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Many founders make mistakes - but very few regret them.
Photo: Secret Annex Productions / Stone RF / Getty Images
Four founders, four business ideas and two big questions: How do you start and how do you persevere?
Nine years ago, SPIEGEL portrayed four people who had dared to start their own business.
"The boss, that's me!"
was the headline.
Is it still true today?
We asked - and the result seems sobering at first glance: Only one of the four founders still lives from the idea he wanted to get started with back then.
It is the oldest of the four.
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Jörg Schröder rents out pictures - and now also takes photos himself
Photo: Carlos Kella
Jörg Schröder was almost 50 years old when he quit his permanent position at BMW and dared to take the step into self-employment with "Bilderwerk": He sells and lends works of art - and very successfully.
His clients include hospitals, tax consultants, doctors, insurance companies and hotels.
He has found his niche, he says: art for people who do not want to pay 5000 euros for splashes of red paint by emerging artists, but who also have no desire for prints from Ikea or Möbel Höffner.
He has long since paid back his Kfw loan of EUR 20,000.
Although he earns less money than in his old job in sales at BMW, "I am more relaxed and no longer work like a machine," says Schröder.
His concept can certainly be transferred to other cities - but he consciously does not want to expand any further.
"Success is not rewarded in Germany," he says.
"If you exceed a certain company size, the accounting becomes so complicated that you can no longer do it alone."
You can read more about his foundation and his personal conclusion here.
With umbrellas in bankruptcy
The youngest of the four founders presented in SPIEGEL at the time is Daniela Wallraff, then 28 years old.
A friend brought her business idea with her from Singapore: machines that you can pull umbrellas out of.
"It just fits perfectly with both of us. We have been friends for ten years and complement each other. While Rebecca thinks and works out every detail, I focus more on sales and the external impact," said Daniela Wallraff at the time.
Today the two women are at odds and have no more contact with each other.
The two had big plans: They wanted to set up 2000 umbrella machines together with franchisees all over Germany, in parking garages, cinemas, restaurants and clubs, wherever people are surprised by the rain and suddenly need an umbrella.
An umbrella should cost four euros.
Cooperations with companies that would print advertising on it were planned.
The idea was well received, reported by dozens of media.
In May 2014, Dry2Go GmbH was entered in the commercial register with share capital of 37,800 euros, two months later the capital was increased to 50,400 euros.
Bankruptcy proceedings began a year later.
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This is what the umbrella machines look like.
This copy hangs in the Schleusenhotel in Brunsbüttel.
Photo:
Dry 2 Go
In Hamburg there are still the umbrella machines - one of the two franchisees is sticking to the business idea.
Michael Heise has been equipping almost 20 machines with up to 40 umbrellas since 2011; depending on the weather, they are sold within a week.
The price is still four euros per umbrella.
Heise cannot live on that.
"I tried to turn it into a full-time job, but it didn't work out. I would have to set up a lot more machines and unfortunately many site owners don't see the need," says Heise.
His main job is a commercial clerk.
At the Hamburg Jungfernstieg train station, he used to have to fill up the machine twice a week because the demand for umbrellas was so high, he says.
But the Deutsche Bahn ended the cooperation, he had to dismantle his machine.
Car park operators and hotel owners are also difficult to convince, although the machines do not incur any costs or work.
"Wherever there are, everyone is very satisfied. I also take care of everything, regularly fill up the machines and maintain them," says Heise.
"But many are afraid that the machines will somehow cause them trouble."
In fact, the first Dry2Go machines manufactured in Asia were very error-prone, and some were deliberately demolished.
Heise now purchases its machines from a German manufacturer and generally only installs them indoors.
"The idea still has potential," he says.
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Daniela Walraff is now married to rock guitarist Doug Aldrich and lives in the USA.
Photo: Ken Howard / Alamy / Mauritius images
Daniela Walraff, who is now called Aldrich, founded a company again after Dry2Go went bankrupt, but not in Germany, but in Los Angeles.
There she followed the guitarist Doug Aldrich, who is well known in the rock scene.
The two married in Las Vegas in 2014.
Instead of umbrellas, Walraff now sells incense sticks, crystals, soap and scent mixtures in a small shop in LA's Studio City district and in her online shop "Mama Wunderbar".
Started with half a million euros
"It is much more important to do the right thing than to do too much."
SPIEGEL quoted Karsten Wysk with these words nine years ago.
Back then, he wanted to get started with a start-up for mobile games.
The high-tech start-up fund had invested half a million euros in MobileBits GmbH; Wysk and its three co-founders received a further 100,000 euros as a promotional loan from the city of Hamburg, and a foundation and a venture capitalist also contributed money.
Today the company no longer exists.
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Karsten Wysk is now permanently employed.
Photo: BCG Digital Ventures
Wysk now works as Product Director for BCG Digital Ventures, a subsidiary of the management consultancy Boston Consulting Group, which is building digital start-ups and digital business models together with corporations.
The fact that he is now a management consultant can already be seen in his way of speaking: "I'm super happy with the experience," he says of his former game company.
He did not get rich with her, but "at least rich in experience".
Four years after SPIEGEL reported on MobileBits GmbH, Wysk and his three co-founders sold it to the Hamburg computer game manufacturer Goodgame Studios - because they had liquidity problems.
"We had a lot of users, but we had a monetization problem," says Wysk.
The men had released three action role-playing games for smartphones.
The download was free, but purchases within the apps should bring money.
But they didn't.
Firstly, because the games were particularly popular with young people in Thailand and Brazil, "most of whom probably didn't even have a credit card," says Wysk.
On the other hand, because he and his team did not pay enough attention to the topic.
What the four founders advise others
Believe in your project Up arrow Down arrow
"Don't let banks or consultants fool you," is Jörg Schröder's tip.
In addition to planning your business, plan your life, too; Up arrow; Down arrow
Before founding a company, not only draw up a business plan, but also a life plan: How do I want to live?
How much money do I need for that?
"At the beginning, many only think about how to advance their project. What is also decisive is how much money you need yourself per month. Otherwise you suddenly panic after six months because there is nothing left to live on", says Jörg Schröder.
Be patient Up Arrow Down Arrow
"For the first year or two you don't even know where the train is going," says Jörg Schröder.
"It takes time to see whether a business idea works."
Get Help Up Arrow Down Arrow
"I should have looked for someone who would do administrative work for me and, for example, write the bills for me," says Carolyn Bendahan.
Among other things, her disaster was that many customers treated her more like a friend - and expected her to solve problems "quickly" as a friendship service, free of charge, of course.
Be honest with your team Up Arrow Down Arrow
"Treat your team like adults" is Karsten Wysk's tip.
When his company went downhill, he and his co-founders tried to keep this secret from their employees for as long as possible.
A mistake, as he says in retrospect: "It's better to communicate openly and honestly: this is the situation, let's fix it."
Set the customer boundaries Up arrow Down arrow
Carolyn Bendahan started with the intention of fulfilling her customers' every wish.
"That was well-intentioned, but only led to excessive demands," she says.
Better: A modular system made up of individual parts, each of which can then be customized at a price that has been set in advance.
Also calculate ten-minute workarrow up arrow down
Carolyn Bendahan found it difficult to charge additional money for supposedly trivial work such as sewing on a tick: "You think, oh well, that's done quickly, that would be embarrassing to charge for something like that. But in the end it adds up such tasks. Today I know: If you value your own performance, you also have to calculate ten-minute work. "
It is better to calculate generously arrow up arrow down
Carolyn Bendahan had taken out a loan of 15,000 euros to set up her company. That was too little, as she says retrospectively: "The calculation was so tight that I had no leeway. I should have borrowed 25,000 euros and looked for someone who supports me. "
"Our goal was to build great games. We knew that monetization was our weak point, but we still preferred to put 80 percent of our energy into the games themselves," says Wysk.
Ironically, they hadn't heeded his own tip - first drink coffee and think, then do it.
Like the end of a love affair
"Anyone who wins 10,000 new customers every day without a great deal of marketing effort and doesn't get this monetized is doing something wrong," admits Wysk in retrospect.
But he also says: "What you know intellectually and what you do with all your heart is unfortunately not always identical."
He delayed the end of the company like the end of a love affair.
"Our whole heart and soul went into it."
After all, the sale was not a financial disaster.
Wysk and his co-founders repaid the Hamburg development loan; they and their employees were all taken over by Goodgame Studios.
What Wysk has learned from this time: "It's not worth it. We wanted to protect our team from bad news, but we have made everything worse. Better to say openly and honestly: This is the situation, let's fix it."
In his new job, everyday work looks similar to that at MobileBits, he says.
But unlike in the past, he no longer has to bear the entrepreneurial risk himself, and he does not have to worry about financing either, he can attract talent with generous salaries.
Wysk expresses this in his advisory speech: "Founding start-ups in a corporate context is easier than 'in the wild', but has different challenges. For example, you can generate your first turnover at a faster rate."
Although he puts "a lot of heart and soul" into his commissioned start-ups, turning his own idea into his own company is something else.
"I haven't lost the fire, the charm of founding is still there."
Carolyn Bendahan also feels this charm.
She had started her own business as a tailor for lingerie - and has been employed in the production planning department of a textile manufacturer for three years.
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Carolyn Bendahan would no longer plan to run her own business as a one-woman company.
Photo: Daniel Zander
“Selling made-to-measure lingerie was a fantastic business idea, but I didn't have the side wars under control,” she says.
Above all, one mistake was decisive: she tried to do everything on her own.
Buying fabrics, measuring customers, writing invoices, getting rid of advertising callers on the phone, cutting, sewing and changing them again and again.
When she was done with the day-to-day business late at night, she went on to the next items on the to-do list.
It never stopped.
Tailoring underwear requires a lot of closeness, after all, customers literally get naked.
But it was precisely this closeness that became a problem with invoices and complaints, says Bendahan, because many customers treated her more like a friend - and expected her to solve problems "quickly" as a friendship service, free of charge, of course.
Bendahan himself also found it difficult to charge additional money for supposedly trivial work such as sewing on a hook afterwards.
Looking back, she says: "If you value your own performance, you also have to calculate ten-minute work."
However, it was difficult for her to accept the job offer: "Deep down in me there is still the desire for independence."
You can read your personal summary of your founding here.
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