As an angel investor, startup builder and scale-up executive, I believe entrepreneurship is one of the most effective ways to be a force for good. In the past 15 years, Martin has co-created and scaled up five companies, including a subsidiary for McKinsey & Company and the FinTech N26. Turning tech startups into unicorns is his passion.
As a serial entrepreneur, he believes we not only need more late-stage venture capital, but more skills and knowledge to turn more startups into scale-ups. To this end, he is currently writing the book “The Builder’s Guide to the Tech Galaxy – 100 Practices to Upgrade Startups into Unicorns Companies”. Martin believes that we, builders, are the inventors of the 21st century, and he is doing everything he can to support entrepreneurs working toward that mission.
If you want to pre-register for the book “The Builder’s Guide to the Tech Galaxy”, you can do so here: https://buildersguide.org
Topics:
Qualities that help in building high-performing teamsStrategies on how small startups can acquire growth capitalFinding your north star that can help serve as part of your organization’s guiding principles
Episode transcription:
[00:00:11]Fred Obiero: [00:00:11] Hello and welcome to the Ivy podcast. My guest today is Martin Schilling. He's the former COO at the End 26 Group, and is currently working on a book. Thanks for joining us Martin.
[00:00:25] Martin Schiling: [00:00:25] Thanks Fred for having me, it’s really a pleasure to be here.
Fred Obiero: Wonderful. So give us a brief introduction about yourself and your role, and maybe a little bit on what excites you the most about becoming an entrepreneur and also about writing the book.
[00:00:37] Martin Schiling: [00:00:37] Yeah, sure. Look, I have been an entrepreneur all my life. So what excited me most is walking paths that no one walked before. Essentially venture into the unknown with a great team and build amazing companies, which no one has done before. That's kind of my path. Since early days, I have created a youth parliament in my small Bavarian hometown. I went to Argentina and I created a foundation there. I then created my first company in Berlin, Australia. Consultancy worked a couple of years for McKinsey, super interesting years, whereas, well, I had McKinsey clients to create companies in the Middle East and Saudi Arabia for two years. And then I had to find a subsidiary in Germany. And I was then at a point in my career where I had said to myself, I never wanted to work for banks or insurances. And at that point in time, the six founders of Maxon 19 called me and said, look, don't you want to scale up? And 26, a FinTech European FinTech from around 300 people to 1,500, which was an amazing journey.
[00:01:51] Fred Obiero: [00:01:51] There's some that you said that I want to follow up on, actually two things. First one, you said that you helped found the parliament when you were growing up.
[00:02:01] [00:02:00] Martin Schiling: [00:02:01] Exactly. It was a youth parliament. So it was essentially that I lived in a small Bavarian town and there was the year of our mayor to create a youth parliament. So it was essentially a city parliament for youths.
[00:02:20] Fred Obiero: [00:02:20] That's the idea, is that something that you did while you were also, I know at a younger age or just because of your experience?
[00:02:27] Martin Schiling: [00:02:27] I've been driven since these days as well by let's say societal mission. This has always been important for me and more important than earning money. So for example, when I know you've said it before I'm currently writing a book and I'm super passionate about creating companies, in particular tech companies that will create millions of future jobs and secure the technological silver entity of countries. So [00:03:00] that was always a theme in my life that earning money and kind of creating valuable companies for investors is great
