Startup Stereo

Today’s guests are German Accelerator Alumni Dirk Schart, CMO & President U.S. of RE'FLEKT, and Julian Leitloff, Founder & CEO of Fractal. In our conversation we tackle the culture of failure from many different angles: the international one - looking at Dirk and Julian’s perception of failure culture in Silicon Valley, New York and Singapore. The company culture angle - looking at the role founders and leaders in organizations play as role models by sharing when something didn’t go as expected. And we tackle it from a personal angle – looking at Dirk and Julian’s learnings from the year 2020. Wishing you lots of aha-moments whilst listening to our conversation about failure or as Julian reframed it: “Failure is only failure if you stop doing it, before that it’s learning”!

Today’s guest is Andy Goldstein, Co-Founder and Managing Director of German Accelerator, German Entrepreneurship as well as Deloitte Digital, and serial entrepreneur. We talk about Andy’s perception of crises – or as he calls them “breakdowns.” According to him, every breakdown is the opportunity for a breakthrough! We also talk about pitfalls entrepreneurs might face and ways to successfully steer your business through a crisis. Towards the end of the conversation, we look at digital transformations and Andy’s personal experience as an American living in Europe for more than 35 years. A very insightful exchange with lots of great anecdotes from Andy’s personal and professional experiences. So without further ado, enjoy the conversation!

In today’s episode we talk about how alumni from the German Accelerator Life Sciences program are involved in the tackling of COVID-19. Daniel Mark is the Co-Founder and CEO of Spindiag, a diagnostics company involved in rapid testing for coronavirus infections. Oliver Uecke is the Head of Business Operations at Lipotype, a company providing lipid analysis services. They are certified to analyze samples infected with SARS-CoV-2 and are looking into the role lipidomics can play in coronavirus research. For the non-scientists among us, lipids are a diverse group of small molecules such as triglycerides, cholesterol or fatty acids amongst others! In our conversation we talk about how exactly their companies are involved in finding solutions for COVID-19, the impact of the whole situation on their companies such as for Spindiag it meant completely shifting their product from rapid testing for multidrug-resistant bacteria to testing for corona viruses and how they both perceive the “gold rush” in their field at the current moment. Two great guests and a very significant topic! Enjoy the conversation!

Our guest in German Accelerator’s Startup Stereo Episode #02 is Anna Yona, Co-Founder of Wilding, a company producing minimal shoes for children and adults that feel like walking barefoot. What started as a good way to balance both work and family life with 3 kids, has resulted in Wildling being set up as a remote company that now has more than 130 employees, most of which are working from home. Therefore, Anna is the perfect guest to talk about recommendations for working from home! In our conversation, we talk about the importance of a virtual coffee kitchen, daily routines, fostering trust in a remote company through bi-monthly live meetings in non-corona times, and Wildling’s creative plan B in case of total lockdown. To give you a teaser: it involves the decentralized storage of 20,000 pairs of shoes in employees’ garages! As we did this interview from home to home, you might hear kids in the background, but we imagine that this is something we’ve all come to know during the recent times: that work and family life have moved just a little bit closer.

Today’s guest is Jenny von Podewils, Co-Founder of Leapsome, a startup providing performance enablement & employee engagement software that supports fast-growing companies such as Spotify, Trivago or Babbel in building high-performing teams and strong company cultures. Jenny currently participates in the German Accelerator New York program with the goal to expand Leapsome to the U.S. market. In today’s conversation, we talk about feedback – feedback as rocket fuel for learning, feedback on feedback, and what receiving feedback has to do with going to the dentist. We also talk about company culture and the role the founders play in shaping it. Towards the end of the conversation, Jenny shares her recommendations for successful distributed teams, great insights not only in times of corona!