2:34 – Why study law and not business?
18:06 – Can you work on a startup part-time?
34:46 – Being motivated by challenges.
48:31 – Having a big client not renew the contract
59:58 – Companies asking for discounts
Tobias Häckermann is the co-founder and CEO of Sherpany, a provider of meeting management software for leadership meetings. Tobias started his first company right out of high school. As a long time practitioner of martial arts, he was the go-to person if one of his friends needed a bouncer for a party or other event. Seeing an opportunity, Tobias started PNC security. Through his first venture, he met Nathanael Wettstein, who would later become one of his co-founders at Sherpany. Tobias sold PNC security to a competitor for CHF 70k. He went on to start easyComm, a platform for digital events which he sold to Alphablue Eventmanagement. During this entire time, Tobias was still obtaining his law degree from the University of Zurich. During his semester abroad at University of Siena, the idea for Sherpany was born. Originally, Sherpany was conceived as a communication tool between companies and their shareholders. For nearly two years, Sherpany was trying to bring the product to the market, until the founders realized they were not solving the right problem for their customers. The company pivoted to providing software for agile meeting management in leadership teams and has since grown to a multinational company with offices in Paris, Lisbon, Milano, Wroclaw, Berlin and Zurich.
“It’s okay to work part-time on a startup at the beginning. But at some point you’ve got to start giving it your all, otherwise you’re gonna iterate too slow and you’re gonna get frustrated, because you’re going nowhere.”
“I always thought the bigger your company gets, the more things it should be able to do. But it’s the opposite — the bigger you get, the more focus you need.”
If you would like to listen to other episodes on organizational matters, check out our conversation with Christian Burger.
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