#1 Founder Shadowing w/ Maria Pentschev

Back to school ??

Yesterday, I shadowed Maria Pentschev for one day.

Why founder shadowing? I truly believe in learning through reflecting oneself and stepping outside your comfort zone. When talking to other entrepreneurs you will already find out a lot, but imagine which deep insights you get when following them for 1-2 days as their silent observer. This goes for both sides by the way.

Before Maria founded von Jungfeld she followed her passion: singing. After she recognized that it will not pay all her bills, she successfully convinced Lucas to work together on their new business idea.

Why did she start her own start-up? 1) Freedom of decision and designing. 2) Having the potential to reach ?everything“.

Her Recommended book: Getting things done, David Allen.

Most used tools: Asana, Google Suite, WhatsApp, 3 Screens, Bose Headphones.

My top takeaways from yesterday:

1. She answered only 3 e-mails herself (outsourced email organization to her assistance), so she could focus on her 3 daily goals and prepare well her meetings (9!)
2. Finding the right ERP and e-com solutions for all stages and products is tough and very costly. Better: take-away complexity of your product, so you can scale within the same tech-stack.
3. Important traits to look for in your founding team: 1) Having the same attitude towards work. 2) Appreciation for each other, thanks to different skill-set.

Other inspirations:

• In Daily huddle: current speaker announces the next speaker
• Spotify playlist for more focused work and fewer stress hormones: Binaural Beats
• To-dos in Kanban style with the category "someday maybe"
• Wednesday = meeting-free day
• Write down meeting notes/agenda directly into your calendar tool and not in a separate notebook
• Also, plan with focus work in your calendar (use different colors for those blocks) -> schedule everything!
• Tool to test out: followupthen

Thanks to Lionel and Michael, who inspired me to do this.

It was a completely new, but very insightful experience for both of us. To improve the experience, you should bring your laptop to ease up the participation in all virtual video calls. I also wanted to add value to Maria and make the shadowing beneficial for both of us. So I started the day with the questions: "Should I focus on particular things or details? Are you working on something?". We wrapped up the day with a feedback round.

Thank you for this opportunity and also big thanks to the whole von jungfeld team for being so open-minded! ????

Stay tuned for my next shadowing experiences.