Posts Tagged: entrepreneurship


23
Jun 09

Entrepreneur Internship Program

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 – und seit 9flats auch Berlin.

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.

8
Jun 09

Next Steps…

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.


29
Mar 09

Success of persistent entrepreneurs…

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 ;-)


6
Mar 09

What does your company do better?

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.

  • Doodle.ch is a fantastic example of this. It does one thing extremely well and is being used for just this: Agree on something, mostly a convenient time for a meeting.
  • Facebook is (and will be) successful in essence, because it will continuosly strive to deliver the best product to connect with your friends. Whatever form this may take. And they have the resources to do so.
  • While a BMW is a car like any other, BMW make the experience for people who like driving just better.
  • Ryanair is fantastic at lowering their costs for flights. Even to the point that they seem to only buy new planes in an economic downturn.
  • Many German Mittelstand companies simply turn out the one product and do that better than everyone else, legions of books have been written about this phenomenon.

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.


9
Feb 09

Business ideas that excite me.

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.