Swisspreneur Show

By SwisspreneurBusiness Entrepreneurship

Swisspreneur Show episodes

April 15, 2020 EP #67 - Tanja Lau: Q&A On Raising Kids And Growing A Startup
Timestamps:
2:05 - Managing a work-life balance
3:42 - Missing half of your own wedding
8:00 - Finding out what's really important
14:08 - Preparing for motherhood
18:19 - Finding a challenging part-time job
20:55 - Why not a corporate career?
29:57 - The role of Tanja's husband
32:43 - How to split parenting responsibilities
40:23 - Swiss women in leadership positions
46:05 - What does motherhood teach you about business?

Biography
Tanja Lau is an experienced entrepreneur and the founder of Product Academy, a coaching business for product managers. Previously she was Head of Product at Siroop, where she played a crucial role in scaling the company to over 200 employees. During this intense period of her life she found herself experiencing symptoms of burnout, even suffering a breakdown at her own wedding. With the goal of building a balanced yet challenging career for herself, she started Product Academy and is running it part time while raising her two young children.
51 min
April 08, 2020EP #66 - Philipp Stauffer: Is Silicon Valley the Promised Land for Startups?
Timestamps:
1:52 - What mistakes do Swiss startups make when it comes to moving to Silicon Valley?
16:02 - When should you not go to the Valley?
29:56 - Hiring the right sales person
32:28 - Tackling the PR and marketing game
43:23 - What shocks Swiss companies when they come to the US?

The Episode In 60 Seconds
Competing with Silicon Valley Startups – what to expect
Switzerland is generally strong in research and not so strong in productization and marketing. Be aware of this and give your amazing product the showlight it deserves.

Cap tables (the “who owns what” in a company) are a big topic. SV investors don’t like to see large, fragmented cap tables. Be smart and don’t give away more than 20% of your company per round.

SV is fast-paced and direct. Be prepared to adapt your style of doing business.
Is Silicon Valley the promised land for all startups?
The short answer is: no. The long answer is: it depends. Know where the experts in your field cluster. This can be Houston, New York, Chicago …

Don’t underestimate the value which comes from a Swiss brand: neutrality, trust and reliability, to name a few.
Building up your presence in the US
Your expansion should be customer centric. Move to a new market when you feel you understand and are ready to serve the customer there.

Expanding abroad usually entails building a physical presence there. Often this requires at least one of the founders to relocate in order to build a quality team away from home.

Ideally, your first hires have existing customer relationships that you can leverage.

Build the business first, fundraise second. This will give you much more negotiating power.
58 min
April 01, 2020 EP #65 - Philipp Stauffer: Greed For Good
Timestamps:
2:10 - Where does Philipp's entrepreneurial spirit come from?
15:31 - Getting an American green card during the 9/11 era
24:23 - When a mission-driven company fails
34:18 - The 1/1/1 program
48:40 - How can young people find their mission?

Biography
Philipp Stauffer is the co-founder of and Managing Partner at FYRFLY, an early stage technology venture firm. Amongst their former and current portfolio companies are Beekeeper, Philz Coffee and AngelList. Prior to becoming an Angel and early stage investor, Philipp co-founded his own ventures: Dropimpact, an innovation catalyst and early stage investment firm, and Onor, an impact digital marketing project. He moved to San Francisco in 2001, days after the 9/11 terror attacks.
Philipp holds an MBA from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and a BA in Microeconomics from the University of Applied Sciences in Zurich.
1 hr 4 min
March 25, 2020 EP #64 - Daniel Sandmeier: The Financial Matchmaker
Timestamps:
2:13 - How does a corporate career give an entrepreneur the upper hand?
11:28 - The lender-borrower ratio
20:12 - Switching work flows
27:38 - Developing the user interface
28:29 - Plans for the future

Biography
Daniel Sandmeier is the CEO of Instimatch, a platform for digitizing money markets. Instimatch was named “Growth Startup Of The Year” at the Swiss Fintech Awards 2020. Before joining Instimatch, Daniel had spent 12 years at Credit Suisse and over 2 decades in banking over all. He holds a Master of Arts in Economics from the University of Zurich.
39 min
March 18, 2020 EP #63 - Andreas Iten: When Startups and Corporates Team Up
Timestamps:
2:15 - Why does a large corporation decide to get involved with startups?
11:26 - What F10 brings to startups
23:15 - How can startups and corporates succeed together?
25:35 - How to convince opponents
33:40 - How else does Andreas help startups?

Biography
Andreas Iten is the co-founder of F10 FinTech Incubator & Accelerator and also the head at SIX FinTech Ventures. He has worked for over 15 years within leading institutions in the IT service, airline & transportation and the financial industry.
Andreas holds a degree in Digital Innovation and Business Transformation from the University of St. Gallen.
41 min
March 11, 2020EP #62 - Dorian Selz: Internationalization
Timestamps:
2:34 - What do Swiss startups get wrong, when it comes to internationalization?
14:11 - How to organize a team
19:32 - The role of fundraising in internationalization
30:55 - How to manage a successful partnership
40:15 - Risk assessment in Europe vs in the US

The Episode In 60 Seconds
Getting the timing right
Rather than going and planting a flag abroad, consider letting your customers lead the way. Wherever you find a “big fish”, find an agreement to localize for them.
Finding international customers
Try to engage analysts such as Forrester and Gartner early on. This can be in an informal way, since formal engagements can cost you lots of money.

Look for international technology partners such as Salesforce and the like.

Attend conferences abroad to gain visibility.
Organizational setup
For technology products, marketing and sales are usually the areas which need localization, while engineering can stay centralized.

A coherent reporting structure and rigorous documentation are vital to successfully move an international team forward.
Successful international partnerships
Partners are followers, not leaders. Even though you might have a partner in a certain market, you still need to lead the way for the first successful implementations.

It’s a long term game. Try to become part of your partner’s daily routine to stay on the top of their mind.
International fundraising
International investors are desirable but not a requirement to expand abroad.

Don’t underestimate the difficulties which come with operating in two different legal systems.

Since you are missing the benefit of a shared culture, introductions to international investors through your network are even more important.
49 min
March 04, 2020 EP #61 - Dorian Selz: Getting to 50 million In Revenue Within 2 Years
Timestamps:
7:26 - How Dorian found the right team
23:48 - Going from 0 to 50 million in revenue within 2 years
29:58 - Why leave a hugely successful company?
40:14 - When's the right time to launch a certain product in the market?
47:05 - Starting an A.I. business

Biography
Dorian is the founder of local.ch, Switzerland’s leading local search platform which he grew to >$50M revenues in 4 years. Today he is co-founder and CEO Squirro.com, a personal digital research assistant. The company also offers memonic.com, a web based digital notebook. Prior to launching local.ch, from 1999 to 2005 he was Partner and COO at Namics, an internet professional services firm. Dorian holds a PhD in information systems from the University of St.Gallen and a degree in econometrics from the University of Geneva.
1 hr 6 min
February 26, 2020 EP #60 - Christian Burger: Q&A On Organizational Setup For Startups
Timestamps
2:45 - Do I need a co-founder? When is it absolutely essential to get one?
4:15 - How to get to the right organizational set-up
9:47 - What's a good vision for a company?
16:59 - How small is a lean startup? What are the advantages?
18:42 - How do I find the right people?
30:09 - Should you work with freelancers? Can you onboard them later on?
32:16 - Getting an inexpensive, rockstar team for you startup
33:55 - Should every employee get stock options?
36:28 - What role do team meetings play in the EOS system?
43:35 - What is the role of the visionary?
45:50 - How to prepare your organizational system for growth.
47:40 - Which admin tasks should you outsource?
50:16 - Do we need marketing experts?

Biography
Christian Burger is the founder and owner of Antarius Gmbh and one of Switzerland’s first licensed implementers of EOS (the Entrepreneurial Operating System). Christian advises the leadership teams of companies how to effectively set up their organization. He holds a degree in electrical engineering but focused a major part of his career on project management before starting his own company Nomasis in 2007, which focused on enterprise mobile device management, and later Antarius, a business consultancy, in 2010.
57 min
February 19, 2020EP #59 - Manuel Grenacher: How To Grow Your B2B Business
Timestamps
2:10 - What mistakes do you see Swiss startups make repeatedly when it comes to growth and scale?
11:27 - How to manage distribution partners
17:28 - Marketing and customer service: can you handle it remotely?
22:30 - Challenges of scaling up
31:56 - What role does company culture play when it comes to scaling?

The Episode In 60 Seconds
Getting the basics right
Don’t underestimate how long it will take you to build sales channels. Invest time into developing them at the same time as you are developing your product.

Switzerland is too small. Go international fast.

Be present where you want to build your network.
Managing high growth sales channels
Your partner has to make an upfront investment in order to be able to sell your product. They will only be willing to do this if they believe in your vision and see an opportunity to grow together with you.

You should own the selling process and have your partners’ commissions tied to project delivery milestones. This will maximize their incentive to make the customer happy.

To assure quality, you should own the certification process of everyone who sells your product
Culture at scale
Leadership is culture. Culture is what drives the company beyond the term of any single manager.

At scale, culture has to become more explicit in order to keep everyone on board. Write down your values and talk about them often.

The trust of your employees is your most valuable asset. Do not squander it by paying salaries late or otherwise breaking your word.
Surviving the race to scale
Growing a company is tough, there is no other way to say it. If you aren’t willing to put in the hours, it may not be the right business for you.

Sleeping is vital. Learn how to sleep “effectively” by shutting off your thoughts and finding deep relaxation, at least for a few hours.
45 min
February 12, 2020 EP #58 - Manuel Grenacher: A Swiss Serial Entrepreneur
Timestamps:
2:24 - Going from founder to employee
17:36 - How doing an apprenticeship helped him with his startup
33:19 - Building an international brand
38:57 - Starting a spin off of his own company
47:42 - Manuel Grenacher's future plans

Biography
Manuel Grenacher is the founder and fmr. CEO of Coresystems, a cloud solution that helps companies to source and coordinate technicians for customer service. In 2017, Siemens decided to use Coresystems to digitize their global customer service technicians network. Subsequently, in 2018, Coresystems was bought by SAP, where Manuel is now General Manager for Cloud Service Solutions. Previously, Manuel had already successfully sold Mila, a spin-off of Coresystems to Swisscom in 2015.
59 min

About Swisspreneur Show

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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…