Swisspreneur Show

By SwisspreneurBusiness Entrepreneurship

Swisspreneur Show episodes

November 11, 2020 EP #107 - Jeremias Meier: Optimize Sales, Jumpstart Growth
Timestamps:
10:22 - Understanding your clients (needle question)
14:55 - Getting your customers to use your product more often
17:00 - Achieving negative churns, incentivizing referrals
24:51 - The best lifetime value vs customer acquisition costs ratio
36:53 - When to pull the plug on a certain channel

The Episode in 60 Seconds

How to find, optimize and scale your sales funnel from early stage to exit.

The early mistakes to avoid
- Sell like the incumbent: just because one sales funnel is working well for incumbents in your field doesn’t mean it will work for you. Especially if your unit economics are different (think for example on-premise software vs SaaS).
- Ignoring the unit economics: especially if you are entering the market with a new kind of business model, it’s very important to know your unit economics in order to understand if you are selling your product in a margin enhancing way or if every sale you achieve actually incurs a net loss.
- Only focusing on closing the deal: your long term goal will be to achieve negative churn (gaining more customers than you lose in a certain interval). This will not happen if your product does not delight customers across the entire lifecycle.
On data and experiments
- Data is your best friend when it comes to finding your most effective sales funnel. Don’t allow your organization to go astray on hunches and gut feelings.
- Becoming a data driven organization starts with the mindset and the mindset starts with the people you hire.
- Run experiments, and run them often. There is no way you’ll know from the start which funnels will work for you, so testing (and failing) is the only way to find out.
- To run a meaningful experiment you need two things: a quantifiable definition of success (and therefore failure) and a significant sample size. Leave either one out and the experiment will not deliver its value.
Customer Lifetime Value and Customer Acquisition Cost
- A good way to measure success of your sales funnel is the ratio between customer acquisition cost (CAC) and customer lifetime value (LVT). So what you spend to acquire a new customer and what they in turn spend on your product during all the time they are your customer.
- There are a variety of ways how to calculate these two numbers. Whichever you choose, make sure it is comparable to benchmarks in your industry.
- A good ratio of LTV/CAC is 3-4. If you are higher, you are not spending enough on marketing / growth. If you are lower, you either have a lifetime value problem or you are not spending your marketing / sales budget effectively.
Scaling and optimizing your sales funnel
- Don’t forget that once your sales funnel works and you have an acceptable and proven LTV/CAC ratio, this will help you get money from investors, because you can say: for X amount of money in, we’ll very likely get Y amount of revenue out. That’s a pretty safe bet.
- If you are scaling one of your sales funnel rapidly (especially online), most likely prices will increase because of the higher demand. Therefore it’s important to continuously optimize. Optimization is never done.
- Over time, a funnel may change and become less valuable to you. It’s time to pull the plug when you see the quality of customers you are getting through that funnel decrease (i.e. lower LTV).
41 min
November 04, 2020 EP #106 - Jeremias Meier: Spinning A Product Out Of A Service Business
Timestamps:
12:56 - Turning a company tool into a product
25:00 - Developing a brand with 25 other people
34:53 - Dealing with the complexity of a growing company
43:23 - Being laughed at by more traditional companies
56:38 - Finding work-life balance

Biography:
Jeremias Meier is the co-founder and managing director of Bexio, a company offering SaaS around payrolling, invoicing and accounting. Bexio was born out of Jeremias’ first business iBrowse, that he started while still at university. The team had built Bexio (called Easysys at the time) for their internal invoicing needs but found that a lot of agencies like themselves were interested in using the product. In 2014, they separated the product and agency business and spun out Bexio into an independent company. iBrowse was acquired by PwC in 2015 and transformed into a digital experience center.
1 hr 6 min
October 28, 2020 EP #105 - Mark Essam: Is Vertical Farming The Future?
Timestamps:
5:11 - Getting fired
18:42 - The business model behind vertical farming
22:19 - Having to change your founding team
32:40 - Having an employee steal data from you
37:17 - The ETH Entrepreneur Club

Biography
Mark Essam is the co-founder of YASAI, a vertical farming startup and ETH spin-off. The idea to pursue vertical farming originated from the book "The Vertical Farm: How to feed the world in the 21st century" by Dr. Dickson Despommier, which Mark read during his exchange semester in Mexico City in 2016. He subsequently wrote his thesis at ETH Zurich on the following topic: "How to integrate Vertical Farming within the Swiss landscape?". The building material manufacturer, LafargeHolcim supported an initial feasibility study of the hypothesis brought forward in the thesis and allowed YASAI to grow. In October 2020, YASAI secured a collaboration with fenaco for a industrial-scale vertical farming pilot project in Zurich through a joint investment of CHF 1.5 m.
53 min
October 21, 2020 EP #104 - Lukas Stuber: Q&A - Data Driven Marketing In 2020
Timestamps:
3:54 - Most relevant digital marketing channels
13:50 - How do you know you're on the right track?
19:33 - Talking budget
31:15 - When should you switch to an offline marketing channel?
38:41 - Best tool setup

Biography:

Lukas Stuber is the Managing Director of Dept, a digital agency. Previously, he had founded Yourposition, a digital marketing agency specialized in search engine optimization, which was acquired by Dept in 2018. In 2004, Lukas published the book “Suchmaschinen Marketing” (search engine marketing) and became known as one of the pioneers of this field in Switzerland. He also serves as a lecturer on the topic at several Swiss universities such as University of St. Gallen and Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.
46 min
October 14, 2020 EP #103 - Doris Albisser: Roadmap To The Asian Startup Market
Timestamps:
8:03 - When to expand to Asia
17:54 - Knowing how to change your mentality
19:21 - Will English take you far?
28:26 - What can Europe learn from Asia?
30:25 - What can Asia learn from Europe?

The Episode in 60 seconds
Why expand your business to Asia
- Asian markets are growing rapidly, with a strong increase in purchasing power.
- Asia’s entrepreneurial ecosystem has long caught up with the US and is almost unparalleled in its agility and speed.
Preparing to expand your business to Asia
- Make sure you get a very good understanding of the cultural differences, especially with regards to contract negotiations.
- Ensure that your war chest is large enough. Like everything, the expansion will take you twice as long and cost you twice as much as anticipated.
- Swiss Global Enterprise offers a market checkup to determine if you are ready to enter a particular market.
Market entry
- Out of all the Asian markets, Singapore is probably the most similar to Europe, so it’s usually a good place to start building your base.
- Get in touch with the Swiss Embassies and Chamber of Commerce on the ground. They can introduce you to their network and put you in touch with experts in the region.
- It’s advisable to have a legal entity in the market you are trying to enter, especially if you are a service business.
- English will only get you so far in Asia. Outside of Hongkong and Singapore it may get tricky, so invest into an interpreter or find an employee which is well versed in both English and the local language.
Corporate Governance and Regulations
- It’s important to have a good mix of people from your team in Europe and locals from the region. This will help you relay your company values and corporate governance while also adapting to the local ways of doing things.
- Especially in Mainland China, regulations are rapidly changing and violating them can have serious consequences. Get expert advice on how to navigate the regulations of your industry.
39 min
October 07, 2020 EP #102 - Doris Albisser: From Translator To Master Entrepreneur
Timestamps:
2:25 - Turning a translation company into a profit center
15:21 - Finding your core values
19:48 - Dealing with employees who don't fit your culture
25:13 - Going international
46:34 - Working with investors

Biography:
Doris Albisser is the founder and executive Chairwoman of Evaluglobe AG. Through Evaluglobe, she focuses on board mandates, growth investments and advising companies’ in their international expansion. Before starting Evaluglobe, Doris served as the Group CEO for CLS Communication AG for 16 years, developing CLS from a startup through a management buyout and internationalization, to a company with 600 employees and 5.000 freelancers in 10 countries across Europe, Asia and North America. Amongst others, Doris also served on the boards of Switzerland Global Enterprise, SOS Children’s Villages and the Psychiatric University Clinic of Zurich.
59 min
September 30, 2020EP #101 - Nicholas Hänny: The Bootstrapped Way To Success
Timestamps:
0:55 - Common mistakes with bootstrapping
2:40 - What's the right channel for you?
12:43 - Offline vs online ads
17:12 - Green Friday sale
24:13 - Scaling your social media presence

The Episode in 60 Seconds:

Bootstrapping your marketing from scratch
The first commandment of bootstrapping: do it yourself. Don’t pay agencies or lawyers for things you can do yourself or copy paste from templates.

Don’t start with branding, start with the performance marketing of your product. This way, you’ll earn back your ad spend immediately (if you do it well).

Use cheap CPM media (cost per 1 million clicks) such as Pinterest or snapchat for brand awareness. Facebook and Instagram for retargeting.

A lot of world class knowledge about social media marketing is freely available on the Internet. Use it!
Experimenting and tracking success
Experiment with a broad variety of channels to find out what works. Be sure you understand the basics of how the platform’s algorithm works, so you are able to interpret your data (e.g. how long does the algorithm take to learn, i.e. how long until it produces significant results).

Run experiments over 1-4 weeks. External events such as the weather or other events can significantly influence the performance and skew your data.

Branding ads should have at least a return of 1x, performance ads a return of 2x or higher. This means, with every $ spent, you earn 2 $ in purchases or customer value.

Watch the CTR (click through rate), engagement and ROAS (return on ad spend) to gauge how effective your campaigns are.
Tracking offline marketing
Usually a billboard alone won’t cut it. Combine off- and online marketing to build strong brand awareness.

Use custom links or discount codes in order to track your offline marketing.
Finding your target audience
Google analytics or Facebook audience are great tools to help you with this.

You can create “look alikes” based on your Facebook pixel. Be sure to integrate it on your website early, so it can collect data.

Look into the other Facebook pages that your audience likes and build your targeting based on them.
Scaling your social media marketing
If an ad performs well DON’T just double the ad spend. This will throw off the algorithm and it will start learning from scratch again (and you’ll pay again for the learning). Instead, increase your spend slowly or duplicate your campaign and launch a second one with the same spend, to immediately duplicate your spend.

Don’t go too broad. When expanding, do so in narrowly targeted locations to help build word-of-mouth.
45 min
September 23, 2020 EP #100 - Alfred Escher: Wie Ein Unternehmer Die Schweiz Für Immer Veränderte (Ein Gespräch Mit Joseph Jung)
Timestamps:
6:01 - Wie die Eisenbahnfrage die Schweiz für immer verändert hat
30:53 - Wer ist Alfred Escher als Mensch?
48:03 - Wie Escher mit Verlust klargekommen ist
59:42 - Umgang mit Krankheit
1:24:48 - Hat Alfred Escher ein tragisches Ende gefunden?

Biographies:
Joseph Jung
Joseph Jung is a historian, consultant and the author of one of the most influential biographies of Swiss entrepreneur Alfred Escher as well as “Laboratorium des Fortschritts - die Schweiz im 19. Jahrhundert”. Joseph studied Swiss history, modern general history, history of law and German language and literature at the University of Fribourg, where he received his doctorate in 1987. In 1998 he habilitated at the ETH Zurich and was a private lecturer there until 2006. In addition to his scientific activities, Jung was Managing Director and Head of Research at the Alfred Escher Foundation (2006 to 2016).
Alfred Escher
Alfred Escher (1819-1882) is considered one of Switzerland’s most influential early entrepreneurs. Among his “ventures” are the ETH Zurich, Credit Suisse, the Gotthard railways and Swiss Life. He was also a prominent political figure of his time. He served as National Councilor (Bundesrat) for 34 years and was elected National Council President (Bundesratspräsident) four times during this period.
1 hr 38 min
September 16, 2020 EP #99 - Nicholas Hänny: Swiss Sustainable Fashion
Timestamps:
5:40 - Why go through college?
10:08 - Going from idea to execution
21:15 - Building a startup part-time
35:33 - Building a community behind a brand
48:54 - Turning investors down

Biography:
Nicholas Hänny is the co-founder and CEO of Nikin, a sustainable fashion startup. Nicholas started Nikin in 2016 together with his childhood friend Robin Gnehm. Within only 4 years, the startup grew to 30 employees and CHF 7.2 m revenue. In 2019, Nicholas received the “Aargauer of the Year Award” as recognition for his work with Nikin. Nicholas has a background in marketing and business administration. He holds a Master of Arts in Business Innovation from the University of St. Gallen and was part of the CEMS program.
1 hr 5 min
September 09, 2020 EP #98 - Phil Lojacono: Q&A - The Peace And War-time CEO
Timestamps:
4:00 - Hiring the best people
23:28 - The management team
28:02 - Dealing with investors
41:04 - Being Chief Culture Officer
45:04 - Are great CEOs born or made?

Biography:
Phil Lojacono is the co-founder and CEO of Advanon, one of Switzerland’s formerly fastest growing fintech startups. Advanon offers a platform for SMEs to bidge long payment terms by providing them with liquidity through financial investors. Phil started Advanon in 2015, shortly after his internship at Google, where he also met his co-founders. In January 2017, the company closed a financing round of CHF 13,5 m with investors such as Daniel Gutenberg, Partners-Group co-founder Urs Wietlisbach, Eric Sarasin und Moneypark founder Stefan Heitmann. In 2018, Advanon was confronted with a significant fraud case on its platform. Under Phil as their CEO, Advanon recovered, and in 2020 successfully sold to CreditGate 24. Phil has now started his own blog where he reflects on the learnings of his tumultuous 5 years at Advanon.
1 hr 8 min

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The Swisspreneur Show is a podcast series of in-depth, candid conversations with some of Switzerland’s most successful founders, business leaders and innovators. By getting to the heart of these…