Entrepreneurs share insights at Google Start-up Day

At the Google Start-up Day start-up founders had the chance to learn from some very different entrepreneurs. Pascal Mathis, co-founder of GetYourGuide and now working at Google, told the story of GetYourGuide. Tom Hanan, a former Google employee, explained how his start-up Webrepublic had grown to more than 50 employees in five years. Jasmine Kent, co-founder of ludo.io, delivered a good example of how a lean start-up evolves, and Andrin von Rechenberg, co-founder of MiuMeet, focused on the topic of scalability.

Most of our readers know the story of GetYourGuide, so we won’t repeat it here, but Mathis shared some experiences about strong growth that are worth mentioning. GetYourGuide chose to obtain its funding from venture capitalists because the company wanted to grow as fast as possible. The VCs not only invested their money in GetYourGuide, said Mathis, but they also “really helped us to acquire new talent in the US and they opened doors to travel companies”. He had an interesting piece of advice for the founders at the event looking for investors: “Don't forget that you are selling emotions to your investors, not financial plans.”

In contrast to GetYourGuide, Webrepublic is growing without venture capital. Nevertheless, the company, founded in 2009, has more than 50 employees and an impressive list of blue-chip companies as customers. The most important success factor for the company is the team. “Team is everything,” said Hanan, and indeed the company invests heavily in soft factors; for example, a Mediterranean cruise for the whole team. Just like GetYourGuide, Webrepublic wants to grow further and Hanan announced the opening of a second office in western Switzerland soon.

MiuMeet’s von Rechenberg made it clear that today a very small company can become a global player: the global dating platform is particularly strong on the west coast of the US and in some Middle Eastern countries. He emphasised that start-ups should pay attention to the scalability of their solution and their business model. He used a Google cloud solution to secure the scalability of his business and he seems to be a real fan of the product.

GetYourGuide, Webrepublic and MiuMeet are several years old, but Kent presented a much younger venture, ludo.io. The firm started as a crowdfunding platform for new features for games with the idea that gamers would pay in advance for a feature they wanted developers to implement. However, at the moment it seems not enough paying customers for new features have been found. So, Kent talked about a pivot – the broadening of the business model to include other kinds of software; for example, the platform could be used by users of business software willing to pay for new features.

The entrepreneurs spoke very candidly about failures, learning and challenges. It seems that the culture of the Swiss start-up scene is slowly changing and that failures and difficulties are increasingly seen as acceptable. This change gives reason to hope that Swiss founders will become more willing to take risks.

After the talks two pitching sessions followed. The full list of companies that have presented at the event can be seen at the website of CTI Invest.