#1 Startup Guide Meets : sisterMAG

Welcome to the first edition of „StartupGuideMeets“ which features many great stories and interviews with successful business influencers from startup scenes all over the world.

This month, I interviewed Berlin’s coolest sisters, the two Founders of sisterMAG (www.sister-mag.com), a magazine for the digital lady — filling the gap from digital magazines for intelligent and widely interested women by covering topics from fashion, food, DIY to technology, digital trends, culture, travelling and other lifestyle issues. Let’s dig deeper into their journey…

1. All the way back to the very beginning. What aspects in your life made it possible for you to start a business?

We are sisters, 6½ years apart, but we were always very close and liked working together on projects. Whereas Toni worked in the Mobile sector for almost six years, Thea studied “Book and Media Production”, an engineering programme at HdM Stuttgart and later at HTWK Leipzig. Magazines have always played an important role in our lives. Our mom introduced us to magazines and the Internet in a very early age, thus we were always surrounded by Vogue, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, AD and many more. However, we couldn’t have done this adventure without Alex, our third member and Toni’s husband, who had a long startup history and made it possible for us to start the venture with our first content marketing partners.

2. Tell me about the idea behind the company and your journey so far, including the beginning, failures and moments of success.

When Toni in 2011 attended the launch presentation of one of the first German eMags, we were absolutely enthusiastic about the new format but at the same time felt that this new medium could be improved in a number of ways. To cut a long story short, the euphoria of the moment made us say: We can do better! At the same time, Thea was looking for a topic for her diploma thesis and decided to research the future of print magazines in the digital era. So she conceptualised the prototype of sisterMAG, which was published in February 2012 as sisterMAG N°1. This resulted in the idea to found Carry-On Publishing, a media house for purely digital formats, that now publishes sisterMAG, but also Lebenlang, an eMag for best agers as well as nursing and healthcare professionals and the travel and shopping magazine Dearsouvenir.

3. How would you describe the spirit of your business?

Innovative, forward-looking, always in search of new trends.

4. Why do you enrich the world?

Because we strike out in a new direction and try to push the digital development. Furthermore, we want to encourage people with our mission “Passion beats Profession” to be creative themselves, not just because they are professional writers, journalists, photographer or models, but because they are passionate about a special topic. With all our magazines we offer a platform to these passionate creators.

5. How do you choose people or companies you are going to work with?

This is actually something that we don’t strategise about most of the time, but that is influenced by connections, word-of-mouth, spontaneous acquaintances and coincidences. The topic of an issue always exists first and from there we look for the right people to implement them. We work with a huge network of contributors and if we are looking for people with a special ability or interest we are asking people from our network, or simply use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest as research tools.

6. What is your secret to create and maintain good vibes within the team?

We try to create a good working atmosphere in our office, that is why we also put so much effort in the design of our workplace. It is a place that should inspire the team to be creative. Also the spacious kitchen-cum-living room contributes to this. It’s the place where we meet for a standing in the morning, for a coffee or for lunch.

7. Tell me about three most important milestones and your future plans.

Since we just published our third magazine at the end of last year I would say that every launch of a new magazine was a milestone for us because it was always a step more towards being a digital publishing company. The same is also true for the future: Of course we want to create more magazine titles to expand the range of our publishing company.

8. Imagine I am a good friend of yours. We are sitting at our „Stammkneipe“ (favorite pub) and having a drink. I am telling you about my plan to start a business. What would be your advice according to your experience in Berlin?

The most important thing is to find a good team. The founders must fit together and the optimum would even be that they all have complementary capabilities. In our case it helped a lot that we are all very different regarding skills and fields of interests. In this way you can make sure that everyone is an expert in his/her field and no one is ousted by the other. My advice for creative teams would be to look for somebody with a business sense. This is often missed in the creative industry.

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Website: sister-mag.com

Twitter: @sister_mag

Headquarters: Berlin, Germany

Startup Guide Berlin // Author: Sofi Sitha Photographer: Lars Mensel