To shape the mobility of tomorrow, “you need to adapt your messaging, depending on who you are talking to. You need to put yourself into the shoes of the respective audience, be it the users of our service, the team, shareholders, or even politicians.“ Our guest knows what he is talking about. John David von Oertzen is the CEO of Mobimeo , a Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) provider that aims to change the way we move. He heads a highly international team that hails from 44 countries and works in a ...
Jan 13, 2023•29 min•Season 5Ep. 172
2023 prediction: companies will relentlessly focus on revenue through storytelling, marketing and communications. Because cost cutting only gets you so far. Sherilyn Shackell has a clear view on the importance of marketing: "The CMOs should be present in every boardroom." They are the ones who feel the pulse of the customers, hear their heartbeat and can make all the difference. Sherilyn is the Founder & Global CEO of The Marketing Academy , a unique non-profit organisation that turns the ma...
Jan 06, 2023•43 min•Season 5Ep. 171
How do you get businesses to see something boring as a competitive advantage? Like data protection. Compliance used to cost companies a fortune in legal fees. That's tough - in particular for small and medium-sized businesses. So Miloš Djurdjević set out with his co-founder Daniel Deutsch to build a real painkiller. “There’s a lot of anxiety involved in this topic due to personal liabilities that may be at risk if you don’t comply correctly,” says Miloš. This makes everything in communications, ...
Dec 22, 2022•35 min•Season 5Ep. 170
The less you tell people, the more they understand. That’s the simplicity paradox. In Message Machine, Jag and I set out to provide founders with everything in one book they need to know about communications to scale and to avoid failure. On the Speak Like a CEO podcast released today, we speak with our amazing guest host Lena Carlson why we wrote the book, the process of writing it (blood, sweat and tears), and what we learned in the process (a great deal). To give you a taste of what we cover ...
Dec 16, 2022•32 min•Season 5Ep. 169
" The biggest mistake a company can make is not to communicate at all. As a founder, you need to start in the early stages and continually be strategic and smart about it, “ says Christian Meermann. Together with Daniel Glasner and Filip Felician Dames, Christian has backed some of Europes most game-changing ventures. Their VC Cherry Ventures teams up with founders from all industries, beginning at the (pre-)seed stage. Their impressive portfolio includes the likes of Auto1, Flixbus, Formel Skin...
Dec 09, 2022•37 min•Season 5Ep. 168
Want to know the essentials of branding in 30 minutes? In this special episode, Phil Rumbol walks us through the process of building and re-positioning brands. There is really no better person to ask for guidance on marketing and branding. Phil is a business leader, award winning marketing director, founder and CEO with a broad range of experience from startups to agencies to global brands. He has helped shape some of the world’s most iconic brands including Cadbury, Heineken and Stella Artois. ...
Dec 02, 2022•41 min•Season 5Ep. 167
Shilpika Gautam is a Guinness World Record Holding climate activist and CEO and founder of SALT Global . Before creating the fintech platform to finance the climate transition, Shilps became the first-ever person to stand-up paddle the river Ganges in India from source-to-sea. 100m people worldwide watched her journey on the Discovery Channel - the result of a cold email. Not one to shy away from big challenges, she is on a mission to close the 100 trillion climate financing gap by unlocking eve...
Nov 25, 2022•41 min•Season 5Ep. 166
Every company faces an existential #crisis as it grows. "As an entrepreneur, you need to speak about the difficulties you are having“, says our guest today. His unconventional view: Start your conversations, your investor pitches and company presentations with the bad news. Klaus Wegener, co-founder und Managing Director of 35up , knows what he is talking about. He has seen companies rise and fall, founded several himself and led his first company Caseable through a severe crisis in 2019. Thousa...
Nov 17, 2022•49 min•Season 5Ep. 165
There are many football apps for professionals. And now there is one for the "real football“ - the amateur game played and loved by 190 million Europeans. Lukas Röhle co-founded Prematch App with Fiete Grünter und Niklas Brackmann. This year, the three amateur footballer players stormed the app charts. Shortly after its rollout across Germany last summer, the football community app climbed to the No 1 spot in the Apple app charts, ahead of YouTube, TikTok and WhatsApp. The app offers players and...
Nov 11, 2022•40 min
A growth-driven entrepreneur who built ventures in six countries, speaks four languages who is also a comedian in his free time best known for his standup and improv performances? There is only one person who fits this description: Daniel Hanemann , the CEO of wundertax , the startup he co-founded in 2016 and returned to as CEO in 2022. His mission is to make tax returns easier. "It’s all about connection. We don’t pretend it’s a fun thing to do, but we can make it simpler and quicker.“ The key ...
Oct 20, 2022•37 min•Season 5Ep. 163
We all want more sustainable fashion and ethically produced goods. But greenwashing and wishy-washy information make us unsure which products are really sustainable. Enter Impactbytes ( https://www.impactbytes.io ), the growth engine for sustainable e-commerce. It’s the brainchild of the impressive Amsterdam-based founding trio Noor Veenhoven and sisters Marcella and Melissa Wijngaarden. The @TechstarsBerlin alumni are building the machine that powers the web with sustainable product data so tha...
Oct 13, 2022•34 min•Season 5Ep. 162
How can you build an emotional connection with your customers? Especially if you have tens of thousands? Certainly not by sending them the same old email, maybe adding their first name from the database 🙄 But by speaking to them as individuals. "Customers want to feel special, like we’ve made the effort to get to know them“ , says our guest. What used to be impossible or at best a tedious and time-consuming process is now possible with technology. Pranav Ahuja, CEO of xeno and his growing team ...
Sep 29, 2022•35 min•Season 5Ep. 161
A brand is a statement. But you have to mean it. 🍋 Our guest today was analysing the markets during his studies and had an idea. He dropped out of university and jumped right into it. In 2020, Max Linden co-founded the fintech start-up lemon.markets — a stock trading API that enables developers to program their own trading algorithms, bots or applications. Despite his young age, business angels and fintech investors have been keen to get on board. lemon.markets has already raised 15m Euros from...
Sep 16, 2022•40 min•Season 5Ep. 160
Why is there no Vestiaire Collective for furniture? Why isn’t there a platform that gives designer furniture the second life it deserves? This was the question Gemma Comabella posed herself while she was Managing Director DACH for MADE.com . And she hit a nerve. Pre-loved furniture is more than just a gap in the market. It is also a solution to reduce the environmental impact of our love for all things interior, which produces million of tonnes of waste every year. Gemma Comabella decided to do ...
Sep 09, 2022•33 min•Season 5Ep. 159
„You can’t make change happen alone!“ says Mali M. Baum. Together with her team, she is shining a light on others. As CEO and founder of WLOUNGE and the MAGDA GROUP fund, Mali has created an ecosystem that supports female founders and promotes diversity in business and technology. Mali has over 20 years of experience as a founder and is active internationally as an investor, speaker, mentor and ecosystem builder. WLOUNGE brings together C-level executives, political leaders and aspiring entrepre...
Sep 02, 2022•40 min•Season 5Ep. 158
" Our best marketing employee is Elon Musk! “, says Caro Gabor with a twinkle in her eyes. Musk’s goal of fixing the „incredibly inefficient“ car insurance market while making a lot of money from it has gotten the attention of the car industry. For car buyers, getting insurance is the least favourite part of the purchase. This is about to change. Caro’s aim is to make the insurance experience delightful, especially for that moment when you need it. To do that requires solving some really hard pr...
Aug 26, 2022•37 min•Season 5Ep. 157
Speak Like A CEO is back after the summer break. Today's guest is the CEO and co-founder of a trailblazing company that digitalizes the conservative insurance industry and has raised $115m+ in the process: Getsafe . The InsurTech scale-up is based in Heidelberg. „Not being in Germany's start-up tech capital Berlin gives us the freedom to build a company culture that is independent of startup trends“, says Christian Wiens . This has given the company the „Day 1 feeling" since 2018. Christian deve...
Aug 19, 2022•35 min•Ep. 156
"You don’t have to be 65 to live your dreams,“ believes our guest. Her business is all about giving people this opportunity much sooner in life, by helping them to build wealth. Christine Kiefer is the co-founder of RIDE Capital . RIDE is a private bank for the digital age that helps customers structure their portfolio in an optimal and tax-efficient way. Customers already trust RIDE with close to a quarter of a billion Euros in assets - a massive amount for a four year old company. This was mad...
Jul 01, 2022•41 min•Season 4Ep. 155
Say no to borders and bureaucracy and yes to openness and simplicity! Our guest today believes that international mobility is beneficial for all and is doing her part to make the process a positive experience for businesses and employees. Having experienced the expat life herself, polyglot Hanna Marie Asmussen , co-founder and CEO of Localyze , knows exactly how complex and bureaucratic it can be to move abroad for a new job. In the absence of a state-of-the-art digital solution, she developed a...
Jun 24, 2022•36 min•Season 4Ep. 154
Dare to rethink how money should work. This is what our guest today is passionate about. And that future of finance starts with a new story about money. Katharina Gehra is the co-founder & CEO of Immutable Insight and manages one of the leading crypto hedge funds in Germany. Coming from the traditional world of finance, she is now an integral part of the crypto industry. Katharina has been invited to speak to the German parliament on blockchain technology and has been named Top 40 under 40 t...
Jun 17, 2022•40 min•Season 4Ep. 153
Today's guest is one of the key players in the German and European FinTech scene. As co-founder and CEO of company builder finleap , Ramin Niroumand and his team were instrumental in building 15 companies that are now worth €3bn+, including Element, Penta, Clark and Solarisbank. Several of these have already achieved unicorn status. Never one to rest on his laurels, Ramin recently founded his own venture capital fund together with Michael Hock called embedded/capital . Its aim is to become the n...
Jun 10, 2022•45 min•Season 4Ep. 152
Selling is hard. To make the sales conversation better our guest today has built Demodesk , a revolutionary screen sharing and video conferencing platform. It acts like an AI-driven sales consultant that assists you by analysing data and giving suggestions to improve the conversation with the customer. You can compare this with the real-time assistance in cars today, says Veronika Riederle , the CEO of Demodesk. Veronika founded Demodesk in 2017 with Alex Popp to revolutionise the sales process....
Jun 03, 2022•34 min•Season 4Ep. 151
How do you know what kind of business has huge potential? It’s easy to connect the dots looking back. It’s way harder is to recognise trends in society before they become obvious, and use that insight to build a business that develops a new market. That’s exactly what Jannes Fischer did. He is the CEO and founder of Vermietet.de , the market leader in digital solutions for private landlords. Helping his grandparents administrating their flats in Hanover, he realised that the younger landlords of...
May 20, 2022•29 min•Season 4Ep. 150
„If you want people to buy in to who you are, then you have to have a really, really great story behind it.“ Freda Katunda Olsen Born in Kinshasa, raised in the USA and currently living in Germany, our guest today is on a mission to create lasting change globally. Freda Katunda Olsen cofounded LEAP in 2020, an ed-tech startup that provides healthcare education across Africa. In partnership with UNICEF, the London School of Economics, international universities and African organisations, among ot...
May 13, 2022•27 min
What is the foundation for everything you do in business? It’s communications. But developing communications skills is hard and time-consuming, unless …. .. you find a way to blitzscale them. We know you are in a rush, so how can you speed this up? The key is to break down communications into a number micro-skills and learn the techniques that help you make progress fast. That way every founder can become a master communicator, and turn their company into a message machine that gets results. In ...
May 06, 2022•17 min•Season 4Ep. 148
Our guest today is passionate about enabling the next generation of entrepreneurs to build high-growth businesses. He believes they are more important than ever to create innovation, jobs and to keep Europe competitive. And there is nothing more powerful for a new business than to find its North Star and ensure that everybody can recite it in their sleep. Martin Schilling is the Managing Director of Techstars Berlin. As an angel investor, startup builder and scale-up executive, Martin co-founded...
Apr 29, 2022•41 min•Season 4Ep. 147
When it comes to Web3, “messaging is the biggest challenge” said investor Chris Dixon. “There are a lot of misunderstandings around it, some of it is self-inflicted by the community. You have a lot of people who react negatively to crypto, which can lead to over zealous regulatory behaviour.” Our guest today is working to change all this with transparency, great storytelling and an exciting new venture: Unstoppable Finance. Peter Grosskopf is one of Germany’s top fintech innovators and co-founde...
Apr 21, 2022•55 min•Season 4Ep. 146
The scarcest resource today is #talent. And finding it is often stressful for both sides. Zenjob co-founder Fritz Trott , our guest today, experienced first hand how difficult it was to find a suitable part-time job as a student. Together with his co-founders Cihan Aksakal and Frederik Fahning, he made it his mission to solve that problem. Today Zenjob offers a state-of-the-art tech solution that finds the best candidates for each job within seconds. After 7 years on the market, Zenjob is a fast...
Apr 08, 2022•34 min•Season 4Ep. 145
Today’s guest is one of the most influential women in tech. Nicole Büttner is the founder and CEO of Merantix Momentum , a leading AI solutions firm, and a board member of Merantix, one of Germany's top investors and company builders for artificial intelligence applications. A tech-optimist through and through, she is pushing Europe to become a global leader in AI. Her impressive background in business and econometrics, academia and politics (she was even running to become a candidate for the Eu...
Apr 01, 2022•34 min•Season 4Ep. 144
Ten years ago, the founders of the London-based fintech unicorn SumUp went from door to door to convince merchants to trust them with their money. It’s been an incredible journey since. We have all used SumUp paying for coffee or shopping at independent retailers and now take convenient payment options for granted. But that wasn’t always the case. The historically slow-moving payment industry has gone through a complete revolution over the past decade, and SumUp has been one of the key players i...
Mar 25, 2022•37 min•Season 4Ep. 143
