Startup Notes

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.

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.