Who are the people behind the scenes? Part 3
Last but definitely not least, our three-piece series introduces ELO’s third co-founder, Felix. In our previous posts we already introduced Philipp and Remie. You can find those posts here and here. Here we go!
Who are you and what is your background?
Hola! My name is Felix. I am 27 years old. I am half German and half Argentinean, meaning that I grew up speaking German and Spanish. So, languages have always played an important role in my life. However, I have not always recognized the importance. In fact, my formal education lies in psychology. I studied psychology to understand more about human behavior. One of the questions I remember I wanted to answer was why people lied.
How did you end up in Sweden?
I came to Sweden three years ago to study my research master’s in psychology at Lund University. The reason for coming to Sweden was that I really digged my exchange in Geneva, Switzerland during my bachelor. So, I really wanted to study in an international environment abroad and Sweden was the best option. In general, the Nordic educational system is quite famous in Germany. Well, and then after the two years in my master’s, I just decided to stay for another year to study Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Lund University!
What have you done before working at ELO and why did you want to start your own business?
Before I started ELO with Remie and Philipp, I studied psychology and entrepreneurship and innovation. I was also very active in the student community and was on the board of the biggest psychology association in Germany. During my education, I played with a lot of thoughts of what I wanted to do and who I wanted to become. I remember that at one point in time, I even wanted to become a professor. So, starting a business was always on my periphery because I was reading quite a lot about startups. However, I thought of entrepreneurs as these super-confident people equipped with superpowers and that just didn’t seem to fit me. Once, I realized that the only difference between entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs is the decision to take big risks, I applied for the master’s in entrepreneurship and innovation.
Why are you working on ELO?
During the master I gained the self-confidence, learned about the process to start a business and met my two awesome co-founders, Remie and Philipp. All of this together convinced me to take the leap of faith and start ELO.
Working on ELO itself is highly personal for me. When I speak Spanish to people who don’t speak Spanish, they always tend to tell me how fluent I am. Though, I and every native Spanish speaker in the world, can hear in a few sentences that I am at a very high level but not really fluent. So, our ambition is to create tools that help everyone interested in high language proficiency to reach near-native fluency.
What has been your best take-away so far?
I have learned a tremendous amount while working on ELO, so I want to present my first and last take-away. My first take-away was that the team cohesion matters more in the beginning than everything else. Just throwing together a bunch of awesome people, does not make a team, it makes a group. So, when we started, I always tried to make sure that everyone felt included and had a say in what we were doing. My latest take-away has been that you can’t do it right. If you want to make it, you have to throw your perfectionism over board and you have to start focusing on execution and iteration.
What do you like about your teammates?
Team dynamic wise, we complement each other. Remie and Philipp have both outstanding qualities. Philipp is competitive, ambitious, extrovert and a little perfectionist. What he brings to the table is his knowledge about marketing and his knowledge about learning and speaking four different languages. Remie is calm and thoughtful but always up for a good joke. He brings tons of experience from his previous start-up adventures. It is good to have some reassurance sometimes. But to be honest, this short description doesn’t do any of them justice. In fact, you need to come and work together with us to see how awesome our team dynamics are.
Last, what excites you about your future at ELO?
To be honest, what excites me most about my future with ELO is going to be able to develop alongside Remie and Philipp while focusing how we can help people reach near-native fluency in any language.
