2:40 – Running a business in Switzerland vs in Mexico
10:23 – The early days of Spocal
21:55 – Raising 50k
35:40 – Figuring out pricing
39:15 – When to scale up
Cristian Grossmann is the CEO and co-founder at Beekeeper, a software company which allows businesses to easily communicate with their non-desk workforce. Cristian was born in Mexico City, to a Mexican-Swiss family. He left Mexico as a teenager to pursue a degree in Chemical Engineering at ETH Zurich and went on to complete his doctorate in Electrical Engineering. The path to Beekeeper began in 2011, when he and his co-founder Flavio started an anonymous dating app for university students called BlicKlick. BlicKlick became Spocal, a community platform for all types of interactions – not just flirting. The solution was picked up not only by university students but also by businesses trying to engage their workforce. In 2012, Swissôtel, a Swiss hotel chain, used the solution to manage communication with its non-desk workforce during a merger with two other global hotel chains. This was a breakthrough moment for Beekeper, which since then has been growing rapidly and just closed a $ 45 million series B round this year.