5 years at Taxfix – Growth and Change in a Berlin Startup
From working student to senior CRM manager, Marc Zehmke shares his personal growth story after five years at Taxfix and how the company has developed in that time.
In 2016, I was studying German Language & Literature at the University of Potsdam and needed a working-student job to support myself during the final months of the course. My dream was to be a writer, so although I had worked many different working-student jobs, I would always look for opportunities to write. I’d previously worked as a journalist and editor and joined Taxfix as a part-time content marketing manager. I was used to writing about whatever came my way–literature, history, pop culture–but had little experience in technical writing. It felt like a challenge.
Little did I know when I got the job that I would still be at Taxfix five years later and that my role in the company would evolve so much.
A new starter in the early days of Taxfix
Taxfix was still in the first year of its existence in 2016. The tiny team was working out of a coworking space, and the product was yet to launch, but Mathis Büchi and Lino Teuteberg, the founders of Taxfix, had a clear vision for the company. I was thrilled to be on board. As a big admirer of the Berlin startup scene, and with the project at such an early stage, I knew there would be the opportunity to learn many skills and help shape a growing company from the ground up. I accepted the role and got to work crafting content for the new Taxfix website in anticipation of the product launch.
As a subject, tax can be notoriously complicated. However, I realised that the trick was to write blog articles for people like myself. Like Taxfix itself, the job of the content I created was to simplify a subject that many people are daunted by — myself included. Using myself as an imagined audience, I shaped the company’s first articles to showcase our vision to demystify the murky world of tax.
Back then, Taxfix was like a typical Berlin startup: the team was lean, everyone had a lot of autonomy, and our roles weren’t set in stone. Working in a small team, it was often necessary to take on tasks beyond one’s own personal and professional horizon. And I gladly seized this opportunity to learn.
Going full-time: stepping up
In the early days of Taxfix, the marketing team relied on content to drive low-cost traffic as the budget was too limited for large scale paid marketing campaigns. But in the autumn of 2017, it was time to diversify. I was asked if I would be willing to broaden my role and research and establish new marketing channels that could help take Taxfix to the next level. My studies had just ended, and it was an opportunity to go full-time. I decided to take up the challenge.
My role had changed, and my job title with it: from November, I was officially a “junior growth marketing manager,” a title reflecting the freedom and flexibility of my new role. The Marketing Team consisted of one performance marketer, a content lead, and another growth marketer alongside me, and we all reported to Mathis, our CEO at the time. The atmosphere was anarchic and creative. We learned by doing as we took an experimental approach, researching different marketing channels and testing them. I had the freedom to try anything and made our first steps into brand marketing, offline marketing, and even found that influencer marketing could be a good fit for our goals. I learned the intricacies of CRM, launched my first campaigns and set up the company’s first automatic user journeys.
After experimenting with various channels, CRM soon took centre stage. It felt like a natural progression: leading our customers to relevant content that would help them make the best use of Taxfix and learn about taxes in a way that suited them.
But CRM is not just about content. It’s about using the right tools and data intelligently and bringing everything together as parts of a well-oiled machine. So I also took the opportunity to develop a skill set that went beyond content marketing right into the technical side of things. Having studied Language and Literature, I never thought that I would work in a job that would allow me to learn about APIs, databases, and CRM software. I always used to love working with HTML and CSS when I got the chance, but it was only a very small part of my work. It has since become my personal goal to improve my technical skills.
Learning by doing
Startups such as Taxfix will always need people to step up and grow their skills as the company grows. I learned early on that it is important to always ask the right people for help and guidance when you need it. Ideally, you find a sparring partner, someone willing to point you in the right direction. Beyond that, the best way to learn is to try and figure things out on your own.
Testing influencer marketing was the first time I had worked with a budget. I had never had to manage money as a content creator, and I remember thinking to myself: “What if this fails? We will have lost money!” It freaked me out. I suddenly felt the weight of responsibility, and my success — or failure — was measurable in terms of hard numbers. Before you start, you formulate a hypothesis about why such an investment should work. Some influencer campaigns worked, while others failed. I learned you shouldn’t beat yourself up about the campaigns that don’t go your way: you grow from the experience and move on.
Company culture was key for providing the groundwork of a good environment to experiment, fail, and grow. I was amazed at how early the Taxfix team was already looking to define this aspect of the company and how the whole team–small as it was–was involved in shaping the meaning of the company and its values. And I feel that precisely those values — Understand, Deliver, Develop, and Trust — provide a foundation for each team member to seek their own path of growth.
Mentoring and a growth environment
As the team grew and more people arrived to take ownership of our marketing channels, my role became more specialised. After taking on the position of CRM manager in 2019, I was promoted to a senior role in September 2021.
As well as acquiring new technical knowledge, my personal growth targets now include leadership skills and learning ways to effectively mentor my team. After five years, I have plenty of tips and tricks to share, but I also encourage a similar atmosphere to that which greeted me when I first joined the company in 2016: to learn by doing. I want our CRM team to have the freedom to try things out for themselves–and not necessarily to ask permission to do so.
For the past two years, we have had a CRM team of four people, and I am very impressed by each team member’s willingness to question everything, examine the way we do things and ask themselves whether a totally different system might work better. I love to work with people who are curious about everything and willing to change lanes to reach our goals.
Of course, marketing roles aren’t quite as fluid as they were when the company first started, but the opportunity remains for team members to branch out in different directions if it fits their interests. Taxfix provides enough space for everyone to take a chance to learn and to develop. If you have an idea of what you want to learn, the opportunity to grow is always there.
Looking back: five years of growth
What’s changed at Taxfix in five years? Everything! To begin with, we were just a few people trying something; we all believed in the product but there was no guarantee that it would be a success. Today, we have over 350 employees, our product launched in three different markets — Germany, Italy, and France — and we just reached our milestone of helping our customers claim back €1 billion in combined tax returns. We professionalised, and though I was excited to enjoy the fluidity of the company when I first joined, I now really appreciate the way the company works today. Back then, we were flying by the seat of our pants and finding ways to survive. We still have the freedom to try new things, but we have a structure now. Things change more slowly, but now we have a plan: for the quarter, for the year, and the next five years. We can forecast what our success will look like when we follow through on our plans.
Though I have moved away from writing, I can see a parallel between my dream of being a novelist and how I have grown as a marketer. Writing is about research, and that is a skill that I brought to the marketing team when I first joined; it allowed me to develop new skills and new ways of doing things, as well as material for the content I was creating in the early days.
My personal growth during my time at Taxfix has been incredible. I have developed a heap of new skills, both technical and interpersonal. I learned to embrace failure and how to turn perceived shortcomings into strengths and opportunities for growth. And I learned to expect the unexpected; you can’t always stick to the plan you had in mind, and sometimes you have to be ready to forge a new path for yourself.
Interested in joining our journey? Explore our open positions.
Special thanks to Samuel Flannagan for helping us put this story together.
