Innovation Friday

Together with Karoline Gross, we touched on some interesting themes: why networking is important, how did the pandemic affect Smartzer, or how to get contracts with big brands like Adidas, Sephora, and Burberry.

Karoline graduated from pharmacology in London but she took a turn and got into the fashion industry. She moved to LA where she attended the New York film Academy and founded Black Pearl pictures, a video production company, focusing on documentaries related to the fashion industry.

Now, she is based in London and is the founder and CEO of Smatzer, an interactive and shoppable video platform.

Advice from Karoline: Really understand what is going on in each different part of the business.

Books: The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

contact Karoline via Linkedin: karolinegross or e-mail: [email protected]

more about the company: smartzer.com

Happy New Year everyone! the first day of 2021 is a Friday and you know what that means...it's Innovation Friday time. Let's get to know the people behind the Innovation Friday Podcast. In this episode, you will discover the intentions and the drive behind our concept.

Without further ado...let's listen!

Books: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

contact Nadine via e-mail: [email protected]

contact Madalina via e-mail: [email protected]

Happy holidays to all our listeners. On Christmas day we have Igor Susmelj as a guest. As the co-founder of Lightly AI, which is based in Zürich, he is „trying to make machine learning more efficient.”

Advice from Igor: To not give up and just continue going.

The keywords to this episode are: education, AI, active learning, and continuous growth.

Books: The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

contact Igor via Linkedin: igorsusmelj or e-mail: [email protected]

more about the company: lightly.ai

on our bonus episode, we have as a guest the inventor of Pictionary, Rob Angel. He's seeking to motivate people and inspire them with his story. We can surely say he inspired us with this journey and we think it will inspire you too. Because as Rob says "everybody has something to contribute."

Some advice from Rob: If you know something's wrong, well then go the other direction. If you know something's right, then go full steam ahead.

Book: The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz

contact Rob via social media: @RobAngel

more about him: robangel.com

order his new book The Game Changer on Amazon here.

Today we have a guest from Lithuania, Dovydas Matuliauskas who is CFO & co-founder at Ligence "a health tech company that is building quite an exciting software for heart ultrasound image analysis".  There are some interesting things you might pick up from this episode.

Advice from Dovydas: Do your homework, be sure to do your homework.

The keywords to this episode are: investors, risk, pitching, heart, competition, ai, and team members.

Books: Lean Startup by Eric Ries

contact Dovydas via Linkedin: dovydasmatuliauskas

more about the company: ligence.io

This week’s episode features Simon Ilzhöfer, a former investment banker turned entrepreneur based in Frankfurt, and Bernhard Schlegel, who loves building stuff: Not only with code (front- and backends, brewery controls) but also in the physical world (welding BBQ equipment and building camper vans). 

We talk about what it means to be a temporary employee in the healthcare system, how to build an MVP, and why it is important to have clear role definitions.

Have a clear distinction of tasks; it helps you to avoid conflicts.

and

Don’t stay behind closed doors. Talk to people, do interviews, reach out to potential customers and users. See what really drives them and if your idea makes any sense to them.

Bernhard and Simon also share their experience and struggles with building the MVP, the tools they used, what mistakes they made and how we could avoid doing them.

Books:

We talk about hard decisions, such as pausing the studies or dropping a customer, about honesty, values, and efficiency.

He also shares with us his experience with a dishonest supplier, when he was to fast in judging people, and how he fixed it.

Join us on:

Books:

In this episode, we talk about the hard process of developing a bacteria cocktail that consumes plastic and the rewarding moments after they discovered it.

Don’t be scared into complacency.

Just go with it. Trust your intuition because it’s telling you something for a reason and go with it. Take the chance. It might not work out. Chances are it might not. But when it does work out, it’s so amazing and you feel that you’re building something for yourself and for your loved ones.

So I recommend everyone who has a great idea and who has this spirit of entrepreneurship. Just try and don’t be afraid of failing.

Liz is also shares with us her experience during the days when Krisztina Lévay and she were putting a lot of hours in the lab.

Annette was recognized by Forbes as one of the ‘top 10 female tech founders to watch In Africa’ back in 2014. She is an international speaker inspiring people and companies all around the world to do things differently. Currently she the founder of flexyforce, the easiest way to onboard, contract and manage payouts — for any kind of supplier.

In this episode, about lessons learned the hard way and what it means to be an entrepreneur and leader when the company is in hot water.

The best work and ways of achieving a goal is to actually just remain incredibly focused and do one thing at a time and do it really well rather than running around like a headless chicken.

This was one piece of advice. Annette also shares with us her experience, when she had to decide if she continues with her co-founder or not.

Books:

Tools:

Theo is one of the co-founders of Equalista, which is building the first gender equality learning app.

Please support her on kickstarter to make the world more equal.

Be very careful which advice you are listening to. Look for mentors, but really look whether you share the same values, whether you share the same vision for the type of company that you want to build. Look at the people that you’re taking advice from and trust your intuition.

This was one piece of advice. Theo also shares what happened when they hired a “bad fit”.