What's your secret sauce for building a great team?
See people as individuals, not CVs. It’s very easy to slip into this for example in recruiting, when you find yourself sorting through dozens of standard CVs that all begin to look alike. What I like to do is to ask open-ended questions that give candidates a chance to present their character in a unique way, for example: Which tools/apps could you not work without and why? How do you imagine the perfect workplace? What’s your dream job?
What's a skill that we should pay more attention to in the workplace?
Written communication. It enables async work like few other things, and the more comfortable people feel in expressing their ideas succinctly in text, the less need for looms or zooms or rooms. I also apply this to the example hiring questions above: letting candidates answer in text for the first round of questions.
What motivates you to work as a leader / entrepreneur?
To save human civilization. Haha 😅 I’m still surprised how uninspiring leadership still is in many companies, and how many problems of the world remain unsolved. It amazes me how the peace in our world seems stable and fragile at the same time. I believe we need empathic leadership and bold entrepreneurship to save our world from unsustainable behavior of all sorts.
What should leaders understand about their own role and responsibility?
The rules are not yet written. It’s up to us to design not just our tech stacks but also our cultures, habits, and what it means to “work” at all. Don’t take anything for granted! There are too many common misconceptions about how organizations function, how leadership supposedly works. We are free to do it differently, to do it our own way.
What book do you recommend the most?
"The Meaning Revolution" by Fred Kofman. It influenced my leadership style the most. I realized that you can achieve a high level of trust and high performance at the same time. It’s not an either/or between (over-)empowering or (micro-)management but the right dose of both that gets you furthest.
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Here’s More, From Other Founders Around the World
When times are tough, who or what is an anchor for you?
My co-founders are my anchor in work-related topics. Having an environment where failure is welcomed with a helping hand and where weakness is valued as openness, once you are down those people will drag you up.
What's a mistake that you're happy you've made?
When I was 16 (way before the internet) I founded a travel-partner agency to connect people from different backgrounds seeking travel companions. After a year, I had to close the agency due to a lack of customers and the confusion some callers had regarding the nature of the “service.” Despite this setback, I gained invaluable insights into sales, communication and people’s needs, solidifying my desire to run a business that helps people.
What motivated you to become an entrepreneur?
After graduating, I worked for an extremely well-paying automotive company. But I always had the feeling that there was more out there. So I quit and went into research with the aim of becoming a founder.
What should leaders understand about their own role and responsibility?
There are no overnight miracles, it's very hard work: both physically and emotionally. Requires resilience, grit, strategic approach and grind.