Making It Real

Daniel Gutenberg is one of the most active Swiss early-stage angel investors and has invested in a variety of high growth startups. Among his portfolio are companies like Facebook, Airbnb, Tesla, Mobileye, Skrill, Netscape and SumUp, where he is also Chairman of the Board. 

Daniel Gutenberg, Investor | Making It Real Podcast with Jan Brinckmann | Episode #10

00:00 How did you get into the entrepreneurship world?

02:20 Have you always wanted to be an entrepreneur?

03:26 How did you decide what to work on?

05:54 How did you persuade people early on that you can be a distributor for them in Switzerland?

07:14 How did you pick which companies to focus on with your distribution venture?

08:44 What was your pitch as a distributor?

09:36 Lessons learned across products

12:01 Netscape as an entry door for the internet

14:33 Daniel on quitting his job

16:40 How did you start your VC career?

18:22 Advice for people looking at different opportunities

19:43 How much better should a product be than existing solutions?

22:10 Do you think about odds as an investor?

22:49 How important is timing?

24:25 What traction should companies prove in the first 10 years?

25:37 Daniel’s take on development check-ins

26:17 What are you looking for in an entrepreneur?

27:27 Would you only invest in ventures that are world-changing?

28:56 Advice for people who want to create a world-changing company

31:38 Personally, what do you enjoy the most?

Serial entrepreneur Lukasz Gadowski is one of the core people in Germany’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. Lukasz founded his first successful company Spreadshirt in 2002. Today, Spreadshirt has over 1,000 employees and is preparing to go public. Lukasz is also the co-founder of Delivery Hero and founded or co-founded several other companies such as Mister Spex, Vertical Media (Publisher of Gruenderszene) and Circ. Being the founder & CEO of Team Europe and the co-founder of Point Nine Capital, Lukasz is also an active investor and business angel. Among his portfolio are Skyryse, Skydio, Volocopter and a few other undisclosed aviation companies, Miles, Bird, Enpal and two other undisclosed energy companies, Apollo.vc and Aroundhome (formerly Käuferportal).

Lukasz Gadowski, Serial Entrepreneur | Making It Real Podcast with Jan Brinckmann | Episode #9

00:00 How Lukasz got started in the entrepreneurship domain

04:44 About cmplementary characters in founding teams

05:35 How Lukasz found his co-founder

08:20 About the idea for Spreadshirt

11:35 The big problems Lukasz is focusing on

17:19 The idea behind Lukasz’ portfolio company Volocopter with Team Europe

20:49 How much time to market do you expect for aviation companies like Volocopter?

27:03 Which other areas apart from aviation are you interested in?

28:38 Do you have a gameplan to attack the biggest problems?

32:20 Core mistakes that founders are doing

35:38 Are there any indications for when to scale a company?

38:25 How can you find good investors?

39:12 Lukasz’ advice for the beginner stage

Jason Fried is co-founder of Basecamp (formerly 37signals), a Chicago-based software firm which among others includes his current venture HEY.com. Jason is the co-author of the international bestseller Rework, which was published in 2010. He also writes Inc.'s Getting Real column. Jason lives and builds his businesses under the motto 'It's simple until you make it complicated’. 

Jason Fried, CEO of Basecamp | Making It Real Podcast with Jan Brinckmann | Episode #8

00:00 Jason's founding story and his personal way into entrepreneurship

02:52 How Jason met his co-founders

05:16 Creating a company, dealing with taxes & accounting

06:50 Vesting for founders

09:03 Who should you found with?

11:10 "Don't create companies, build projects first"?

13:26 Advice on founding team size

16:05 What do you think about having someone on the team doing marketing/sales?

18:06 Should you bring in external sales people?

21:18 Jason scratched his own itch - how important is that for building a business?

23:46 Advice on finding a technical co-founder

29:00 How to put your first product out

30:16 How did you determine the first version for HEY.com?

32:52 How long did it take you to put it out?

35:40 How do you decide what to work on?

37:30 Main concepts Jason sees a lot of founders struggle with

40:13 Jason's take on focus and 40h work weeks

43:41 Do you apply the 80/20 rule a lot?

46:00 What keeps you excited?

46:44 Any advice for tricky situations?

You can find the free book 'Shape Up' that Jason mentioned when talking about productivity and roadmaps on https://basecamp.com/shapeup.

Tim Schmitz is the COO of Jodel. Jodel is a very popular location-based communication app which enables its users to discover, follow and participate in the most relevant conversations with people nearby. Prior to creating Jodel, Tim studied at ESADE Business School.

Tim Schmitz, COO of Jodel | Making It Real Podcast with Jan Brinckmann | Episode #7

00:00 Tim's personal story in the entrepreneurship domain

3:55 What gave you the confidence that Jodel could work?

6:00 MVPs in the consumer space and their KPIs

11:25 How your KPIs should develop

14:20 User acquisition for consumer apps

16:50 With how many people were you programming?

18:15 How long did it take you to launch the first version?

19:35 How did you launch it?

22:00 Were you strategic about which type of study, gender, university of Jodel's users?

24:17 Where does Jodel currently stand?

31:06 Validating Jodel with its users

32:30 What's next for Jodel?

34:06 Most exciting topic for Tim right now

36:30 Tim's advice for people thinking about making it real

39:15 Tim's advice for an entrepreneur's darker times

Download the one-pager for curated top learnings of this episode → https://makingitreal.io/7

Ariel Poler is the founder of Reveri Health, a company in the human augmentation space that helps millions of people relieve stress, anxiety, chronic pain and insomnia through Alexa-based programs.

Prior to Reveri Health, Ariel has founded and ran three Internet companies: I/PRO, Topica & TextMarks. He was an active board member at a number of technology companies, including Strava, Kana Software, LinkExchange, StumbleUpon, Silicon Investor & Odeo.

He currently serves on the boards of NeoSensory, Freedom Financial, HUMM & Returnly.Ariel is also an active angel investor. His investments include AdMob, Thumbtack, Flixster, Slideshare, Cornershop, Optimizely, Brightroll, Clearbit, Pantheon, Instructables, VivaReal, Mashery, Viki, AngelList, Homelight, Bios Health, Change.org and NexTag.

Download the one-pager for curated top learnings of this episode → https://makingitreal.io/6

Ariel Poler, Reveri Health | Making It Real Podcast with Jan Brinckmann | Episode #6

00:00 What brought Ariel to the internet space in his early days as an entrepreneur

06:37 Is it a good way to raise capital early on to start your company?

08:06 How much equity should you give away as a founder when the company is still young?

11:02 How to build a great team

13:06 How do you decide which opportunity to go for?

15:53 Working on several projects in parallel vs sequential working

18:11 What Ariel enjoys about being early in new business spaces

21:18 What project Ariel is focusing on right now

24:53 Can you apply the 80/20 rule to determine what founders should focus on in the early days?

27:18 What Ariel looks on to determine product-market fit

30:14 How important is it to generate early revenue?

33:00 The #1 mistake founders commit

35:00 Best practices for hiring slow

37:40 Besides Human Augmentation, what else should founders have on their radar?

39:36 Final advice for entrepreneurs who want to make it real

Florian Heinemann is a Founding Partner at Project A Ventures, where he is responsible for the areas of marketing, CRM, and business intelligence. Before co-founding Project A, he was Managing Director at Rocket Internet with the same areas of responsibility (2007-2012). During his time at Rocket, he was mainly involved at Zalando, Global Fashion Group, and Spark Networks (aka eDarling/Affinitas).Prior to Rocket, Florian was Co-Founder and Managing Director of JustBooks/AbeBooks being in charge of marketing and product (1999-2002, exit to Amazon in 2008). Then, he was co-heading the online marketing department of Jamba! and the online dating portal iLove (2003-2005, exit to Verisign). In 2006, he was Co-Founder of the online marketplace antibodies-online.com (exit to Broadoak).Moreover, he has been an investor/business angel in more than 80 startups including Trivago (seed investor), Zalando (founding investor), Audibene (seed investor), Home24 (founding investor), CityDeal/Groupon (founding investor), Betreut.de/Care (seed investor), ClassPass (early stage investor), Mimi Hearing (early stage investor), Bitbond (seed investor), Lillydoo (early stage investor), and the Code University (seed stage investor).Apart from his Project A-related board activities he sits on the board of Koerber AG and About You and the digital advisory boards of Henkel and Oetker.

Florian Heinemann, Project A Ventures | Making It Real Podcast with Jan Brinckmann | Episode #5

00:00 How Florian got into the Entrepreneurship domain

02:45 Florian’s role as a founder in the early internet days

05:05 Knowing your strengths and growing into an expert in your field

12:26 Should you join a startup with funding or start your own venture for best possible learnings?

18:46 Florian’s entrepreneurial path and his start at Rocket Internet

23:13 Rocket Internet’s first ventures and how they decided which new companies to launch

30:35 What Rocket Internet underestimated

34:50 Advantages of B2B business models over consumer businesses

37:18 The role of sales is mostly underestimated in B2B

38:36 Why Florian left Rocket Internet and started Project A Ventures

43:05 Was Florian scared of starting his own company?

46:25 Florian’s advice for founders who want to make it real

Download the one-pager for curated top learnings of this episode → https://makingitreal.io/5

Michael Wolfe is a serial entrepreneur and technology executive. Michael co-founded Gladly and Vontu, worked as the CEO of Pipewise and is also a Portfolio Advisor at Point Nine Capital. Throughout his career, Michael has raised several hundred million of capital through many venture rounds, IPO, and secondaries and has led his companies to two successful acquisitions and one IPO. He is especially experienced in SaaS and on-premise products and led over 20 major development cycles based on a variety of technologies.

Michael Wolfe, Serial Entrepreneur | Making It Real Podcast with Jan Brinckmann | Episode #4

00:00 How Michael started his entrepreneurial journey

03:15 Transition from the business world into tech

05:59 The best timing to join a young company

07:43 How Michael launched his career path early on

11:04 How to evaluate the quality of potential co-founders

13:29 The trigger for Michael to create his own company

15:49 Is there a standard process to build a company?

18:38 How do you find your first customers?

21:28 Building a better product than your competition

23:56 Which product features you should focus on

26:25 Should you charge for your pilot product?

28:30 Pricing strategy for startups

30:57 Top 3 mistakes Michael sees founders make

34:33 Michael’s advice for aspiring entrepreneurs

37:05 Practical advice to start a company

Download the one-pager for curated top learnings of this episode → https://makingitreal.io/4

Tim Schumacher is an entrepreneur since he got his first computer 30 years ago and started coding as a kid. He has founded and lead various companies, including Sedo.com, Eyeo.com (makers of Adblock Plus) and, most recently, the SaaS.group. He also enjoys investing into start ups and mentoring the next generation of founders, especially climate tech founders, where together with Ecosia.org he is building WorldFund.vc

Tim Schumacher, Serial Entrepreneur | Making It Real Podcast with Jan Brinckmann | Episode #3

00:00 How Tim got into the Entrepreneurship world 01:49 How Tim was selling his first product at 17 years old

Download the one-pager for curated top learnings of this episode → https://makingitreal.io/3

Craig Newmark is the founder of Craigslist. In the conversation with Jan Brinckmann on the Making It Real Podcast, Craig talks about the early days of Craigslist, philanthropy, why he decided to not monetize Craigslist to its fullest potential and shares his favorite Twitter jokes.   

Download the one-pager for curated top learnings of this episode → https://makingitreal.io/2  

Steve Blank is a serial entrepreneur and recognized for developing the customer development model that launched the Lean Startup methodology. Steve is the author of four significant books in the entrepreneurship world, namely "The Four Steps to the Epiphany", "Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost", "The Startup Owner's Manual" and "Holding a Cat by the Tail". He also teaches entrepreneurship at Stanford University, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business and Columbia University.  

Download the one-pager for curated top learnings of this episode → https://makingitreal.io/1