Footprint founder Carolin Kleinert on honest communication and why you shouldn't cling too tightly to your startup aspirations

"There are many factors you can't force."?

You can listen to the full podcast episode here. (German)

When Carolin Kleinert was transferred to the Entrepreneur Think Tank as part of her nearly five-year stint at Audi, she felt so inspired by the innovative program that a traditional corporate career was no longer an option for her. And so she started looking around for an idea and a team to start her own company.?

"I have to admit that it was also such an ego thing at first. I thought it was cool to be a founder,"

reflects the young entrepreneur.?And yet, she realized relatively soon that she was getting in her own way with just that. "There are a lot of factors that you can't force. This spasmodic clinging just for the sake of founding was not the right way to go," the founder says in retrospect.?

When she finally founded the start-up "Footprint" in 2019 together with two co-founders, it was clearly no longer about founding per se, but about the cause. Because Footprint is a tech start-up that allows its customers to measure their feet and thus avoid incorrect purchases when buying shoes online.?This not only saves customers and retailers time and money, but also ensures a significant reduction, the environmental damage caused by shipping:?

"We first put a lot of work into the research and realized that the market was ready for it. At some point, we asked ourselves whether we're really going to do it or not,"

recalls Carolin Kleinert about the final step toward founding the company.

Since 50% of all shoes purchased online are currently returned, and the most common reason for returns is that the new shoes don't fit after all, there is indeed a need to solve this problem. And that's exactly what Footprint wants to do: In the future, customers will be able to measure their own feet online and thus find the right shoe size for the selected shoe, independent of conventional size charts.?

"I think in five years everyone will be ordering their shoes this way. The question is not if, but how and who,"

predicts the young entrepreneur. Because Footprint is far from the only start-up that has taken on the solution to the problem. For Carolin Kleinert, however, competition is not a problem:?

"There is room in the market for several players. I think there is enough room."

For the time being, she herself has primarily entered into partnerships with children's shoe retailers and medium-sized companies with Footprint. Because as all parents know, finding just the right shoe size for growing children's feet can sometimes take a lot of effort:?

"The children's shoe manufacturers were open to innovation, but didn't have access to it. That was a relatively fortunate starting point for us,"

explains the young entrepreneur. As soon as the start-up has more to show, larger manufacturers are to be won over as partners.?

Because the founding trio has big plans:?

"Our goal is to be at the forefront when it comes to finding shoes and the right shoe size. We want to become your lifelong companion in finding the right and fitting shoes," says the founder, summarizing the start-up's mission. Later, she could also imagine a kind of Netflix for shoes in the form of a website through which shoes can be found and ordered.?

Similar to many other founders, she is particularly proud of her team:?

"It's only now that I'm in it that I realize the importance of the team. I am extremely happy about the two men at my side. It's a dream constellation. Firstly, because we have different roles in the team and also want to perform them. Secondly, we have each other's backs super and can also talk to each other very honestly."?

The latter in particular is worth its weight in gold for Carolin Kleinert:?

"The most important thing for me is to have a team where I can say openly when something doesn't fit. And where you can be tougher with your position in conversations without it being taken personally. That hurts sometimes, but it's super important to have a shared understanding that that's what it's all about."?

If you want to learn why negotiating the shares in particular led to a tough discussion and why difficult conversations like this are an important foundation for a healthy company, you should listen in to the podcast.

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