The journey from founder to leader
Founder Confessions with Anna Banicevic and Michael Martens
This week we hosted another event in our Founder Confessions series. This time we invited the founders Anna Banicevic from Zizoo and Michael Martens from fairlanguage.
Here are some of the most interesting answers we got from our guests:
That’s always the biggest challenge. Making people join, organizing them and getting them bring the productivity that you expect in order to deliver the results. — Anna
What are your biggest challenges currently?
Anna: Fundraising is always the most stressful time. When you raise money for the first time, everyone says ‘no’ while you keep knocking on lots of doors — always on the verge of bankruptcy. But afterward, when you raise money for the 2nd or 3rd time, it gets even more stressful because you need to show results. Then what happens is, you hire loads of people — usually too many, too quickly — even though you’re not ready with your processes to make these people actually deliver what you need. That’s always the biggest challenge. Making people join, organizing them and getting them bring the productivity that you expect in order to deliver the results.
Michael: We are in a very new market and try to sell into public organizations. There’s a huge interest but they have super slow processes. If you want to do anything together with public institutions, expect sales cycles of six months to one and a half years! For a startup, it can be quite challenging to basically survive day to day while working on these future contracts.
In order to survive, we do revenue through consulting projects, which is also a bit tricky, since you want to focus on building your product. On the upside, you really learn a lot about your customers and understand what they actually need which can again influence your product development positively.
Anna: Especially in Germany investors are just way more risk-averse. To prove your concept it’s even worth it to pay for professional research. You can go out to one the big consultancies and let them validate your market. It will be easier to convince investors.
Michael: We’re working on a social topic and especially in Germany we have this mindset that you cannot make money with something social. For example, if you work in elderly care, these are things where society says: “It’s not okay to earn money by helping people” and I think that’s a fundamental flaw in our whole system.
You just have to be tough on yourself to make tough decisions because it is your responsibility as a founder to make the company successful and that means making it as productive as possible. — Anna
What are your learnings when it comes to hiring the right people and what to do if they’re not the right people?
Anna: When I was at Google I was in the recruiting department. Obviously, Google was super harsh about hiring. You have to do like 20 interviews and then they’ll take you for lunch and say you’re not fun enough. And the result of that is they end up with a very strong culture and a very strong team. This is something we partly adapted. It’s better to take them for a tenth lunch and make sure as many people as possible interview them to find out if you really want this person on the team.
About letting people go, if someone is not productive and doesn’t love your company then it’s not a bad thing to let them go. You just have to be tough on yourself to make tough decisions because it is your responsibility as a founder to make the company successful and that means making it as productive as possible.
What would you do if you could found another startup today?
Michael: I would go into the direction of voice analyzes. For example, I would be very interested to see how the voice distribution between the three of us is. Women on panels are totally underrepresented. Often they take less space because the moderator has the feeling that they should stop women earlier and jump to the next questioncompared tomen. There’s also a big big issue of representation even in movies. It’s super interesting. There are studies that show how many women speak in movies. It’s not that many.
Try to balance yourself and stay fit because if your body doesn’t work, you don’t work. No investor money can fix that. — Michael
How can you be a good leader?
Anna: It’s really important right from the beginning to have accountability on the most important things you need to achieve. As a co-founder you will for a long time be a firefighter. When people resign, when the website goes down, it’s going to be you who’s gonna pick up the phone and tries to solve it. But what I’ve learned is that at one point you have to pull back. If you have 70 people to manage, you can’t solve everyone’s problems. You have to be very disciplined to make sure that other people do the firefighting and feel accountable and responsible.
How do you ad in your own growth on a daily basis?
Michael: The biggest work is to manage yourself and ensure that you’re functioning. Try to balance yourself and stay fit because if your body doesn’t work, you don’t work. No investor money can fix that.
Anna: Take care of yourself because if you get tired no one will give you money and no one will listen to you. Definitely read books because you always hit your limits or knowledge.. Thirdly, listen to your team and find good ways to give and receive feedback.
Convertible note — This is great because it ties the money into future success. That’s fair on the investor and on you. — Anna
Any recommendations for books to read as a leader?
Radical Candor: How to Get What You Want by Saying What You Mean by Kim Scott
Scaling Up: How to Build a Meaningful Business & Enjoy the Ride by Verne Harnish
Radical Focus: Achieving Your Most Important Goals with Objectives and Key Results by Christina Wodtke
Turning the Flywheel: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great Kindle by Jim Collins
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
What are good ways to get funding?
Anna: Convertible note — This is great because it ties the money into future success. That’s fair on the investor and on you.
Loan — If you do get investment then the state will give you a loan on top of that. 30% of our funding came from state loans and they have very friendly terms. The investor likes it as well if you have a bank commitment.
Michael: Funding programs — Berlin has some very nice supporting programs. One of them is called ‘Gründungsbonus’ which you can get within the first 12 months of your incorporation. Also check if it makes sense to partner up with a bigger company as a strategic investor.
