Interview with Susanne Dröscher — Co-founder of CARU
Susanne Dröscher is a Swiss entrepreneur and co-founder of CARU Home. She’ll be distilling her current experience building this project and giving meaningful advices and interesting sources of knowledge to future entrepreneurs. Don’t miss her answers below.
How do you define yourself? Who are you?
I’m a person that is fascinated by finding and truly understanding problems that people have. As a trained engineer I’m convinced that technology can solve a great part of these problems. Right now I’m the co-founder of CARU pursuing exactly this passion — and I’m really excited about it.
How did CARU get started? What inspired you to make it?
My co-founder and I were determined to find a problem of the society that fulfilled the following three criteria: 1. It is an issue that affects many people, 2. A technological solution can have a big impact, 3. A solution is urgently needed.
We looked into various large trends — among them the demographic change. The aging of our society fulfills these criteria and we started to talk to lots of people working in the care sector or similar industries. These conversations convinced us that we wanted to develop something in this space. It became clear that safety, autonomy, and social inclusion were the key challenges for elderly people in their daily life. So, we looked for technology that could support them effectively. That’s how we started to design CARU.
Is CARU your first startup?
Yes, it is my first startup. However, I have been exposed to the entrepreneurial life before because of two reasons: 1. My dad has his own company and I learned early on what that means for professional and private life. 2. I have been working in a startup after graduating. These experiences certainly helped me to know what I would give myself into.
What’s the problem you are trying to solve and what’s your long-term vision?
How will generations live together in the future? How can elderly people stay an active part of society? What will care processes look like? Which role will technology play? These are the questions that we ask ourselves every day. With CARU we contribute with a smart device that helps elderly, their relatives and caretakers to connect more effectively. It is a bit like a smartphone with several apps but without the screen or any complex interface.
Our vision is to connect generations.
Based on your current business experiences, what would you recommend to an aspiring entrepreneur who wants to start a business, and more specifically a hardware-focused project?
One of the most important things is a great partner. It is very intense to build a company and there will be many ups and downs. For me, it is crucial to be able to share these moments with someone that is as involved in the project as I am.
The other thing is to take your time to evaluate thoroughly whether the problem that you’re going to solve is a real problem or an invented one. Talk to a lot of people (potential customers) to get their opinion as this will help you to determine the true value of your solution. Once you are convinced that the solution is meaningful, go for it. Especially if you do hardware you need to fix the design and functionalities at some point. Most likely there will still be doubts whether you chose the optimal design or not. I guess that’s part of the game… Here I can’t give much advice as this is the stage we are at right now.
How much impact do you consider CARU has made till now?
Wow, this is hard to tell — especially since we haven’t launched the product yet. What I can tell though is that it made a big impact on our own lives and the lives of our whole team. We are all so much more aware of challenges that elderly people have.
What we hope we could show to anyone who saw CARU is, that products for elderly people can be nicely designed and appealing. Also, CARU had a huge impact on the lives of people who tested it within a pilot project. People that are not able to move anymore have no way of calling caretakers or their relatives. We enable them to get in touch with others whenever they need it — by a simple voice command. These are very small things so far but they are promising nevertheless and extremely motivating for us.
In the Swiss Startup Environment, to whom do you follow as a reference or source of knowledge to reach your startup goals?
The Swiss Startup Environment is very active and there are many programs, competitions and courses one could attend. For each startup and each progress stage, the focus is different.
We have attended several programs and still we are participating in one. A main source of knowledge right now is our fantastic investors. They share their experience of building companies and industrializing products with us. And of course we follow closely what other startups are doing — some of them are a step ahead and others are at the same stage as we are. It is really helpful to exchange experiences with someone that is more or less in a similar position.
Is there any podcast, book or reference you’ve follow in all the process of building your project?
There are many and I will mention only a few:
- Steve Jobs biography: A classic. In general I love to read biographies of people that I find interesting or inspiring.
- TED talk by Simon Sinek: Building a successful business is a lot about asking the right questions. Simon Sinek puts them as “Why? How? What?”. There are many other inspiring talks e.g. by Tim Ferriss, Sheryl Sandberg, or Adam Grant.
- Swisspreneur podcast: They interview a Swiss entrepreneur in each episode and dig deeper into personal topics than in most other interviews.
Could you please mention some failures and learnings you’ve found in the process of building your startup?
I’m a rather optimistic person. Therefore I have troubles seeing any experience as a failure. If a failure is treated well, it can be much more instructive than a success and even accelerate your business. Here just a small example: We got kicked out in several startup competitions and programs not even entering the first stage. The important thing was that we went to see the jury afterward to understand what the problem was. Some great inputs and even introductions to potential customers came from that.
How can aspiring entrepreneurs reach you for more questions or pieces of advice?
Send me an email: susanne.droescher@caruhome.com or connect on LinkedIn anytime.
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