Where do you see the hurdles on the way to a successful company? Where did you get support?

Without the Exist scholarship, the step out of well-paid jobs (Tobias and Ingo) or the renunciation of the step into a well-paid job would probably have been quite difficult for us, to be honest. Having a basic livelihood is very reassuring and gives you the opportunity to fully focus on the idea and the “start-up project”. Especially in the B2B sector, you don’t gain a foothold overnight, because as a young player you first have to assert yourself on the market and the sales cycles with (large) companies are sometimes very long. Here, the Next Commerce Accelerator program from Hamburg helped us a lot to get in touch with the right people at some companies. Without this program, we would probably only have been able to acquire half of the pilot customers.

What were the biggest challenges you had to face during the start-up phase?

One of the biggest challenges of starting up is that there are always more issues you could or even should be working on than you can. In a small team, you start working on a topic that interests the team. As a result, you open up more and more topics – sometimes of an administrative nature, which is a natural part of setting up a company – but you are still a small team. That means you very quickly reach the point where you have to prioritize very strongly and strictly and make decisions – especially as a team of young founders – under great uncertainty. So far, we feel that we have met this challenge quite well. Another big challenge in the B2B business is to get feedback on the idea and the product. You don’t sell a product to end consumers with which you can perhaps stand in the pedestrian zone to ask a few potential customers. And not everyone starts out with a well-developed network in the relevant companies – and even if you do, that doesn’t mean you’ll get feedback and customers quickly. Also: see next answer.

Has Corona had an impact on your startup/industry so far, and if so, what?

We started in April last year with the Exist grant at the same time as the Covid crisis started in deutschland. Of course, this was followed by great uncertainty in the companies, which often led to investment stops, which often affected the innovation budget. From our point of view, however, the situation calmed down relatively quickly and we used the first few months intensively to set up our product properly and, at the same time, to search for suitable contacts.

What qualities do you think a founder should have?

Willingness to learn and curiosity: It’s insanely great to often be able to learn new things. But there are also things that you have to learn because they are part of the job. You should be able to find something positive about that, too.

Resilience and a certain basic serenity: If you quickly despair because things don’t work out, you should at least have co-founders by your side who can cope with it. Many things will not work out. Maybe even the initial idea turns out to be unfeasible. Then it doesn’t have to be over, if you bring along a basic optimism and the rest fits.

Team spirit: We realize time and again in the team that we are simply much stronger together. We are making great efforts to build a pleasant corporate culture in which everyone can grow and develop. We don’t know for sure yet, but we have the feeling that this will be a crucial building block on the road to success.

Do you have any tips for other young startups?

Don’t think things through too much, just go for it. Talk to people, critically explore your idea (“The Mom Test,” Rob Fitzpatrick). Accept and seek help! Team, team, team!

Thank you very much for the interview and good luck for the future.

Your KIT-Gründerschmiede-Team