The wisdom of Cologne's top entrepreneurs - 5 years Entrepreneurs Club Cologne

What a ride it has been. Last week, Tuesday night, we celebrated five years of our student entrepreneurship club in Cologne. A time in which the Entrepreneurs Club Cologne (ECC) became the number one spot for entrepreneurial active students. With founders nights (in German we call them "Gründerabend"), workshops, pitch events and more we have supported the local startup scene. With RHIVE, our student entrepreneurship conference coming up this fall, we also embark on a new journey.

To celebrate all this, we held the 50th edition of our pillar event, the "Gründerabend," with two of Cologne's most distinguished entrepreneurs: Dustin Figge from Homelike, the leading platform for temporary living for business professionals in Europe, and Moritz Delbrück, a serial entrepreneur, who has been involved in creating companies such as PIRATE.global and Justix. And these are the insights I took from listening to them:

Dustin Figge - Homelike

Interestingly Dustin has been active voluntarily for the OFW before becoming an entrepreneur. For those unfamiliar with the organization, they are the organizers of the World Business Dialogue, the world's largest student-organized business conference. It has been happening for over 20 years in Cologne. Dustin was responsible for sponsorships and later went on to lead the organization for some time. He learned some valuable skills and acquired knowledge that later helped him in this journey and that is the power of volunteering. You gain from helping others, isn't that a wonderful thing?

The question that we all wanted to know now was how he went from organizing a conference to building his company. The idea for Homelike came to him and a couple of friends in the one place known globally for creating great startups, the Silicon Valley. Back then he worked as an assistant for the management of a corporation. And at that moment Dustin and some friends noticed that the popular Airbnb platform doesn't offer long-term stays. It seemed like a great fit, so they pitched that idea to the product head of Airbnb, at that time the position was filled by another German. Surprisingly, he declined any interest. Airbnb focuses on experience, he told them. Long-term stays wouldn't fit into their business.

The ambitious young German team saw a chance and started researching the market. How large was the potential market of combining people who are looking for longer stays, usually business professionals, and companies offering such accommodations? They estimated the market to have a value of over 150 billion €. An opportunity they grasped and they set themselves the goal to become the number one online provider of such services, building a digital platform to connect the two groups just mentioned here.

In 2015, after a lot of work, they finally launched their platform to achieve their goal. Interestingly, they launched the company on Weiberfastnacht 2015, the official start of carnival in the West German Rhineland. Of course, nobody would buy anything that day, everybody was celebrating. But they loved the idea of celebrating their anniversary later on during carnival. Still, they soon got their first sales, and this was more problematic than they expected. The issue was that potential investors saw these numbers and thought great. How about you guys double your numbers every week. It will show me that your business is worth investing in. Finding an investor only became harder now. Luckily, they eventually managed to get investors on board and the speaker shared what he believed were the main reasons for that: Transparent open communication. Many people from Cologne have the tendency to just talk to others, friends or strangers and be open about their thoughts and feelings. Venture capitalists, who are used to founders, who try to sell themselves too hard, quite much enjoyed that transparent and authentic style Dustin and his co-founders showed. And they were rewarded for it in multiple investment rounds.

But the entrepreneur wasn't finished yet. He still had some key learning for us, that he wanted to share:

1. Build scalable organizational processes and define a supporting culture, otherwise, you will grow to a point where your fundament is not stable enough to support the enormous structure on top
2. You can outsource mini-processes, you don't need to do anything yourself. Sometimes it's easier paying a professional provider for an easy service that would not cost you a lot of time and effort doing it yourself but possibly be even more expensive than just letting somebody else do it for you
3. Don't let distractions intimidate you - keep your focus even if it hurts. If you want to succeed, you need to focus on your startup and the goals it has
4. Make mistakes early and as fast as possible - otherwise they will be costly later on. Some mistakes Homelike didn't do got a bigger price tag down the line
5. Scaling entails frequent changes and a maximum of stimuli - maintaining mental stability will help you handle the weight. You need relaxation, your life is not just startups. How far can you go? A human can go only so far before they break. A topic little talked about is the pressure founders have to withstand. Never forget that you are a human, take care of yourself, get support, maybe take yoga classes, talk to friends outside the startup world and enjoy your life a bit.
6. When you grow and grow, you need to take care of your culture. It might change over time, therefore you need to protect your firm culture and make sure it stays an open one where individuals will feel happy and fulfilled.
7. "Nobody wants Homelike to succeed." A bold statement, but the point is that suppliers and customers do not care if you succeed, they care about what is best for them, therefore the only people, who want you to succeed a 100% are you and your employees. Push your startup to greatness.

After hearing all that wonderful input everybody had some time to think about what they just have heard. Beers were ordered and discussions were started. A cold drink and some friends always help to truly understand the wisdom of a great entrepreneur. The short break came to an end, as our second speaker prepared to get on stage:

Moritz Delbrück - Serial Entrepreneur

Moritz began his speech with a strong message: There are only a handful of people, who are ready to push through their shit. Do whatever you started and make it big. And that belief in persistence and doing what he wanted to do guided him through his life and he shared with us what made him the person, he is today.

At the age of 16, he saw that the liberal youth organization, part of the Liberal Democratic Party of Germany, held a contest. Who could get the most people to join the organization? Moritz had a brilliant and crazy idea. Selling weed. Weed is and already was illegal back then in Germany. But Moritz found a loophole, bird seeds without THC, theoretically, they couldn't be counted as weed. Moritz and his fellow friends then opened the first coffee shop in Germany in the city of Wuppertal. The police wasn't so happy and didn't know that the seeds sold in the shop had too little of a THC concentration. Moritz's first venture was fastly closed down by the authorities. It wouldn't be his last encounter with authorities, who try to impose their rules on him. Still, he succeeded. More than 300 people joined the organization, and he won the contest and went on for some time to do go into European politics and try to legalize cannabis.

This strong opposition to authority eventually concerned his more conservative parents, who believed in more classical Prussian values. A decision was reached, and the son was sent to South Africa to a boarding school for boys. The school was hard, there were beating punishments for disobedience and Moritz didn't see the point in being here. It only further nurtured his disdain for following rules. One day finally, he decided to leave, because of love. He had to leave a girl back behind in Wuppertal, that he liked, but now a continent stood between him and his youthly desire. That, of course, wouldn't stop a Moritz Delbrück. He broke out, the police shortly afterward in his pursuit, trying to get him back to school. He fled the country and went to Namibia, being broke and having no money left. From there he took a flight back home. His parents conceded and he could saw the woman, he desired to return to, again. Sadly, the ensuing relationship only lasted nine weeks. If that isn't Hollywood material, I don't know. I look forward to somebody making a movie out of this.

Life went on and our speaker started studying law. He just never finished it. A company making slogans needed a substitute for a pregnant employee and Moritz saw an opportunity. It didn't take long for him to get a higher position and he quit his studies. And here a pattern emerged that I as a listener first needed to understand to not get confused by the barrage of activities he did. Moritz went on to do one thing after another. It would take too long to explain all in detail but let me sum up the key stations of his life.

After the slogan firm, he created a pro-EU organization. He then started studying again, this time marketing and philosophy, but that wasn't the most important thing to him, as he preferred to build more organizations at his university during his studies. But the result at first was a classic one. He became a consultant. Now he had clothing from top design experts, he had a nice car, lots of money and his parents were proud. It wouldn't last. Two years later he lost his passion for this job. He didn't like rigid rules and wanted to try out something new. Meanwhile, he was doing a Ph.D., so he used that work to create a sustainability consultancy out of it. After making it a success, he tried the next thing. A marketplace for headhunters. Quickly they became the market leader in Switzerland. Then he built a coupon platform. Swiftly, the firm grew to over 300 people and the company was sold for more than 120 million € to Google. He went on to invest in startups and sustainable business models. Then he became part of the founding team of the Pirate Summit. Till Ohrmann, who had the idea for such a conference, went to Moritz to look for a sponsor. Moritz was able to convince him to take his idea from the city of Iserlohn, where Till wanted to start, to Cologne. 10 years later the rest is history and the Pirate Summit is one of Europe's biggest and craziest startup summits. He went one to do a couple of more things such as creating a bank with startup builder Rocket Internet and opening up a company that is digitalizing law protection.

If that was a little bit too much, don't worry. You don't need to remember all the awesome things he did, but you should remember one thing. He followed his passion and dreams and he experimented. Many people are too fearful to try anything new. Moritz is the opposite, he just jumps into the abyss and checks on the bottom if he thinks it's comfortable enough down there.

Talking about jumping into the unknown, Moritz went into a topic that Dustin also shortly mentioned. Being a founder is hard, really hard. And it can be more than just painful. You have days, where you celebrate, but also many where you don't. Days where you feel down and the darkness surrounding you. That's why Moritz started to support other entrepreneurs, organizing meetings, where they would discuss their biggest fears and issues. Mental health is of key importance to founders. When you are responsible for so many employees, it's like being the parent of an army of children. Just as you want your children to enjoy their victories, you will do the same for your employees, but when it's time to take responsibility you don't blame your children, just as you don't blame your employees. You take responsibility and have to bear that.

Coming back to a more positive final part, Moritz also wanted to share his key learnings:

1. Decide what makes you happy, make your own rules instead of blindly accepting the ones by others
2. Live consciously
3. Almost all fuck-ups in his companies had the same source, himself. So don't blame others, take responsibility and work on your shortcomings.
4. It's a rollercoaster, entrepreneurs live in a sinus curve of two phases: uninformed optimism and informed pessimism, it's a marathon.
5. Money is nice, and lots of money is really nice. But only for a couple of days.
6. There is nothing more beautiful than entrepreneurship. What a wonderful statement to end with

As a fun bonus:

After his speech, I stood together with him and a couple of other people and he remembered a story, he forgot to tell us. When the first Pirate Summit was organized, Moritz took the logos of all their corporate sponsors and put them on a puppet, a Nubbel, people in Cologne would say. He put on a costume of a priest and started to hold a sermon on startups and corporations and ended with the quote: "Fuck corporates," and went one to burn the puppet. It made quite the headlines in the international startup press. The point was that he wanted to show that they stand for something. In this case entrepreneurship. Have a backbone and show what you believe in. Sometimes you might need to break a couple of rules. But that's the fun part about life, isn't it?

That night I not only thought about the knowledge these two great men installed in me, I also went into a nostalgic mood, as it was time to say goodbye to my friends at the ECC for the next half year because I will go abroad for a semester abroad. It has been quite the year for me, being part of the club. Organizing events and acquiring speakers for these. I loved every second of it. Seeing how excited students were about starting a business and then some starting these was an exhilarating feeling. I could feel that our work had an impact, that more students in Cologne got the support they needed. The recent startup DoorAmi, founded by members of the ECC is just one of many examples. And with around 40 active members, our club is expanding. I look forward to returning in 2020 and see how much the organization will have grown by then and my parting words are a little bit different than the ones by Moritz but similar. For me, there is nothing more beautiful than community building. I love empowering others and bringing people together and I hope that I could excite some of you start a business or volunteer for an organization.