In early November, we got to host our first online event for everyone interested in ‘How to StartUp’ a company. With our Founder Sebastian Schuon and his long-time friend Jeremias Heinrich (founding partner of Picus Capital) we were lucky to have two experts on founding businesses and starting new ventures on our panel. They were joined by Felix Krauth (former Alasco) and Dennis Rosenke (Alasco), both of whom are in the process of starting their very own venture. More than 70 interested participants got to hear the insights of all four panel-participants and ask the questions most important to them.
Read up on their tips on how to create your own business!
As mentioned before, Jeremias and Sebastian have an enormous amount of experience and knowledge when it comes to new ventures. The two of them have been working on a publicly available checklist for starting a business, which will be released within the next months. Their goal is to encourage others to start companies and help them in the process.
When Sebastian started to mentor two of our (former) employees, Felix and Dennis, for their own projects earlier this year, the idea grew to openly share all the insights and the knowledge base they have built up so far. We started planning our event and invited everyone that is interested in starting a business or has an idea but no clue on how to turn it into a venture.
In short, as Jeremias put it:
“We want to share that it is very easy for everyone to know that it is not so hard to get started and build a company”.
So how DO you start a business? In their checklist, Jeremias and Sebastian have divided the process into six main topics:
“Have an idea”, “Assemble a team”, “Get going”, “Finding investors”, “Hiring employees” and “Do your first sale”. The former three were covered in the event, setting a knowledge basis for starting a business.
Our panel started with the most basic, yet important question on how to get an idea for your new venture and how to validate it. In summary, Jeremias and Sebastian argued for a structured process of 6-9 months for finding an idea. They stressed the importance of setting milestones for oneself and for openly talking about your ideas. As Sebastian put it, you shouldn’t be scared to share the multiple ideas you will come up with because someone else might steal them. Rather he argued that with the feedback you will receive, you will be able to develop, iterate and grow your ideas continuously.
Jeremias and Sebastian suggested coming up with a list of business, personal and team criteria beforehand to be able to cross check your ideas with things that are important for you. Do you want to enter a big market? Or a small market? Do you strive for B2C or B2B products? What values are important to you? For validating an idea, Sebastian also pointed out that building a dummy homepage or a prototype for an app is the most efficient way to get instant and valuable feedback to check whether the business idea you come up with is working or solving the problems it's intended to solve.
So here we are, you have found an idea, you came up with the criteria that are important to you, what’s now? You need a team!
You might already have a team when brainstorming for the idea, but no matter when you start assembling your team, there are some things you should consider. Both Jeremias and Sebastian pointed out that your team should have people with complementary skill sets and interest (i.e someone who is interested in business finance, another one who is eager to push your marketing and a third one that is capable of taking over engineering and product tasks). Having a diverse team gives you the opportunity to do well in different areas and prevents you from neglecting certain tasks or topics because they are not in the interest of everyone. For Sebastian one of the key components of forming your team is the creation of emotional moments together. These moments strengthen a bond between all of you that will hopefully last for a very long time. Also, you need to make sure that you can agree on a common vision and story for you, it sets the foundation for your future work together.
The last part of our online event covered was on how to get going once you found your idea and assembled the initial team. Jeremias called these topics “not too sexy”, nevertheless they are extremely important and should by no means be neglected. Whether it is the establishment of a legal entity for the new venture, the opening of a bank account or the search for a right tax accountant to avoid running into tax problems, Jeremias and Sebastian made sure to stress the importance of legal and bureaucratic issues in becoming a business owner.
Getting all the insights and information from Sebastian and Jeremias is extremely important. However we wanted to make sure to connect the theory they presented with some real life experiences. As mentioned before, Sebastian has mentored two Alascians on their way of starting their venture and we were excited to have Felix Krauth and Dennis Rosenke joining us during the event. Both are in the beginning stages of their journey as founders and shared their experience with the more than 70 participants in the event.
The official part of our team event was followed by a Q&A session, we were overwhelmed by the amount of questions we received. At the same time it made us excited that we could share insights and infos about a topic that is not only important to us, but also to more than 70 participants of the online event. Watch this 30min-click to get the answers to the Q&A questions.