Entrepreneurs of Budapest: Michael Bist, ArtCosmos

Entrepreneurs of Budapest is a deep-dive into some of the people and stories that are building startups (often not their first) in Budapest today. We invited local startup founders and teams to tell us about their personal entrepreneurial journeys, their thoughts, and impressions on building a company in Budapest, and their hopes and desires for the future startup scene in Hungary.

This week, meet Michael Bist one of the founding duo behind ARTCOSMOS, with an awesome non-native’s perspective on starting a startup in Budapest.

Tell me in a few sentences about ARTCOSMOS, with an angle from where the inspiration comes from and why you decided to make a startup of the concept.

The idea for ARTCOSMOS comes from the fact that my wife and I are private art collectors of affordable art, not highly expensive art. We’ve been collecting art for years. We always had it all over my apartment and people kept coming into the place saying ‘Wow, that’s awesome — you know we have all these standard Ikea things, and yours is so colourful and individual.”

So we thought — ok, seems like there is a gap somewhere — we had also met a lot of artists who didn’t know where to sell, so there appeared to be demand and offer which did not fulfil. We then went online, looked and yes there are certain places for art. But the problem is a lot of these online sites are still very, very elite. There’s still a lot of curating going on. So there are not so many players who play at an affordable level.

And what we figured out in the end, what was missing the most for people was to be able to relate to the art, was the story behind the artworks. What a lot of people enjoy is, they love to go to an artist’s workshop and see and talk to the artist. This experience we want to bring online, so we developed our video storytelling.

At ARTCOSMOS, the artists create artist feature videos. We are standardising an “easy to do”-video creation process so that every artist has videos about where they live, what inspires them, how they create their art — a look at what’s behind the artwork.

So your startup began with a love of art and the chance to start your company. What are the things that inspire you every day and give you the motivation to marry a personal passion with business?

One thing is, I’ve always worked on building things. Before ARTCOSMOS, I was always employed at a company, but even there I was always creating something new. So that’s what motivated me every day, and still does now. And the other thing is, now, every day there is something new. No two days are the same.

And finally, getting the stories in from the artists is inspiring. I would love to get to know personally every artist we have because there are just so many crazy stories, so many videos.

We have a lot of fun in the background you know, reflecting. It’s these kinds of stories that give the art another dimension, and when you start to see these videos you see that every artist is entirely different, their style, their works, their motivations. You get a lot of insight and that’s what I enjoy.

Is this your first startup?

Yes.

And it’s difficult enough especially coming from a management position in a large company. You’re used to having resources — legal, IT — you’re so used to delegating and now you’re starting from scratch, you have no cash, so you’re the CTO and the legal council and everything. You have to figure it all out. It’s totally different.

Was there a moment when — what helped you decide to leave your company to start your own business?

I had always dreamt of starting something on my own. What happened is, we formed the business, the company was founded five years ago. But, we always knew that we wanted to have children and financial stability, so we didn’t jump straightaway. We saved, we had an excel file predicting how much money we have, what do we need for the company, how much for a flat, and three years for living with savings. One day, I stood up, walked down the aisle and told my boss that I’m quitting in three months.

I went home and told my wife, and she said, OK now I need to quit as well then.

I love the intentionality and life design behind that.

Yea, it shows good, solid mid-level German upbringing. You have to have your security in place ☺. But my parents still think I’m totally crazy.

Having grown up in Germany — could you elaborate on your experience working in Budapest as a non-native?

Working here?

For me, it’s my third time in Budapest.

I always enjoyed the fact that Budapest allows you a lot of liberty in itself. The people are creative. I work with a lot of part-time freelancers, and that’s relatively easy, which is cool.

But trying to negotiate with someone that you need an invoice for the books… That’s difficult.

They go, mmm, you know, if it’s on the books then I have to pay taxes. And for me, coming from working in Germany and Switzerland, paying taxes is normal. It’s what you do. Trying to come up with ways of avoiding that, feels wrong. And I don’t want to.

Other than this I enjoy working here, because of the talent, the young people in university are eager to do something. We need creative people, and Budapest is full of it. But when it comes down to more managerial skills or fundamental business skills, then it becomes difficult. That’s where I see a huge gap.

Regarding the startup community here, the ecosystem, what’s available resource wise — can you compare it to your experience in Germany?

I think what’s missing here is experience and advice. Budapest has barely good mentors, and this plays into the capital scene. You have a lot of people giving cash out, but few people give advice or connections as well. There’s a lack of smart money here.

Most serious entrepreneurs would try to find capital outside Hungary. You have JEREMIE funds or other VCs funded by managers of formerly state-owned companies who made huge money during privatisation, and they’ve never really been so much exposed to the American style corporate world. They lack the experience.

Zeroing into ARTCOSMOS. Where do you see it regarding growth and future? What are next steps?

Launching. That’s the first thing.

When are you launching?

It’s already kind of out. On March 10th, we did our first ARTCOSMOS Budapest artist forum. We want to get a group of artists together where we keep talking to them.

That way, if we try something new with videos, we know someone, a group of people that can implement and test it tomorrow, and then we can get it out.

We use Budapest as a testing ground for anything else. So if the forum works well, we’ll try to install it in other countries as well. At least that’s the goal ☺

But what is missing is the marketing launch, introducing ARTCOSMOS to a wider customer base. This is the next big step.

While it’s impossible to ask where you will be five years from now, I get the sense that there’s a mission, about connecting people, about bringing affordable art to all these people who only have… Ikea. In an ideal situation, what do you see as the ultimate goal?

We’ve developed a timeline of personalities that we want to touch.

There’s obviously first adopters, who are creative and adopt art quickly, who probably already buy art offline at markets and fairs. But my goal is to reach those people who currently feel safer buying prints, who are like, ‘Art? Don’t you need to have to study to understand it?’ We want to reach these people by giving them the stories of artists, to make art easier to understand and reach.

We’re planning to do a video series with a fictional character who wants to discover art — called Arty. And he’s stuck — he understands Van Gogh, so easy… Oil, canvas and something about light. But the knowledge stops there; he hasn’t gotten any further.

So this character can ask the questions that other people are afraid to ask because they’ll sound stupid. Like you know, Andy Warhol — what’s so special about a soup can? No one wants to ask that, because you’ve heard Warhol is great, and you too say, yeah he’s great. But you have no idea why.

Therefore, you would not buy a unique modern artwork because you fear that people will ask you to explain it to them — and you can’t. Because people feel you need to be able to describe an artwork you love or buy, it is not enough that you just like it.

This is what we want in the long run; we want to break down this barrier. That art seems so overcomplicated, so over sophisticated. Hopefully, in five years we’re in this segment.

There are 2–3 other companies in Europe with a focus on affordable, without the storytelling, though. So my goal is to be number one in our market in Europe by opening up these new market segments.

As a final wrap-up — it’s been a couple of years long journey for you. Is there anything you wish you could have told yourself at the beginning of the journey?

The first thing I wish I had at the beginning is different connections, the connections that I have today. Going back to what I said about people — finding the right people takes a long time. So it’s not that easy in Budapest.

You know if you say hey, I’m a new startup, I’m here, who wants to join me? That’s one of the values of accelerators — they put you in contact with the necessary resources you need that get you running.

That’s one thing. I mean as for the rest, we had to achieve the learnings we gained and there’s no way of going around that.