Making It Real

Javier Darriba is the Co-Founder & CEO of Bloobirds. Bloobirds is a sales empowerment platform that guides SDRs and closing reps to convert more prospects into customers. Prior to Bloobirds, Javier also co-founded and led UserZoom as the Co-CEO. Furthermore, he is the Founder & Chairman of The SaaS Institute and an Investment Comittee Member at Encomenda VC. Javier is an enthusiastic entrepreneur, not only in business but in everyday life. He's striving for change, innovation, and creating new things - he raised more than 40 millions funds from Business Angels and VCs and built international operations with offices in Spain, US, UK and Germany. The greatest pleasure for him is going to work every day where he's part of a team of inspiring professionals who are also nice people. He enjoys spending his free time with his family, books and on meditation. Javier Darriba, Co-Founder & CEO of Bloobirds | Making It Real Podcast with Jan Brinckmann | Episode #20   00:00 Javier's first steps into the entrepreneurship domain  04:00 Founding companies in economic crises  06:10 The problem of building service companies  08:46 Turning consulting into a software business  13:00 How did you build the software for UserZoom and Bloobirds?  15:10 Learnings about hiring a great team  17:25 Thoughts about building product  19:10 How do you think about building a tech team?  20:21 How long should a launch take?  22:15 Co-developing your product with the customer together  23:23 Sell it before you make it?   27:21 How did you get the first customers with UserZoom?  28:18 Building global companies from Barcelona  31:30 How do you determine which markets to go to?  35:27 How do get the first customers in new markets?  39:39 Top mistakes founders do when trying to sell their product  45:21 What keeps you going?

Pau Rodriguez is the CEO of Methinks AI, a software company to unlock life-saving treatments potential worldwide. He is an industrial engineer and MBA graduate by background. Prior to leading Methinks AI, Pau was also a professional rugby player, was a member of the U17, U18, U19 and U20 Spanish Rugby National Team, participated in the Rugby World Cup 2005 and Rugby European Cups 2004 and 2006. He also was the captain of the Senior Catalan Rugby National Team in 2010. Pau is passionate about how technology can change people’s lives for the better.   Pau Rodriguez, CEO Methinks AI | Making It Real Podcast with Jan Brinckmann | Episode #19 00:00 How did you decide to start a company?  02:54 Starting a Health Care company, what was your background?  04:19 You were a professional rugby player - did that help in your entrepreneurial career?  05:55 How important is it to have an entrepreneurial mindset?  07:10 How to be successful in Health Care without a background in biology  08:50 About Methinks AI  11:26 Collaborating with hospitals  15:08 What Pau loves most about his work  16:07 Regulations in Health Care and main things to watch out for  18:13 How did you reach out to experts in the field?  20:15 Trusting your gut feeling  22:08 Combining a great vision with a top team and doing your best work  23:15 Monetization in Health Care  26:32 How to build a business focusing on value delivery  29:52 What are the next steps for Methinks AI?  33:10 How do you learn?

Richard Schenke is Co-Founder & MD at Priceloop AI. Prior to Priceloop, Richard also co-founded Contorion, a fast-growing online shop for professional industrial and trade supply. Before becoming an entrepreneur, Richard was a Senior Consultant at McKinsey and with a project focus on non-food retail, sales & pricing strategy and automotive. Richard is an MIT and RWTH Aachen graduate. Richard Schwenke, Co-Founder & MD Priceloop AI | Making It Real Podcast with Jan Brinckmann | Episode #18 00:00 How did you get into the entrepreneurship domain?  01:52 Did you start your venture in parallel during your consulting job or went all in?  04:05 How did you find your first investors?  06:51 The idea behind Contorion  08:16 Getting both the supply and demand side right on a platform model  13:05 Evolving your venture one step at a time  14:59 What to do if you lose money per transaction  19:00 How merchants can bring value to suppliers  22:03 How to set your prices right  27:46 Advice for collecting quality data  32:20 Filtering data for machine learning  39:55 Exiting Contorion and starting Priceloop AI   41:49 Richard's top 3 learnings for aspiring founders  46:28 What do you enjoy the most about creating startups?

David Casellas is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Pridatect and Co-Founder of Redpoints, both enterprising and successful SAAS LegalTech Companies. Heading up the Business side of the companies, David nurtured their growth and expanded their business from startups to successful Million€ companies and has been prominent and influential in internationalising business worldwide. David came from a two year spell at FC Barcelona where he was a driving force in the Digital Business team, working on a global scale. David started his first business at 19 years old whilst still studying Business Management and Marketing in the digital sector, specialising in digital business. David Casellas, Co-Founder & MD of Pridatect | Making It Real Podcast with Jan Brinckmann | Episode #17 00:00 How did you got started in the entrepreneurship space? 05:24 What was the trigger to go for your own entrepreneurial venture? 09:20 How did you start the venture without having clients? 12:49 Closing first customers 16:34 How to deal with rejection 19:20 How did you go about building your product? 23:29 Advice on finding a technical co-founder 26:38 Hiring a professional CEO 33:19 What's next for you?

Robert Wetzker is the Founder & CEO of Aklamio. Founded in 2011, Aklamio has become Europe’s most successful referral marketing solution, trusted by companies such as Virgin Media, Vodafone, PayPal, Endesa, o2, and over 300 international brands. Aklamio believes that a company’s best assets are its customers, their networks, and the power of incentive marketing. Their mission is to empower brands to succeed in a customer-centric world by building the world’s #1 platform for customer incentivization. Their 80+ employees work in our HQ in Berlin and London, with teams in Madrid and Paris. Aklamio was ranked 2nd fastest growing technology startup in Germany (Financial Times, Europe’s 1000 Fastest Growing Companies, 2019) and continues to expand internationally. Robert has a background in engineering. Prior to founding Aklamio, he led the research team at TU Berlin’s Competence Center for Information Retrieval and Machine Learning.  Robert Wetzker, Founder & CEO of Aklamio | Making It Real Podcast with Jan Brinckmann | Episode #16 00:00 What's your personal journey into the entrepreneurship space? 01:32 From a researcher to starting a company - how did it come about? 03:49 How did you take the first steps to build your product? 06:30 How did you get in touch with your first customers? 08:49 Doing sales as a founder 11:12 When is the right time to start contacting your target customers? 12:35 What's the best way to reach out to people when you have nothing to show for yet? 14:52 How many customers do you need to determine a common base for a scalable product? 17:23 How can technically strong people be a sales-driven CEO and find a specialized sales person? 20:01 What are your core lessons learned in the process from doing the first sales to building Aklamio as an impactful company? 24:08 How to approach internationalization 26:14 Should you start with one country manager first or build a small team early on? 30:46 For people looking into referral marketing, what are the core lessons learned that you can share? 33:48 Besides the size of incentives, what are other components of a successful referral campaign? 36:39 What's next for Aklamio? 38:54 What is your core advice for people who want to make it real?

Michael Brehm is the Founder & Managing Director of i2x who helps sales and customer support agents to excel at their job by providing the most intuitive, productive and personally tailored learning to improve each individual’s skill-set. Prior to i2x, Michael has run and founded multiple internationally successful companies in the last 15 years. His last company, Rebate Networks, was an e-commerce and daily deals network. He also was Executive Director & Investor at VZnet Netzwerke Ltd. (schülerVZ, studiVZ, meinVZ). Apart from building companies himself, Michael also enjoys supporting founders as a Partner of Redstone, a Berlin-based VC firm managing multiple corporate venture funds through their unique VC-as-a-Service approach.  More about i2x: https://i2x.ai More about Redstone: https://www.redstone.vc Michael Brehm, Founder & MD of i2x | Making It Real Podcast with Jan Brinckmann | Episode #15 00:00 What's your personal story into the entrepreneurship domain? 03:46 The studiVZ success story: Why did you decide to take on the challenge to battle Facebook? 07:59 How did you meet your co-founders? 10:01 What was the game plan of studiVZ having huge competition like Facebook? 13:36 Do you have to put in an incredible amount of hours to get your venture going in the beginning? 18:15 Painting schools pink as a marketing hack for schülerVZ 19:29 Getting users for a consumer app 23:01 Core mistakes you see in other ventures 28:33 After having launched Rebate Networks and a VC, how did you determine the opportunity for i2x? 31:59 Development of i2x 34:25 How can you finance a technology venture before revenues? 38:39 Convincing potential customers to sign a letter of intent 41:13 Passion, resilience and timing 43:44 How can you judge if it's the right timing for your product? 46:17 What do you personally enjoy the most in entrepreneurship?

Colin McElwee is the Co-Founder of Worldreader. He has a degree in Economics from the University of Manchester and a MBA from ESADE Business School, where he also was the Executive Director of Marketing and Communication from 2001-2010. From 2012-2014, Colin was an invited member of the Global Agenda Council for Africa of the World Economic Forum. Colin has extensive for-profit and not-for-profit experience around the globe. He was an economist for several Brussels-based lobbies to the European Commission. Colin was also the Global Marketing Controller for Scottish & Newcastle where he oversaw Formula 1 sponsorship and product distribution to over 150 countries. He co-founded Worldreader in 2010 with the vision of creating 100's of millions of readers in sub Saharan Africa.  More about Worldreader: https://www.worldreader.org Follow Worldreader on Twitter: https://twitter.com/worldreaders Contact Colin: Colin@worldreader.org Colin McElwee, Co-Founder of Worldreader | Making It Real Podcast with Jan Brinckmann | Episode #14 00:00 What is Worldreader about? 01:28 Is Worldreader an NGO? 02:44 How did Worldreader get started and what did you do before it? 06:58 Going from a vision to making it real 09:27 How did you get started with Worldreader? 14:52 Advice on how to form first relationships when you're starting out 16:47 Networking in times of Covid 19:33 Approaching developing markets 22:28 How did you get Worldreader to where it is now? 25:17 Taking Worldreader to the next level 28:23 From the first few hundred readers to 300,000 users 32:55 Making high-quality content accessible in Africa 37:21 About content contribution 40:38 Do you have a guiding concept to make things real? 44:29 What is for you personally most rewarding about entrepreneurship?

Spain is a serial entrepreneur who has founded or co-founded four Web-enabled companies that transformed their industries. Presently he is the CEO of First Stop Health an online and on-call telemedicine and advocacy service used by employers and their employees. Co-founder and long-time chairman and CEO of Hoover’s, Inc., Spain led the company from a small book publisher in 1992 to a profitable, publicly traded online business information services company with $31 million in revenue in 2001 with a sale to D&B in 2003 for $119 million. Spain was also the founder, chairman and CEO of HighBeam Research, which he started in 2002 and sold to Cengage Learning in December, 2008. He also co-founded and is CEO of Newser, a news curation and summarization service with an audience of seven million readers each month. Spain serves as a board member of Owler a Silicon Valley-based company information service that is using crowd sourcing to revolutionize data collection, quality and delivery. He is also on the Board of a Chicago-based Occasion, an event scheduling platform for smaller merchants. Spain also serves on the Board of Community Health, the largest free clinic in the U.S. Chicago. He is also a member of the Board of Governors of Opportunity International, the largest and best capitalized micro-lender in the world. Spain serves on the advisory boards of several technology startup companies. Past board positions include service at Televerde a rapidly growing, socially responsible marketing services company, SmartAnalyst, a research company that serves the pharma industry and GuideStar, the largest and most trusted database of information on the not-for-profit sector. Spain has worked in the technology industry since 1979 and has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago and a law degree from Boston University. He splits his time between the Chicago and Austin, TX areas.  Patrick Spain, Serial Entrepreneur | Making It Real Podcast with Jan Brinckmann | Episode #13 00:00 When did you decide to co-found a company? 02:04 How did you approach starting your first business? 02:58 Leaving behind a nice salary for your startup 05:14 Democratizing information as a business model 07:40 How could you get into volume distribution? 09:34 How important was market timing for Hoovers.com? 10:38 What would have been your plan B if Hoovers.com didn't work out? 12:25 Is there a common scheme you're looking for when founding a company? 15:19 Intuition vs validation before making large purchases for your business 16:22 After selling two companies, how did you decide on your new venture? 19:10 Core lessons learned in a declining market 21:02 Would you advise founders to only go into high-growth markets? 24:04 How do get started when trying to fix fundamental market issues 26:58 How important is it to have at least one co-founder with deep domain knowledge? 28:28 Starting First Stop Health 30:18 Putting components together instead of building everything from scratch 32:18 Building a sales team as a company who made it to the INC 500 list twice in a row 36:10 Is there a guiding concept to decide things as an entrepreneur? 38:51 Being a very active business angel, what are the common mistakes you're seeing? 42:40 First Stop Health is your fourth venture - what keeps you going?

Katrina Walker is the CEO & founder of CodeOp, Barcelona's first coding school for women and the TGNC community. Prior to that, Katrina worked on the central data science team at eDreams. Being originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, she immigrated to Barcelona in 2016 to explore the rising tech scene from a data science perspective. Katrina comes from a multidisciplinary background starting first as a social worker for the largest provider of reproductive health services in the United States. She has carried out social research with institutes such as the University of California, San Francisco and the University of Ber'Sheva Israel as well as presented on "Pedagogy and Postmodernism" at the University of Florence, Italy. Katrina Walker, CEO & Founder of CodeOp | Making It Real Podcast with Jan Brinckmann | Episode #12 00:00 How did you get started in the entrepreneurship space? 03:08 Triggering moment to start the venture 04:15 Lead time from validation to launch 04:55 How did you approach your validation? 05:46 About CodeOp's start and vision 07:47 When did you decide to incorporate? 08:32 Were you considering bootstrapping the company? 10:44 Tips to find the perfect investors 12:15 About ‘Women in Tech’ support 12:45 Solo-founding vs co-founding a company 14:00 How did you structure the core task areas of your company? 15:31 How do you get your board members committed and get the speed on the ground internally? 17:33 Mistakes while building CodeOp 20:13 How did you approach to take CodeOp globally? 23:01 CodeOp approaching Latin America as an international market 23:42 How does CodeOp's business model actually work? 26:10 Personally, how do you live entrepreneurship? 27:39 Learning how to use external advice 29:12 About the skill of decision-taking 30:08 What do you enjoy personally most in entrepreneurship? 33:31 What's next for CodeOp?

Aimie is the co-founder and CEO of Realtainment, which covers the brands ArtNight, ShakeNight, PlantNight and BakeNight. Her team brings more than 30,000 people together every month. The platform enables 1,000 artists, bakers, and confectioners, florists & bartenders to make a living doing what they love. Realtainment’s vision is to combat digital loneliness with a new brand of “edutainment”, bringing communities together offline again. Aimie-Sarah Carstensen, CEO of Realtainment | Making It Real Podcast with Jan Brinckmann | Episode #11 00:00 How did you get started? 01:30 Did you want to start your venture with a co-founder? 02:09 How did you know that your co-founder is the right one? 04:45 Bootstrapping the venture 05:45 From a corporate job to the triggering moment to start your own venture 07:08 What was your biggest concern that your venture would not work? 08:55 First steps to get ArtNight going 12:20 How did you pick the artists to start out with? 13:50 Approach to start a completely new concept 16:11 What “edutainment” means for Aimie 18:25 Best channels to get customer feedback 19:18 Expanding ArtNight and tips for scaling 22:46 Event ventures during Covid 26:45 Next steps for Realtainment 28:31 Lessons learned while managing the team completely online 30:45 Tools to increase efficiency & productivity 32:26 What are the things you're most excited about? 34:08 What are you enjoying the most being a founder?