What advice would you share with other founders?
A founder should always believe in his or her ideas and visions, because this is how they can motivate themselves and their employees. A motivated team can support each other and master even the most difficult tasks. Going out to eat together or grabbing a beer in the nearest bar not only fosters great team spirit, but also helps the team to switch off from the day to day challenges of work.
What surprised you the most when you started out?
The responsibility. You feel responsible for every decision, every mistake, every employee. You want everyone and everything to be happy and satisfied, but unfortunately this isn’t always possible. I was also surprised in situations where I suddenly found myself sitting in front of CEOs and COOs at meetings with potential customers and realising that there was no longer a superior who could step in if I didn’t know what to do. That was the moment when I first realised what it really meant to take responsibility. But in the end, these tasks help us to grow.
What would you like to see from politics and Germany as a business location?
I’d like for politicians to finally tackle the subject of digitisation consistently. Politicians always talk about the fact that Germany's prosperity depends on digitalisation and that more has to be done about it. But these words haven’t yet been followed by real action. That’s why, for example, Germany is only in the middle of the European rankings for high-speed internet. And when awarding the contract for the new 5G mobile radio standard, instead of quickly agreeing on the frequency allocation, targets will be pushed back again even though they’ve already been missed. The introduction of 5G is extremely important for Germany as a leading industrial nation with excellent companies in many sectors. It’s especially critical for the automotive industry because 5G is of considerable importance for autonomous driving. Another example is AI - here, too, politicians have recognised its importance. The new Federal budget even included a new title, Artificial Intelligence, but no money was allotted to this.
Why doesn’t Germany have a leading startup ecosystem?
That’s a hard question to answer. Certainly one reason is that the willingness to take risks is lower in Germany than in other countries: and I’m referring to several stakeholders in an ecosystem there. Founders, for example, bear the risk of failure and therefore might act with more caution. Venture capital donors, on the other hand, run the risk of losing money. This risk reflects a factor in which the development of the entire ecosystem is strongly influenced by the willingness of those involved, since they are interdependent. But I think that the startup scene is developing quite well in the meantime. You can't build a leading startup ecosystem overnight, it takes time, but I think we're on the right track.
