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Derk: Hi guys. Here we are, yet another broadcast of Friday at Six. Are you
okay?
Sebastian: Yes, I'm fine.
Derk: Talk into the microphone. Everything is in order now to start show
number 17 of Friday at Six. We also say, "Hi" to everybody who
is watching at home or at that their office. They have to come
over to the pre-party of Silicon Allee because we're in 1820 Bar
and tonight their Christmas party's here.
If you are not planning to come over here, you definitely have to
come. In the meantime until 7:00 you can follow us and listen to
us talking about the normal Friday at Six stuff, talking about
business.
Who we have here at the table. Let me start here right in front of
me. Who is this wonderful young man?
Daniel: Hello, I'm Daniel Bartel. I'm a co-founder of Autonetzer. It's
basically an Airbnb for cars.
Derk: Is your microphone on?
Daniel: I don't know. Let me check.
Derk: Because I cannot hear it.
Daniel: Uh-oh.
Derk: That's always a bad thing, yes. I didn't put it on. Excuse me.
Daniel: Okay. I'm on.
Derk: We added this later. The live viewers now can laugh at us, but later
in the edit it will be fine. So, who are you?
Daniel: I'm Daniel Bartel. I'm doing Autonetzer. It's private car-
sharing. It means basically we are the Airbnb for cars.
Derk: You also always have to connect that to a very famous other company
because you hope that you will be that big later on.
Daniel: Later on. We are growing and we are online, of course.
Derk: You want to conquer the world.
Daniel: Basically, yes.
Derk: From Berlin.
Daniel: From Berlin and from Stuttgart and Germany.
Derk: You are in Berlin and Stuttgart now?
Daniel: Yes. We're doing both cities, but you can order cars worldwide
through Germany.
Derk: Yes, thank you. Who's there on the right opposite of me with his nice
hat on?
Sebastian: Thank you.
Derk: It's not that cold outside, but you have...
Sebastian: In our office it is. You definitely need it. It's very cold in
the office.
Derk: At your office you cannot pay the heating?
Sebastian: No, we can't, we're bootstrapping.
Derk: Okay, so who are you?
Sebastian: My name's Sebastian Michel. I'm the co-founder of
WechselButler. Our service is not so easy to explain as, "We're
like Airbnb, but just for electricity and gas." It's more like
what we do is we consult you when you want to swap your
electricity provider or gas provider.
There's a lot of services out there, but they're not really focused
on the customer. What we want to do is when you get a problem
and you pay too much, like a lot of people pay too much for
their energy and gas, you can come to us.
W e can give you a personal offer so that you can save a lot of money
per year. We do it for free because we get paid by our big
partners.
Derk: Your big partners, yes. You try to persuade customers who want to
change, to having a contract with one of these sponsors?
Sebastian: No. We're definitely in partner with 95 percent of all the
different providers in Germany. We can offer a bright range of
providers so that really everyone somewhere...
Derk: It's an owner service then?
Sebastian: Yes, it truly is.
Derk: Very interesting.
Sebastian: It truly is. A personal service.
Derk: Thank you. Here on my right side we have the third guest who's also I
think doing something from business to consumer. Am I right?
Jan: Yes. It could be business-to-consumer or business-to-business.
Derk: Also business to business. Okay.
Jan: I'm Jan Brunnert. I'm a co-founder of SquadMail. SquadMail is
basically synchronized group folders for your email account. We
basically upgrade your email accounts so you can have folders
shared with other email users, and you can use those to
collaborate.
You can share emails, you can put notes in files and they will be in
all the users email folders that are participating in this.
Derk: Why is it called "Squat"Mail?
Jan: Squad is a synonym for team.
Derk: A squad, okay.
Jan: S-Q-U-A-D. This is aimed for team collaboration. It's a very
lightweight cloud collaboration service. We want teams to be
able to escape from this email overload and to work in a small
confined shared place in the inbox.
Derk: So, email turning into an intelligent self-thinking orderly
structured daily habit.
Jan: It has some intelligence in the sense that if you have a discussion
in one of our shared folders all the emails related to that will
stay in the shared folder, but all the good stuff will probably
come later.
We think email is an underrated platform and with all the stuff
that's going on on the web, email has been forgotten it seems,
and I think there's a lot of potential in this platform.
Derk: Okay, wow. A lot of interesting things I've already heard here from
these three young...you're all from Germany, right? You're in
age ranging I think, from 25 to 30 or maybe even younger?
Sebastian: Twenty-two.
Derk: You're 22?
Sebastian: Yes.
Derk: And how old are you?
Daniel: Twenty-four.
Derk: And you?
Jan: I'm 29.
Derk: You're 29, okay.
Sebastian: And you are?
Derk: I'm 31. I wish I was such [inaudible 00:05:10].
Sebastian: Aw, come on.
Derk: Yes, I'm totally old and forgotten. This show keeps me alive because
of the energy of these young three kids.
Sebastian: That's great.
Derk: Yes, that's true. But very interesting, all from Berlin. A specific
reason why you chose this place to develop the projects?
Sebastian: You can go first.
Derk: Who wants to answer?
Daniel: Well, we are from Stuttgart, we're not from Berlin. We were
founded in Stuttgart, but...
Derk: But the headquarters for Autonetzer is in?
Daniel: Both. In Stuttgart and Berlin right now.
Derk: No, that's not possible. Headquarters can only be in one city.
Daniel: That's true. We are still in Stuttgart. We are still in the
place where cars are born and Stuttgart is...
Derk: I think in Bayern, they think differently.
Daniel: Yes, I know.
Derk: Because Stuttgart is Mercedes of course, and Bayern is BMW.
Daniel: But I'm now in Berlin because it's just a cool scene. You meet
so many great guys and people which will help you to develop
your product, to give you insights and input, and it's really,
really nice to just meet up. We saw each other like, three times
already in...
Derk: Yes, we met already without even knowing. I didn't know that you were
Daniel, you didn't know I was Derk and in two weeks we saw each
other three times, and now you are here.
Daniel: It's so fun. We met the first time just now, and it's awesome.
This is really...
Derk: I think that's pretty awesome too. And do you have a specific reason
for Berlin?
Sebastian: So is this your first date today?
Derk: This is our first date, yes.
Sebastian: Nice.
Derk: So for you Berlin, why in Berlin?
Sebastian: I came to Berlin in 2009 because I wanted to study here, but
half-year in I realized that studying is not exactly what I
wanted to do. I called a couple of guys I knew and then friends
of mine organized something called The IdeaCamp, which is
something like a weekend workshop where we just hang out
together. We had some brainstorming sessions and the product of
that was the WechselButler company.
Derk: Is WechselButler your first company?
Sebastian: Yes, it is.
Derk: It's your idea and you're the owner?
Sebastian: Not really. I'm a co-founder with five guys, two from Berlin
and the other ones are from [inaudible 00:07:24], Ludwigsburg
it's called, and that's where the...
Derk: We have a Stuttgart inspired broadcast today.
Sebastian: To be honest, I've never been to Stuttgart or our headquarters.
I've been in Berlin my whole time since we started the company.
Derk: And you, did you discover in Berlin that email is an underestimated
platform?
Jan: We kind of didn't discover it in Berlin specifically, because in
Berlin if the problem is so great, it's a great problem
everywhere. We're in Berlin because we come from university, we
basically founded out of university and also are supported by
the programs from the government in that regard.
Derk: I saw a lot of logos on your website, also the European Union. Can
you still count on your money because I think they have big
problems now in Brussels?
Jan: I think they can print it off, so it's no problem.
Derk: In Germany they think differently about printing money with the
European Central Bank, but let's not go into those details.
Jan: It's not the topic here.
Derk: But you came out of university, because of course in Berlin, there
are a lot of universities, and then what happened?
Jan: Actually, two of our founders, we have three founders, studied at the
Hasso Plattner Institute. It's actually in Potsdam. It's an IT
focused school, but also does a lot of design thinking as our co-
founder would say. We kind of just stayed in Berlin.
Derk: We have also music and they are so very politely waiting in the
corner until they can come over and play. We have the wonderful
leader of a number of bands here in Berlin. His name is Eli
Fabrikant.
Eli: A co-participant, not a leader. Our music, we don't have it like that
jazz and stuff.
Derk: A participant. I thought that you were so polite. They're going to
play, but Eli is not alone. Who did you bring along?
Eli: This is the Knoblauch Klezmer Band, a newly formed Berlin-based band
and we're going to play some klezmer music for you.
Derk: What kind of music?
Eli: Klezmer. It's the traditional Jewish music of East Europe.
Derk: Oh, wow. Yes, that's right. If I may ask, if you'd go a little more
to the left, for you, to the right. The other people can more
come to the end of the table. Then you're right in the shot of
the live stream and all the people can see you. Thank you and go
ahead. Thanks.
[music starts 00:09:58]
[music stops 00:14:22]
Derk: Wonderful music, Eli and his band. Later on, all the people have to
introduce themselves so that we also know their names, or maybe
you can do this already? Let me wait. Who are there today with
you?
Eli: Well, Arnaud [inaudible 00:14:44].
Arnaud: Hello, I'm Arnaud. I'm from France and I play clarinet.
Derk: Do you like the start-up scene in Berlin?
Arnaud: If I start what?
Derk: If you like the start-up scene in Berlin?
Arnaud: Yes, I'd like to be a star and play with Madonna hopefully.
Derk: Yes, it's almost the same. Who's the next person who wants to
introduce themselves?
Léon: Léon, the contrabass, from Berlin.
Derk: Léon, the contrabass, because you are from Berlin, do you know
anything about the web start-up scene here in Berlin?
Léon: No.
Derk: No, okay. You should listen to this show, then you'll know more about
it. Who's the next player?
Alice: Alice [SP], from Italy.
Derk: Alice, from Italy. Do you have a smartphone or something like that?
Do you use the web?
Alice: No, not really.
Derk: No? Okay.
Sebastian: Well, that's great.
Derk: This is exactly why I invite real Berlin-based bands, because every
time there's such a huge difference in how people that are
involved with the web scene and for instance, musicians, what
they know about the web and how they use it. Because you all
have products for German users and they're not all early
adopters, what can you say about that, talking about your
product, usability and how willing they are to try new things?
Sebastian: Me?
Derk: Yes, if you want to, ButlerWechsel.
Sebastian: WechselButler.
Derk: WechselButler, yes, exactly.
Sebastian: Actually, it's kind of hard because electricity and gas is
something you don't want to be too involved with. It's what you
do once a year. Most of the time people never do it. It's like,
75 percent of all the people never change their gas providers.
They're paying too much, but they just don't care.
Derk: And Autonetzer, for you?
Daniel: We believe in a change that's coming now. It's going from habit
consumption to creative consumption, that you start sharing your
own private car with strangers. This, in the U.S., it's pretty
common or in other countries in Europe, but in Germany it's just
started, where people start to think about it, just not sharing
their own flat, but sharing their car.
Derk: But it is already, also in Germany, very common if you travel longer
distance, to share a car for example. So it's not a whole new
concept that you are starting.
Daniel: Right. You're talking about carpooling, but on the Autonetzer,
you give away your own car to a stranger and give it to them
with the keys. On the platform, we started to cover insurance
because nobody would do it, and the Germans, they love their
cars.
This is a really hard market, but we are pretty sure...in Stuttgart
for example, we have almost 50 to 60 cars there and it's
working, but it's early adopters of course, and the people will
be leaving new comments.
Derk: We'll definitely come back to that, but I'm now making a quick round.
What about you and how Germans react upon your product? Is it
hard to change their behavior to look differently upon email?
This is the co-founder SquadMail.
Jan: I think for our product the early adopters are mostly tech savvy
people and we hope that by network effects, when they're
inviting friends to other shared folders, we can grab more of
those people who are not as tech savvy. In Germany for example,
for such products you often get responses like, "Is it secure?"
In Germany they care about the security...
Sebastian: Yes, it's true.
Derk: React on it please, Sebastian.
Sebastian: There's not more to add. It's like he said.
Jan: ...and the keyword is data protection, and, "Is it all legal?" and so
on.
Derk: Do you find it difficult?
Jan: For us, technically, we don't find it difficult because we make sure
that all the data is protected and safe and we do all the
encryption. From a technical side it's okay, but it's the
psychological side where people think, "Is it really okay?"
They have no problem giving all their data to big other providers,
but if it's a small unproven company, they might have
reservations.
Derk: Yes, it's even more difficult when you're a small company because you
have to build up the trust with the people that use your
products.
Jan: Yes, exactly.
Derk: How do you do that? Of course, everybody has the same problem
tackling this sometimes more conservative German behavior.
Jan: First of all we provide the technical solutions to this in
authentication methods like Google where you don't have to give
your password to us. That might draw some people who are
concerned about giving away passwords, for example.
Building trust, building a community, showing that we are only people
that don't want to steal your data, that don't want to mess with
your account, that's what we're working on.
Derk: Yes, but make it a little bit more concrete how you wrap this into
the philosophy in your whole company? It's not only that they
don't have to give a password, it really has to come right from
the bottom I think when you start a company.
Then you have to have this awareness that you want to have this
approach, so where can we see it more in your company?
Jan: We want to be customer-focused. We love hearing from customers and
how they want our product to evolve. We want to stay in contact
with these people by building relationships with these initial
users. We want to build this trust that they are then
transporting.
Derk: Does it work?
Jan: I hope it does. Right now, we have no complaints. It's mostly the
people who come anew who first hear about the idea. They have
these concerns it seems to protect themselves from new things,
but then later on when they understand how we operate, they
don't have these concerns anymore.
Derk: What about Autonetzer? You say, "I'm using my car only in the morning
and in the late afternoon to go to work." It's there safe, it's
dry, it's in a parking lot, it's yours, you can have your coffee
there and you have your own personal stuff.
Then you come and you say, "We're going to use your car, your
property and we're going to give it to a complete stranger, to
somebody you don't know." How do you approach such a huge
problem, just this personal stuff?
Daniel: We have two points where we attack this target market or to
make people more trustful of it. One is insurance. We have
insurance that's fully covered and it took us a lot of time. We
had talked to insurance companies for over a year and we fought
with them and now we've got...
Derk: When you first them, how did they react to your proposition?
Daniel: They said, "No. Sorry, we have our own insurance business. We
want to do the insurance by [inaudible 00:21:44] at the end of
November." We're a daily insurance. We need a daily insurance
based on a daily basis or even on an hour basis. They said, "No,
we cannot afford it. We are not able to do that," and this was a
big fight.
Derk: What was your response then?
Daniel: We said, "That we believe in a change that it has to be all the
more on time and..."
Derk: More flexible.
Daniel: ...more flexible of course. Of course, they are maybe afraid
somebody will steal their car and go away, but this is not the
case. We have several hundred car exchanges every other month
and the people take care of your car. They don't mess around
with it like on a commercial car-share platform.
Derk: Do you think it's harder in Germany than in another country to roll
out this product?
Daniel: Somewhat it's easier because in the U.S. you have the 50 states
and you have to negotiate with every state about the insurance.
We can say, "We have now the coverage for all of Germany and can
provide other countries as well". But if you want to go to
Europe, you have to talk with every country and to make
insurance in every single country.
Derk: What I meant is, are Germans more proud of their cars than other
people in the rest of Europe, do you think?
Daniel: Yes, of course. We have 45 million car owners here. It's the
second largest car market in the world. That's definitely so
that people are...
Derk: But you like a challenge, that's pretty obvious. It's really
interesting. How many car exchanges do you now have a month?
Daniel: I don't have the figures right now, but I believe it should be
around 100 or even more in regards to...
Derk: 100?
Daniel: ...where we started a year ago. But we reframed our platform 12
weeks ago and now we're on the new system where it's much
easier. It's so snappy to just order a car.
Derk: So you made some iterations. Last question is now going to be for
you, but Eli is already standing there because we want to of
course have some more music, that's absolutely right. I have to
say now, correctly, because if I now say the company name wrong
again, then you're really leaving.
Sebastian: I'm leaving.
Derk: Nobody left until...I did 17 shows and nobody left. Yes, you.
Sebastian: I'd be the first one. Yes, bye.
Derk: You would be the first one. WechselButler, right?
Sebastian: Correct.
Derk: Yes. We talked about this already, you don't want to mind gas and
electricity. What is now your main plan on how to change this
behavior that they say, "Well, if I don't like it, I'll just go
to WechselButler and change it?"
Sebastian: To be honest, a lot of people just don't know how much money it
is. We did a lot of interviews with customers or...what is it,
people who could be interested in our service?
Derk: Prospects.
Sebastian: Yes, prospects. And we talked to a young family with two kids,
a mom and dad, and they could save in a year about E1,000. I
don't know how they did it, but because they did it with our
service, they could pay for a vacation.
If you can tell people, "If you would change your electricity
providers, you would save per year." Even if it's only E500,,
it's E500 more, you can do a small vacation or a really short
one, so that's very good.
Derk: What are you going to play?
Eli: We're going to play "The Haut [SP] Bulgarian" and I want to dedicate
this song for low-tech, for simple, non-technological, acoustic,
good music.
[music starts 00:25:28]
[music stops 00:30:04]
Derk: Amazing, wonderful kind of low-tech. This is the kind of music where
you can dance all night long.
Eli: Without the electricity, by the way.
Derk: Eli, you're such a wonderful guy. I can learn a lot from you. We all
can learn a lot from you I think. Where would we be without
electricity guys? We could not walk one step.
Sebastian: We wouldn't exist.
Derk: No, we would not. That's also very deep.
Sebastian: He's trying to kill me, kind of.
Derk: I'm going to ask you a very broad question. You can just fill it in
the way you want to. By the way, you're half-way into the Friday
at Six radio show, a show about web start-ups in Berlin. We're
here today in 1820 Bar where the Silicon Allee Christmas party's
going to be held.
Thank you very much to the guys of Silicon Allee who organized this
event. They are now setting up, but have given us the
opportunity to broadcast here, which is pretty cool, so thank
you Travis, among them, and the other organizers of this party.
And the broad question is, let me start with WechselButler, how is it
to start up?
Sebastian: Hard. When we started we were five guys, but two of them could
only work for ten hours a week and the rest of us, we three,
were just working our *** off, if you can say that on the
radio.
Derk: Absolutely.
Sebastian: So we had our problems in the beginning. We launched our new
website only two weeks ago, you can do it now faster and you can
do it easier, so it's good. But it gets better for the customer
every day and we're just trying to improve at every point. It's
going well.
Derk: Apart from the products and the things that you want to make better,
you also have some issues in the team all the time that you have
to resolve as well?
Sebastian: Yes, sure.
Derk: I can imagine. With five guys, I think it's also hard, especially if
some dedicate more time than others. How do you solve that?
Sebastian: We've got to call once or twice a week with all the different
people, and I've got a guy here in Berlin, we're working very
closely together and that's going really well. We can meet up
every day to work.
There's not really a huge problem between the guys on the team, it's
more like we're just holding on together, we're just working on
the product and the team is just going well to be honest.
Derk: But there were some of course, in the beginning, some things that you
had to be really clear about with all the team members?
Sebastian: That's true. The biggest problem was that we've got a guy, as I
told you, in Ludwigsburg, we've got two people here in Berlin,
one in Frankfurt and one in Darmstadt, which is near Frankfurt
as well, so it was hard for us to meet once a month or once
every two months just to solve different problems that were
arising.
It was hard because if some guys are working 40 hours a week or more
and the other guys are just working 5 to 10 hours, it's hard to
be on the same level. So there's some things that need to be
solved in the week that some people in the team don't really
know of, that's kind of hard.
Derk: How do you resolve that when it comes to how much you own of the
company? How do you divide this then?
Sebastian: We all share the same amount, the same percentage of the
company, because the guys who are not working are the ones who
are giving the money. That's where we find ourselves...
Derk: Okay, so there's some equality in it.
Sebastian: Yes, exactly, and that's working out just fine.
Derk: Do you learn a lot during this process?
Sebastian: No. Yes, sure. We really do. We made hundreds of mistakes, we
did some twice, but I think we're in a good way. We're
improving, hopefully getting better and that's good for our
customers. That's good for ourselves, so we can really make a
living from this company.
Derk: Wonderful. And Daniel from Autonetzer, how is it to start up?
Daniel: Harder. It's also hard. It's really hard because you get in
with many ideas. You want to say, "Yes, we have to do this and
do it now," and you get slow because you start to make
everything perfect in the beginning. Then you're getting slower
and you're getting demotivated, and then we have to get it
ramped up again, to push it.
Derk: What makes it that you hold on to this positive energy to go through?
Daniel: The growth of the company is a good sign because you see it
going on. You see also what market it's accelerating in, in this
case. One and one-half years ago we believed in the market, but
we didn't see it coming and now we see it popping up, like the
commercial car-sharing for example.
We're setting up in Berlin, Munich and so on, and that motivates us
to see there is a market and when people want to save more money
or be more environmental friendly, they could use us.
Derk: How do you push yourself through this difficult...because these are
all very rational elements, you can just analyze this and know
it. But there's also I think, a mentality that really drives
you, where do you get your inspiration in these hard times?
Daniel: The team, of course. We are a mix of people. We are six right
now and it's just awesome to see every once in a while when a
new one's coming. It's just awesome to really get more energy
out of them, outside from friends of course, who believe in
this.
Derk: Are some of them sometimes saying "Hey, why do a start-up, man? You
could have done something different."
Sebastian: Some?
Daniel: Ninety percent.
Derk: Yes. And what do you think then when they say something like that?
Daniel: It's hard. Even my parents are not believing in it, so it's
quite hard. You have to motivate yourself and just believe in
it. You can fail and failures should not be meant as you're bad.
It should be a learning process and the earlier you start with it,
like as he said, it's just a high learning curve and you have to
do this, and you have to do this twice, and maybe five times in
your life until you get success I believe.
Derk: Do you have big examples, somebody that you really admire where you
say, "He failed, so I can fail too, but in the end I will make
it?"
Daniel: Firstly, Steve Jobs is a good example. He was kicked out of his
own company.
Derk: It's a pretty good example, yes.
Daniel: That's one example and it's the same with, in his school, you
said design thinking, it's all about you can fail. You're
allowed to fail, so failing is not hard anymore. [inaudible
00:37:20]
Derk: And how's start-up life at SquadMail?
Jan: We're only three people and we all have it spread out equally. We
have good team vibes obviously and we're having a good time
because we have funding. We don't have to worry about this day-
to-day survival, let's put it that way. That's a good thing, but
then on the other side, you always know there will be a time
when the funding is running out and you have to be profitable or
attract an investor.
So there's a certain time crunch always chasing you to get results,
and to get this thing out and to get enough paying revenue
streams, customers. It's hard, but it's lots of fun.
Derk: Where do you get your inspiration from?
Jan: My inspiration? Obviously you can read TechCrunch every day and it's
all made out so you're inspired. You think all these thoughts
are great, but in the end it's basically hard work. You have to
believe in your team and the team is also the one thing that can
only improve.
If you have a bad idea and there's some problem with your idea, you
can re-pivot it. We changed our idea, but the team will always
continue to grow and I think that's great in a start-up.
Derk: You all talk about the team. This is really a good similarity. How do
you get a good team together then?
Sebastian: As I said, we did that IdeaCamp that was organized by a lot of
people I really admire and a lot of people I really like.
Derk: Explain in short what IdeaCamp is.
Sebastian: IdeaCamp is you get together for a weekend and you learn how to
start a start-up. It's kind of like that. I knew a lot about
start-ups before because my roommate started a company himself,
so for me it was more like getting to know different people
who'd love to join me. He's a big inspiration for myself because
I know how it could be and how it can turn out in the end.
Derk: Personalities can be very different, do you really select upon that
beforehand or do you just start and you see if it works out or
not?
Sebastian: I prefer the first way because it's more like you need to be
linked on a personal level. It's really important because
there'll be hard times and that's where personality's really
important. If you've got two people who don't really like each
other in the case when times are tough, it's breaking up the
team.
Derk: Then even money cannot solve these problems.
Sebastian: No, no.
Derk: No, no, you say. Okay. How do you select a team, Daniel, from
Autonetzer?
Daniel: It's basically almost the same. I'm the organizer of Startup
Weekend. It's an organization from Seattle and all over the
world we are doing this stuff. I'm the organizer for doing a
[inaudible 00:40:13] in Berlin.
It's exactly the same, you get to meet on Friday, you get a bunch of
people who want to start a company and you just get together,
drink a beer or two, pitch your idea and then start working on
it.
Derk: But no specific ideas on how to put together the ideal team?
Daniel: It's mixed up because you should have a diverse team you can
comprehend some ideas or you can have a good team to run it up.
Derk: What are the basic elements then? I think you need a creative guy, I
think you need a programmer, you need a designer and then a
finance guy?
Daniel: Yes, business development, of course. You need a big man who
says, "I believe in this vision."
Derk: Aha, the CEO.
Daniel: Not be the CEO, maybe yes, but you need somebody who has the
big...
Derk: A leader type.
Daniel: Yes, a leader type who believes in the big, big idea.
Derk: Anything to add regarding team, like a tip for people who are
listening or watching right now?
Jan: I think if you have a quality team where you have one person that
brings inspiration to a team and then you have another person
who's more rational and kind of brings it down to the real
world, that's always a very good thing.
Then if you have someone who really is into the business side and can
say, "Does this technicality make sense? Will people pay for
it," I think then you are on a good track.
Derk: Are you the creative guy or are you the content guy?
Jan: I work on the technical side, but I like to get inspiration and bring
out ideas. We kind of have a vision where we want this to go. We
don't only want this to be about sharing email, we want to make
the whole email experience a better experience.
We want to push the envelope on email basically, so there's a bunch
of other things we want to do in the future. I think I had some
of these ideas, but then we also have a product to finish.
Then there's other people who'll say, "Well Jan, calm down. Now we
have to get some features in."
Daniel: I'd say marketing is also really strategic, I believe.
Sebastian: I think to sum it up it would be like you should really connect
on a personal level, but on the other hand you should really
know what your position in the team is. I think that's
important.
You should know which kind of guys you need and then you should
search for them, but you should really connect on a personal
level. That's the real deal then, I guess.
Derk: Okay. After the music we're going to talk, the four of us, some more
about starting up and about web life. We were also talking about
leaders. Why am I always doing this? Eli, you know how to play.
Just do your thing.
[music starts 00:43:05]
[music stops 00:45:45]
Derk: It's just so typical that it suddenly stops there, this music.
Eli: A suspension.
Derk: A suspension, oh okay. Wow. We're going to also try to get some more
suspension into this live web radio show while Silicon Allee's
Christmas party's still setting up. Is everything going okay?
A: Yes, I hope so.
Derk: You hope so or is there a little bit stress because I'm looking at a
girl who's setting up the beamer for the logo?
A: Hi there.
Derk: Yes, they have everything under control. They're very relaxed and
they're so in touch. Hey guys, are you enjoying yourselves?
Jan: It's wonderful.
Sebastian: Yes, sure.
Derk: You like it? Okay. When you talk about where your company's heading,
imagine your company in about five years, where will you then be
and what will the product look like? Could you say something
about that? This is Autonetzer.
Daniel: It's a tough question. That can be anything, but if I were to
be optimistic I would say of course, we are one of the leading
companies in Germany doing the peer-to-peer car-sharing
experience, we believe that everybody will know us and that we
have enough cars that people can be flexible on their own.
They can earn money by renting their cars and that it's a common
place, that people just do it and do it on a daily basis, and
they don't need to buy a car anymore, just a case.
Sebastian: That's great.
Derk: Where will you be in five years with WechselButler?
Sebastian: To be honest, we don't really plan for five years, we just plan
for half a year, but we've got a vision. I think it's really
important to have a vision for that.
Derk: It was a wrong question.
Sebastian: I know what you mean.
Derk: It's not about the numbers. It's about the vision of course.
Sebastian: We really want to again, let everybody know how much money they
can save per year and how easy it is, how much less time they
would really need to spend on the internet and how much money
they could save with that.
Derk: Could I make it a bit more fundamental? I think that you're really
trying to raise awareness for people taking their lives and
their consuming into their own hands.
Sebastian: Yes, that's true. It's more like, I guess they just don't know
how much money is in there, so that's our main problem or our
main...what is it?
Derk: What I think in the end, all families with two children can come
together on the internet, form a social group and then
negotiate, themselves, with the electricity company of where
it's this specific family, how much they have to pay. You're
really changing existing business models into a whole different
structure I think.
Sebastian: We're not really doing it as some kind of group-buy thing. You
can go online and you can check it out on our website. You just
need to enter your usage per year and the place you're living
in, and you can get a quote instantly for the type of energy you
Derk: You don't think it will get better if you gather your team up with
other people and then negotiate yourself?
Sebastian: That could work as well, but at that point right now...
Derk: It's a different business model.
Sebastian: Yes, sure. That's a very good idea, but I think there are a lot
of people who are trying that right now. We're just doing
another approach on that.
Derk: Last week we had Michael Brehm, the founder or co-founder of StudiVZ,
and he's a visionary of course, he had very successful
businesses. He said that local e-commerce, every product is
going to be huge, so I already applied this to your business
model, but maybe it's too far ahead.
Sebastian: Maybe you should try it.
Derk: I'm a journalist, don't take me too seriously. I'm not an
entrepreneur. What's your vision with the SquadMail company?
Jan: First of all, it would be great if our network grows so that more
people are actually sharing emails, and files, and notes and
whatever with SquadMail, and by that way, we have a lot of
users.
The benefits would be that when we have a lot of users we can open up
our platform to other developers. So other developers can create
applications for the email inbox to help people with their email
trouble and everyday email issues by developing small apps for
the inbox.
Derk: What's the ideology behind that opening up?
Jan: The ideology is that right now it's very difficult to develop
applications that target the email inbox as a platform. Today,
you have a lot of APIs to work for the web, but there's very few
APIs to work on the email inbox. So developers, for them, it's
very hard to enhance the email inbox with more functionality.
We want to open up our technology platform to other developers so
they can be creative and think, "How can we improve email?" We
give them the access, of course security-wise, limited, in any
app platform to these inboxes so they can develop new value
added functionality for email.
Which, still, there hasn't been the development in the last ten years
that could have been, and we want to change it. That's our
vision.
Derk: Do you, as other entrepreneurs, Autonetzer and WechselButler, have
any questions for him that maybe you're curious of regarding
this product? You have a company yourselves, maybe you have
different kinds of questions than I have.
Daniel: We're using different email systems right now and it's a good
way to consolidate it to one platform. I heard about this kind
of business in the U.S. starting, like reaching all the email
stuff and use the email as just the bottle of the mail. Then the
rest of it, you can create whatever you want.
I believe this is a good idea. I was working at IBM for a couple of
years and we also were heartedly working on how to make the
email new and I believe there's definitely a lot of [inaudible
00:51:58]
Jan: This functionality has been available within enterprises, sharing
emails and folders, but our system is cloud-based, so it can be
used with multiple mailboxes. One can be a Gmail account,
another one can be a plain IMAP account, so it's really
interoperable.
That's why I'm so excited about the cloud, because companies, more
companies like us can make such services available and maybe
later on, even expose it as an API so others can build upon our
work, and if it works out, that's great.
Derk: A little translation because the musicians we heard, how could it
benefit them? Like a musician that is not really into the
internet, but checks their email once in a while, how could they
benefit from this product?
Jan: For example, if each musician, in their city they get newsletters
about what's going on and they see a great band that they want
to share with other musicians in their team, they just drag it
into the folder...great discoveries or whatever, and will be
shared with everyone so everyone is on the same page.
Derk: Okay. Because it would be not nice if they can ask questions, but you
cannot ask them questions, do you have any questions regarding
WechselButler or Autonetzer?
Jan: Yes, Autonetzer. I'm myself a car-sharing user, but if everyone is
using your service, hypothetically, who will provide the cars?
Sebastian: Good point.
Daniel: This was about ten years, we're not talking about ten years.
Maybe in 50 years we do not own cars anymore, it's a true point
so you're right. There are 45 million cars standing on the
streets every day making the city full of stuff and now the
companies are going to put new cars on the streets, it makes it
even crowdier.
We believe that you use the resources which are available and which
are standing there for free, and to make it more useful to save
the environment. If you go this far...
Derk: It's not really an answer. It's a good question.
Daniel: Then I will be rich and maybe doing a different business model.
Derk: After you make the car companies bankrupt, then you're going to leave
and do something else.
Sebastian: That's a good plan.
Derk: It's definitely disruptive, you can't say anything about that.
Daniel, do you have a question for WechselButler?
Daniel: You're doing more than support for the customer, to make more
leisure time, to get more freedom of their choice and so on, do
you think you can put this towards different kind of contracts
besides electricity?
Sebastian: Yes, sure. For us, it's just the start. We just wanted to test
it out and right now we're just improving on our process every
day. If the process is really working and people are really
interested in that, that would be an easy way just to select
another niche or another service we could provide.
Derk: Absolutely. What's the next market then, where you're thinking of?
Sebastian: We're just focusing on energy right now.
Derk: You don't want to answer.
Sebastian: Not right now. We're really focusing on energy. We need to
improve that at that point.
Derk: I know, but you have some ideas about the next market, right?
Sebastian: Sure, it could be something like the mobile providers or
something like that, or DSL internet. Really, all the things
people really want to get the cheapest possible price, but they
don't want to spend hours on the internet searching for the best
one.
Derk: Guys, last question. How are you going to spend your Christmas
because tonight there's a Christmas party? The first in the
season I think, of Silicon Allee. Any special start-up plans
with Christmas? What kind of things do you have in mind?
Sebastian: Celebrating with the family I guess. It's nothing special. I'm
not from Berlin, so I'm going back home, which is near
Frankfurt, and definitely looking forward to that.
Jan: Are you going to acquire some FFF capital there?
Sebastian: Yes, sure.
Derk: Absolutely.
Sebastian: I'm asking for money from my whole family, and that's how we
already finance our company.
Derk: Any Christmas plans, Daniel?
Daniel: I'm also going home of course, having my family.
Derk: In Stuttgart?
Daniel: No. I'm from Cologne, near Cologne.
Derk: Oh, you are from Cologne? Okay, sorry.
Daniel: I'm near Cologne, but I studied in Stuttgart. My family's at
home and I'll make a good Christmas time, and convince my
parents that this idea will work out.
Derk: I really hope that in the end they'll also see the energy that you
have and the enthusiasm. That also counts I think, sometimes,
but of course parents are worried about you so maybe it's a good
sign.
Daniel: Of course.
Derk: Actually, you are not going to work on Christmas, Jan?
Jan: I will certainly take my laptop with me so I can write a few lines of
code.
Derk: Even during Christmas dinner?
Jan: No, not during Christmas dinner. But before that we're going to have
our awesome SquadMail Christmas party.
Derk: Are we all invited?
Jan: Pardon?
Derk: Are we all invited?
Jan: I guess not.
Group: Aw.
Jan: You know, the government funding.
Derk: You have to be careful with that, yes.
Jan: That's technically bootstrapping, yes.
Derk: But also family and just quiet time, and not working all the time?
Jan: Yes. Maybe for our beta testers we can create a little folder where
we can share some pictures of our Christmas party, for those who
are curious.
Derk: You can already beta test?
Jan: You can go to our website, SquadMail.com, and register for a beta
invite and I hope we will put those betas active pretty soon.
Derk: Cool. Thank you so much Jan Brunnert of SquadMail. Sebastian of
WechselButler, thank you very much for coming, and Daniel, you
as well, from Autonetzer. Thank you very much for coming here on
this radio show. I hoped you like it. We're going to end with
some music of Eli and the band. Eli, the problem always is, we
like each other.
Eli: A lot.
Derk: Yes, actually a lot, yes. But you don't really like or are interested
in the content, so it's pretty hard for you to wait and wait
until you get to play the music. We have to find a combination
for that, that you are also interested more in this content. But
it would be very hard for you I think to get interested in high-
tech, right?
Eli: Yes, possible I would say.
Derk: Do you please, want to close the show?
Eli: I'm quite sure, yes. The Knoblauch Klezmer Band will play for you one
happy song for Christmas.
[music starts 00:58:53]
[music stops 01:01:11]
Derk: Thank you for listening to the Friday at Six show. This was number 17
and next week is the final broadcast of this year, number 18.
We'll talk about the whole year, what is behind us and what's
going to be new in 2012.
Thank you so much for listening. Also, if you're at the office, come
to the pre-party of Silicon Allee guys, here at 1820 Bar. It's a
very nice location and it looks really cool.
I hope to see you later and maybe this week I'll see you at some
event. Otherwise, next week. Thank you, bye-bye.