ that successfully accelerated digital entrepreneurship in Germany by the end of the 2000s. For Rocket, he worked as Head of HR and as COO for its venture MyCityDeal. Afterwards, Benedikt founded the Latin American Media Group, which he sold in 2013. Eight years after he entered the startup world, Benedikt is working with Oliver Samwer again. This time by founding Helpling - one of Europe’s leading startups that successfully digitalizes the old-fashioned cleaning and home services industry.
With Helpling, customers can book a vetted and insured home service provider and gain back time that they would spend on chores within just a couple of clicks. For the professional home service providers, the innovative online platform makes it easier than ever to find new clients and to manage when and where they want to work. Helpling has raised more than €70M from acclaimed investors such as Rocket Internet, Point Nine Capital and Lakestar. In 2015, Helpling acquired its UK competitor Hassle for €32M and recently successfully re-branded it to Helpling.
In this episode, Benedikt talks about the fast-paced learning experience he had when he began his startup journey at Rocket Internet in 2009, how to make it work when you found a company with a close friend, why you should email Oliver Samwer and the next steps for Helpling.
In this episode, Startup Notes has a special guest from Silicon Valley: Antonio García Martínez. Antonio has been an advisor to Twitter, one of the first product managers on Facebook’s ad team, and the CEO/founder of AdGrok (a venture-backed AdTech startup that participated in Y Combinator and was later acquired by Twitter). More recently, he became known to a wider audience as the author of the New York Times bestseller “Chaos Monkeys”, in which he shares his experiences in the tech world and gives a behind-the-scenes look of Facebook and the supposedly ‘illustrious’ startup culture in Silicon Valley.
In this interview with Startup Notes, Antonio makes a deep dive and talks about what the culture in Silicon Valley is actually like, what makes Facebook special as a company and why he thinks the increasing automatization that gets accelerated by tech startups is a major threat to society. Lastly, he also gives advice on how startup founders can increase their chances to make it into the famous Y Combinator accelerator.
Are you interested to hear more about his views on startups and why you should not split the equity equally between founders when starting a company? Check out Startup Notes’ 1-hour video interview with him from 2015 on YouTube: bit.ly/2mULoSK
Robert Wetzker is the Founder & CEO of Aklamio. Started in 2011, the company is today Europe’s technology leader in referral marketing with more than 3,000 brands using their services, generating sales uplifts of 20 percent and more. Aklamio’s technology enables customers to refer their friends via any number of next-gen tools, from social networks like Facebook and Twitter to mobile messaging apps such as WhatsApp. In a previous interview, Robert stated that he would have liked to become a Professor for Robotics. But having completed his Doctoral Thesis about “Graph-based Recommendation” and worked as a Freelance Data Analyst for a short time, he chose the entrepreneurial path instead. With its services Aklamio is now on its way to bypass the thousands of branded advertising messages that consumers are exposed to each day by leveraging the natural tendency towards person-to-person sharing. Having gone through the learnings of an entrepreneur in the last years, Robert has some unique insights to share. In this episode, he describes why it is important to find one good investor, why you should focus on your core product early on and why you should think twice about who to start a company with.
Christoph Gerber, is one of the smartest, humblest and most down-to-earth founders in the Berlin startup scene. In 2009, together with Jörg Gerbig and Kai Hansen, he started Lieferando - one of the first online food delivery startups in Germany. For ca. 5 years Lieferando went into an aggressive and controversial competition with Delivery Hero that included 30 lawsuits, police raids and DoS attacks. In 2014, Christoph sold Lieferando for more than €50M to the dutch Takeaway Group, which went public in September 2016 for an almost $1B valuation. Now, Christoph starts from scratch again, founding Talon.One, a Software-as-a-Service company with a powerful API that enables businesses to create, manage and analyze promotional marketing campaigns. In this episode, Christoph shares how hard it was to be one of the founders of Lieferando and why there is so much luck involved in success cases like theirs. He also explains why great entrepreneurs are the ones that won't quit and will keep on pushing even when the road gets rocky. Finally, he shares his advice to entrepreneurs to not let business take over who they are and to always keep the right balance in life.
Philipp Pausder is the co-founder of Thermondo, an energy company that provides smart and clean heating systems. By now, the company has raised more than €35M from respected investors such as Rocket Internet, Holtzbrinck Ventures and the energy corporation E.ON. Thermondo is definitely one of the most disruptive startups in Berlin. Employing themselves more than 300 tradesman in 50 different locations in Germany, the company internally manages the whole process of the HVAC exchange – from lead generation, sales, leasing or financing, installation to after-sales. Besides its complex business model, Thermondo has become the largest installer of heating solutions in Germany, saving more than 6000 tons of CO2 emissions and growing by average yearly rate of 638%. In this episode, Philipp shares how being a professional basketball player for 15 years has shaped his management style, why vertical integration is the key to an outstanding customer experience and why the complexity of today’s business models requires teams to stay self-critical and to pivot quickly. (Photo Credits: http://bit.ly/2EU0nbX)
Julian Riedlbauer has 20+ years experience in entrepreneurship. After building up extensive M&A experience on the sell- and buy-side as an entrepreneur, Julian founded the M&A boutique “Pure Equity Advisors”, which was acquired by GP Bullhound. Today, Julian Riedlbauer is Partner and Head of German Office at GP Bullhound, which is an investment bank focused on providing advice on M&A and institutional capital raising in the technology sector. GP Bullhound has completed over 210 transactions for many category leaders such as Signavio or Delivery Hero and has offices in San Francisco, London, Stockholm and Berlin. In this episode, Julian shares the traits of the high-level entrepreneurs he encounters every day, one key learning he achieved after gaining 20+ years experience in the entrepreneurship world as well his best advices to first-time founders on how to start a company with high exit potential.
Christian Miele is one of the most respected startup experts in Germany. From sketching out a business plan on a napkin to preparing a startup for an IPO, Christian is experienced in all stages of a company. While building a VC fund for Bertelsmann in India, he met Oliver Samwer, who convinced him to join Rocket Internet’s Global Venture Development elite team to roll out Westwing and Payleven. In 2012 he founded Todaytickets (sold to competitor Ticketea) and in 2014 he led the international expansion of Kreditech. Currently, Christian is a Principal at e.ventures, one of the leading VCs globally. E.ventures invests in early stage companies across the USA, South America, Europe and Asia. In this episode, Christian shares his secrets on how to “wow” a VC during an investment pitch, his opinion on the status of digitalization in Germany and why he thinks humbleness is one of most important traits in a founder.
Hans Stier is the founder of one of Germany’s biggest crowdfunding successes, Bonaverde. With their revolutionary concept of the world’s first roast-grind-brew coffee machine, Hans and his team raised over $2M from crowdfunding investors on Kickstarter, Indiegogo and Seedmatch. After shipping the first 300 machines to beta-testers last month, Bonaverde managed to secure another $2M from such prominent investors like former StudiVZ CEO Michael Brehm. In this interview Hans Stier shares how Bonaverde wants to decommoditize coffee and empower coffee farmers all around the world
Alexander Graubner-Müller is the co-founder of Kreditech. Kreditech gives out loans to consumers that are underserved by traditional banks. The startup uses alternative data sources (e.g. social media data) and machine learning technology to score the credit-worthiness of a potential customer. With this concept Graubner-Müller already convinced many world-renowned investors, like Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel to invest over 300 million USD into the company. In this interview Alexander shares how he and his co-founder Sebastian Diemer developed the idea for Kreditech while working for Rocket Internet and his plans for the future of Kreditech. We also touch important topics such as the future of FinTech and why right after university is the best time to start a business.
Yassin Hankir is one of Germany’s leading fintech entrepreneurs and co-founder of the automatic savings app savedroid and the robo-advisor startup Vaamo. Savedroid is an automatic savings app based on user-controlled rules, e.g. “Transfer 5% of the purchase value to my savings account every time I buy something on Amazon”. Vaamo is a robo-advisor that provides automated investment solutions to its clients. Before venturing out into the world of entrepreneurship Yassin worked as an Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company for 4 years. In this episode Yassin shares his learnings from working as a consultant and from co-founding two FinTech startups.