Stephan Uhrenbacher

Es wird viel über Unternehmertum in Deutschland geredet, oder besser gesagt, den Mangel daran. Kürzlich war ich in Berlin auf einem Panel von Techcrunch auf dem neben der allfälligen Frage, “Wie komme ich an
Venture Capital”, auch die Rede auf das Thema Unternehmertum kam.

Markus Berger de Leon von Jamba war es, der das Thema Praktikum aufbrachte. Praktikum ist ja spätestens seit der gleichnamigen Generation ein Schimpfwort. Aber Markus hat Recht: Die meisten erfolgreichen Gründer haben zuvor mindestens ein Praktikum im Startup Umfeld absolviert. Denn man kann lange an der Uni über Entrepreneurship lernen, es geht um unternehmerische Praxis. Während ich dankbar bin für die Management-Erfahrung, die ich durch ein paar Jahre im Konzern erworben habe, hätte es mich extrem weiter gebracht, wenn ich früher auch andere Unternehmer kennen gelernt hätte.

Das Angebot: Entrepreneur Internship Program

Wir bauen - wie im letzten Post angerissen - im Moment drei Startups auf. Jedes der Gründerteams (eines gibt es schon) wird schrittweise Personal aufbauen, aber in der ersten Phase geht es immer auch um um Marktforschung, Business Pläne, Geschäftspartner überzeugen, Web Seiten aufbauen, Produkttests, PR. Es wird Wachstum geben, Entscheidungen, Erfolge und Rückschläge. Dazu viel Detailarbeit. Alles, was zum Unternehmerleben dazu gehört. Im Moment können wir Menschen anbieten, in der spannendsten Phase eines Unternehmens dabei zu sein. Als Praktikant.

Standort ist Hamburg.

Was muss man als Unternehmer lernen?

Man muss als potentieller Gründer lernen, Risiken einzugehen. Im Wettbewerb zu bestehen, das heißt zu siegen, und das bedeutet auch kämpfen. Die Wachstumsschmerzen von Unternehmen zu erleben, ist was ganz anderes, als darüber zu lesen. Die Spannung zu erleben, ob der Kunde zusagt und die Freude über einen gewonnen Auftrag kann man nicht anders erfahren.  Der potentielle Gründer sollte auch sowas wie Durchhaltevermögen erwerben. Auch das geht besser im Praktikum als beim Lesen einer Biographie von Steve Jobs.

Erfahrungswerte

Wenn ich mich an die vielen Leute erinne, die ich als Praktikanten kennen lernte, gibt es eine auffällige Regel: Diejenigen, die Praktikanten in meiner Konzernzeit waren, gingen später als Angestellte in größere Unternehmen. Auch aus Startup-Praktikanten wurden oft Angestellte im selben Unternehmen. Aber überraschend viele Praktikanten und Mitarbeiter, die ich in den Startups kennen gelernt habe, wurden später irgendwann einmal Unternehmer.

Voraussetzungen:

Wir suchen Praktikanten, die mindestens 6 Monate dabei sein wollen.

Wir suchen Menschen, die was bewegen wollen. Mit Geschäftssinn. Menschen, die entscheiden wollen und können. Offen für Neues, im Team arbeiten, wollen. Sich schnell auf neue Situationen einstellen können.
Durchhaltevermögen haben. Lernen wollen. Begeisterungsfähig sind.

• Studienfächer bevorzugt aus der wirtschaftlichen und technischen Umfeld
• Bachelor Studenten, die maximal noch 1 Jahr bis zum Abschluss haben
• Master-Studenten
• Absolventen, deren Abschluss maximal 2 Jahre zurück liegt

• Hohe Online Affinität
• sehr gute akademische Leistungen
• Unternehmergeist
• hervorragende Englisch-Kenntnisse

Tipps zur Bewerbung bei uns

• Nur bewerben, wenn Ihr die Kriterien oben wirklich erfüllt.
• Nur bewerben, wenn das Praktikum in den nächsten 6 Monaten starten kann.
• Engagement zeigen.
• Nach der Bewerbungsmail erreichbar sein.
• Die Email-Adresse für Bewerbungen ist mein Nachname bei googlemail.

I deliberately took a while while to decide how I want to work and where to get involved. I pondered to join a VC (too far away from the business) and looked at direct investments in other people’s ideas (sometimes felt I could come up with better ones myself). I enjoyed the last couple of months with discussions with fellow entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and would be founders and now it is time for the next steps.

I said that I would only be interested in businesses which make life easier for everyone, make markets more efficient and disrupt the status quo; or help reduce emissions.

So here is the news:

We have identified several business concepts that fit the abovementioned criteria. True to what I said earlier, neither of them will involve dating or gambling. None of the concepts is a clone of something that works somewhere else, so there is considerable risk involved, but also ample opportunity.

For all businesses, we will be looking for entrepreneurs to launch and manage them. They will be able to count on input and advice, and will get enough freedom to run their businesses. And they will get reasonable shares to make them real entrepreneurs. Upspring will provide ideas, know how, infrastructure and seed funding.

So from now on, we will be scouting the market for real founders with

• great business accumen,
• team spirit,
• lot’s of potential
• at least 2, but no more than 5 years of job experience.
• An excellent business education
• and demonstrated entrepreneurial skills.

Locations will be Hamburg and Berlin. Do contact me via xing if you know of someone. If you want to apply, send a CV via Xing.

I have heard this so many times recently, so it is quite refreshing to read this article by some VCs: The real reasons why people do not get funding. Rarely told. (Thanks to Paul Jozefak for the link).

Cem Basman brought this interesting article from Harvard Busines School to my attention: There is a new study out that measures the success of first time entrepreneurs versus repeat entrepreneurs.

Quote:

Successful entrepreneurs in the study had a 34 percent chance of succeeding in their next venture-backed firm, compared with 23 percent for those who previously failed and 22 percent for first-timers.

This is not to say that I am about to start a new venture, but it does make me think

Whenever I work with web entrepreneurs, the discussion quickly goes onto one point:

What is it that your company does better than anybody else?

In an era with unprecedented low barriers to entry, and where competition is absolutely global, answering this question correctly and then executing on it becomes more important than ever. And it is surprising how easily we are all being drawn away from that.

Take Qype for example: Qype is successful because it only focuses on local reviews. We had to develop a local search for each market, just to make reviewing simple. Qype reviews are easy to find via Google, on your mobile phone. That is what Qype does really well. Whenever we ventured out of this area, for example with local Groups, we found that we just could not focus the same amount of energy into this.

Nearly every great company stands for one thing they do exceptionally well.

You know if a company stands for something if it does one thing really well. And here I find too many startups trying to do too many things at the same time, becoming mediocre in each one.

In the old marketing days, this was called a USP, a unique selling proposition. But today you have to live up to it. And that means focusing all your efforts on this one thing.

Recently I am spending my reduced work hours doing two very different things.

1. Educate myself on the current status of sustainable entrepreneurship. Meetings with people from NGOs such as Greenpeace, communities dedicated to sustainable or social projects (Utopia, betterplace.de, reset.to) but also Clean Tech funds, startup investors and green entrepreneurs.

I have given myself some time to see where the biggest lever is for me.

2. At the same time, I am being approached by quite a few, mostly German, startup CEOs and founders for business advice, and sometimes funding. While I struggle to make coaching a viable business model, and this takes up too much time, the feedback I get for this has been actually extremely rewarding.

It is amazing how efficient a two hour coaching seems to be when you have just gone through the same questions yourself and often have done the same mistakes just a couple of months before:
- what is the core of the business?
- what do you do better than anybody else?
- who are your customers?
- how do you acclerate revenue
- structure of the team
- where to look for funding
- what do investors expect?

While I will be continuing to distill the most effective form of engagement for me with some of these companies,
I will try and distribute some of my experience via this blog.

Venturebeat berichtet von PowerMeter, einer Initivative von Google.org, um den Stromverbrauch darzustellen.

Wer weiss schon, was die Stromverbraucher zu hause sind, und wieviel die verbrauchen? Die Darstellung des eigenen Stromverbrauchs wäre eine große Hilfe beim Energie- und Geld sparen.
Über so ein einfaches Verbrauchsdiagramm wäre dann schnell geklärt, dass man den Backofen lieber etwas früher wieder ausschaltet oder den Kondenstrockner seltener laufen lässt.

Das Thema habe ich mit vielen Leuten in letzter Zeit diskutiert und das Kernproblem ist ja nicht ein schickes Diagramm mit Google-Logo, sondern: Wie wird gemessen. Venturebeat spricht vom “Smart Grid”, dem intelligenten Stromnetz. Mal sehen, was daraus in den USA wird. Aber um den Stromverbrauch zu messen und darzustellen bräuchte es:
- Entweder einen intelligenten Stromzähler (Installationsaufwand, Teuer)
- oder kleine Stromzähler, die man zwischen die wichtigsten Verbraucher steckt (klingt nach vielen Teilen)
- oder einer schlauen (optischen?, induktiven?) Auswertungseinheit, mit der der Stromzähler aufgerüstet werden kann.
Das ganze dann per WLAN an den Computer oder das iPhone und schon ist die Auswertung fertig. Google bräuchte man dafür gar nicht.

Finally getting to talk to people again. Discussing ideas, market developments, the underlying trends, barriers to entry, business areas worth disrupting and all these things just plain fun for me.

I will get bored eventually as I prefer to do things instead of talking about doing things, but for the moment I enjoy the conversation. Most of it, at least. People have been trying to drag me into their ventures and ideas and a surprising number of people, even good friends, have pitched business ideas and concepts that are just not for me.

So, here is what I find interesting:

(1) Businesses that make life easier for everyone
When I started working on  TravelChannel in 1998, I wanted to make it easier to book flights. We build the first engine that could compare flights in two totally different pricing mechanisms - the official IATA tarrifs and the so called grey market in one go, enabling people to find the cheapest flight.
Qype was started from  a similar starting point: If everyone starts telling everyone about their experience in restaurants, butcher shops or dentists, then there will be less bad experiences.

Bigger examples that fit this category. Google, Flickr, Facebook, you name it.

(2) Business that make markets more efficient and disrupt the status quo
The fun being involved in DocMorris, Europe’s largest mail oder pharmacy that delivers prescription drugs and allowes people to save was that it worked against the existing distribution structure with it’s extremely high cost to the public.
Qype also is ideally positioned to challenge existing near-monopolies like the yellow pages in each market to give local businesses more efficient advertising.
Other examples that make markets more efficient: Ebay, of course. But also craigslist, hitflip , nestoria and many others.

(3) Businesses that help us to reduce emissions
Together most other people on this planet, I am convinced that we are in a massive climate crises ,  and that mainly our carbon emissions are at a suicidal level.
I am therefore  - like many other entrepreneurs I know - particularly interested in businesses that help us reduce our carbon emissions. This is where I do most my research at the moment.
So I will try to combine my background - a degree as mechanical engineer -  with my experience in business-to-consumer internet and starting up companies.
Here I am not alone. Look at people like John Doerr, Shai Agassi, the Google guys with google.org - lot’s of inspiring examples.

In summary: Useful, disruptive, saving the environment. These are the discussions I enjoy and the businesses I will get involved in.

If there is one blog post recommended reading today, it is this one from Fred Wilson, who is also an investor in twitter.
Facebook has just launched something that will position itself really cleverly again at the center of user interaction. I (and everyone else, I guess) believe this will be massive, makes you admire Zuckerberg again. Wilson argues (correctly) for the different user scenarios - private (Facebook) vs really public (Twitter).

Some more thoughts on this, unsorted yet:

• Facebook has so much more leverage with it’s user base, that it will attract a huge number of users doing their status updates. So of course, there is a massive threat to Twitter in this.
• Twitter enables people like Guy Kawasaki or Stephen Fry to reach an audience of several tenthousand people. As a marketing tool, it is fantastic. Hard to imagine this to happen on Facebook.
• For me, anything that is on Facebook also is relatively public. The massive inherent momentum within Facebook that encourages you to connect with people whom you do not know that well is the reason for that.

Most importantly: I found, personally, that I do follow the people who matter to me much more closely and “intimately” on Twitter than on Facebook. Nothing to be found here that is not public,  but the unidirectional follow concept of Twitter surprising level of relevance over the “connectedness” of Facebook.

Global warming is complex. Everyone is repsonsible. Rich and poor.
I recently stumbled over 350.org, which tries to establish a common goal for everyone.
We must turn back the concentration of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere to
350 ppm.
At the moment we are at 380 ppm.

Watch the video.

And follow the action at 350.org.