Timestamps:
4:46 - The evolution of the Swiss ecosystem
11:08 - Building a resilient company
31:41 - Work/life balance
32:40 - Frank’s 3 biggest entrepreneurial lessons
41:30 - Becoming an investor and the logical next steps
As a serial entrepreneur, investor, and coach, Frank Floessel has had a rich and wide-ranging career, starting from his university days at ETH Zurich, where he received a Master's in electrical engineering and co-founded and was the first president of ETH Juniors, which has been helping university graduates and students with part-time project work. He extended this idea and founded a second venture, Tempobrain AG, an HR company for InhouseOutsourcing and Salesforces in retail. He is an alum of MIT's Birthing of Giants leadership course. Now he has taken a step back from being an associate Partner at the Austrian VC company Venionaire Capital to return to his Alma Mater as the Head of ETH Entrepreneurship.
His focus on the importance of company values is a huge part of his ethos. It is how he has coached other CEOs to run their companies in similar ways, especially by giving insight into mistakes he made during his career that were huge lessons, as well as sharing other things he is proud to have implemented, like hierarchical dynamics. Values are core to having employees who enjoy working at your company, feel you are transparent, and think you live up to your word. These are essential lessons he wants to share with other CEOs, and he also encourages them to maintain a healthy work/life balance, which he admits can be challenging to do in the early stages of your career.
Now that his focus has shifted to his new role at ETH as Head of Entrepreneurship, he can contribute to helping foster the next generation of entrepreneurs.
“I think entrepreneurship is kind of magic: you have an idea, you make a business plan, and in the end somebody is willing to give you money for that.”
“Two of the key lessons of entrepreneurship are that failure is not an option, and that timing is really important.”
Resource:
The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway interviewing Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky
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