00:02.14
thomaskohler
Ah, you I’m happy that we have the the chance now to have a conversation because I found your um appearance on Linkedin and um through your events really interesting. Also your podcast I also even am listened to it sometimes and um. Now. It’s great that we have you here on the show. So maybe and we can start with a bit of context about yourself.
00:23.89
ARRtist
Happy to do so Thomas and thank you very much for the invite. Um I’m Julius I’m thirty nine years old now for a couple of days I’m based in Berlin I have two kids here and I’m entrepreneur and investor by heart. Um, if you like to I can give a little bit. Background of myself during the last year so ah see you see you nodding I’m um, um, started my career at Mckinsey Consulting banks and insurances but not for a long time learned a lot but also recognize that it’s consulting is probably not my. Ah, my my my passion of life for the long-term then the 2 founders of Zlando um, acquired me for a top management position at solando which I did for almost four years ah managing all non- full price business units at solando so sallando lounge the retail outlets b two b unit. Um, at the board. Um, did this until the ipo of clanddo and then ten years ago founded my first own company b 2 b trading company Bootstrapped um, really liked. Ah, really like going back to to empty warehouse and starting from the scratch. Um. During the last ten years founded 15 own companies all bootstrapped allbe 2 b of course not alone many a times together with really cool, inspirational cofounders and for like around 4 years and doing b two b investments very early stage precede and seed stage.
01:56.81
ARRtist
Into saas ah companies. So I have a portfolio of around 40 saas companies I’m invested in and there also help the teams mainly and go to market and sales and the common denominator. There is a lot of repetitive ah problems a lack of of network. So. As you said I decided to like build a kind of an ecosystem here in the german-spe market which we call artist a artist and which includes a conference once a year a podcast 2 times a week and we have a slack community for Sas horners and sea levels free of charge 600 people now where. We just and foster exchange and tried that people do not do the same mistakes which have been done before and like talk about mistakes talk about best practices and yeah, accelerating their their business growth.
02:45.48
thomaskohler
And what what would you say? shaped you most in your career.
02:50.75
ARRtist
Who um I think to be very honest, everything. Yeah so every experience I had in my life had a very big learning either. What I like or what I don’t like so talking about Mckinsey. I got a lot of I think frameworks a lot of logical thinking high-lel business contacts. Yeah, but own decision making was quite low. Yeah, you’re consulting and in a junior role. You’re like preparation. Ah preparation. Ah you do presentations you’re preparing stuff. So. I learned how to do with people but I also learned that like just consulting is not enough for me I like to do decisions for myself during my sal hundredro times which started super early days high speed and was like really entrepreneurial building stuff. New processes internationalization hyper scale which i. Really liked like the energy freedom of decision. Ah responsibility also for my mistakes and my my my decisions and when the company became bigger. Um, of course it changed more to like a corporate management role. Yeah like I had 450 people below me and like. The the role changed from super entrepreneurial hit to a management senior management position where I recognize this is not like how I’d like to spend my my time with ah and then the the decision again going back to and or going to my first own company.
04:21.60
ARRtist
And this was I think the best decision of my life. So but a result of the previous things and now I’m really happy and satisfied What I’ve what I’m doing building companies and investing.
04:32.56
thomaskohler
And how do you approach building a bootstrap company because I think it’s a different model than building a Vc a Vc packed or product actually packed company especially in the beginning. So.
04:43.72
ARRtist
Completely different approach. Um I mean a lot of determines which I think you should take into consideration. First of all, is you need to ask yourself how you like to work because having a Vc on the board and deciding for a Vc track means. There is a third party on the table and like if you go down the road There are many more third parties on the table and your share of ownership decreases from baron. Yeah, so it’s a very different working model than to bootstrap where capital is always rare. You really need to. Rethink every of your decisions twice but you have full ownership of what you’re doing no but no need to report to anyone. Ah, you’re depending on your own decisions but also responsible for your own decisions. So I think it’s a decision decision for yourself and of course there are a couple of more dimensions. For example. Not every business model can be bootstrapped. Yeah if I need to build a deep tech product First no chance to bootstrap. Yeah, you need a certain amount of money to just build it and then monetize so also like the decision of the business model requires sometimes venture capital or not so. And also depends like what you like to do.
05:56.24
thomaskohler
And how how do you approach building teams um from from scratch because I think this is what you did often know. So maybe you see some patterns. Yeah, maybe we can also say say it’s an B Two B Sas environment For instance.
06:10.40
ARRtist
Yeah, um, it’s it’s a question of different differentiation of good and bad teams or people people team fit I think there are a lot of factors signaling. Quality of a founder or quality of a founded team and it’s 2 dimensions first is like the single person and then second the second thing is like people combining people to a team. Yeah, ah because just because you have free very smart and great individual persons. All being the same profile like a maniac. And they together and the team will not work. Ah so if you’re composing a team There’s also different dimension. Um, how just have teams I think first of all kind of a vertical knowledge or industry knowledge or at least knowledge about a problem or pain point is super helpful. Yeah, so. Does the founder had or did the founder have any touch points with the problem. He’d likes to solve. Yeah, so it makes a big difference than theoretically thinking about a problem solution or really ah, having experienced this for yourself. Um I think the second thing is. Being curious like you know like it’s very important in sales but also very important as a founder because it influenced on on on many things like ah contacting people selecting advisors want to get to know about best practices by reading or listening to podcasts want to understand patterns on my customer side. So.
07:39.53
ARRtist
Being curious is like an attitude which I think is super correlating super correlated with success as ah as an early stage founder and of course work mentality. There’s no question or ah about this? Yeah um.
07:56.59
ARRtist
Are like in the individual trades and there are many more but I think it’s like free to name just a few here in the short period of time and then if you set together individuals to a team I think you really need to take a look from an investor’s perspective or from founder’s perspective or. You know, like ah someone and founding angel like you can call it a different race is like what what kind of different roles and characters and skills. Do you need to solve a problem. So if you build a saas product you probably need some technical knowledge so you need a quite good deaf and and product profile. And you probably need a very good. Go-to-market sales commercial profile. Yeah, so and this 2 roles can be super different in terms of the people you want to put together. But so depending what you like to do you need to? really then? um, put people together and if it’s at a. Deep tech AiModel you probably need some and and some some ah yeah, Ai professional, having very deep knowledge about ml yeah, ah so really depends on what kind of a problem you like to solve.
09:04.40
thomaskohler
And would you first invest into product development um to build a relevant set of features or stability in the technology um perspective or would you read a first um invest in the go to market site. That you have enough demand and also maybe enough insights at some point to build the product depending on um the insights you generate because you go out of a promise. But maybe you cannot deliver initially because you promise something that just will be built but is not built it.
09:37.52
ARRtist
Yeah I definitely would start on the market side. Um, because otherwise you will waste a lot of resources in terms of product development not understanding the needs and pains of a customer and starting on the market side doesn’t mean you need to sell. Something by contract to the guy it starts with like understanding your icps your ideal customer profiles and your buyer Personas Yeah and understanding means like you really get to know like what kind of problems do they have in general in the company but also on a personal side. What motivates them? Ah what? ah happens if the pain is solved what solutions do they right now use to solve the pain. Um, is there like so how much would they pay for having this problem solved stuff like this and. You You will extract this information only by doing really deep interviews with like a certain number of people and could be potential clients industry experts people from your network and this will help you to really identify pains which have a high priority at your icps and bio Personas and. Only if you understand this from my point of View. You can build a product which then helps solving this pains and this of course can be done then for example with like pilot partnerships. You said like hey we are Developed. We understood your needs. We understood your pain. We are now really going into product development and would you mind like being a pilot.
11:07.92
ARRtist
A pilot customer or a pilot partner. So ah, we don’t charge you for the first six months but we need your feedback on a weekly basis. This helps us for the product and this is like phase 2 and then if phase 2 is done and you have kind of an Mvp like a product which really solves the needs of their pilot customers. I think then it’s a good time to go to the market and try to sell it for a certain price point because then you also have value to deliver against the pain for your customers.
11:37.37
thomaskohler
And I think Also what is a bit different to a venture based venture is that the whole planning Cadence. Um. Is maybe with less ambiguity and also with less more spikes if you if you boot strap right? because it’s a bit more continuous. Um, but once when you raise a big amount of funding for a market entry and so on and um, then you suddenly need to hire or Build. Several orcs in parallel this can be really I don’t know I know that a lot of companies don’t invest into planning at that early stage sometimes or even at all. But I think especially if you are going venturebacked planning is key that you distribute the? um. Resources Um, kind of correctly or efficiently because this is also what we saw now when the money and cash got a bit more expensive that suddenly everybody had to start to plan and then um, the the goal was not to go for the next funding round. Um, but to also some some kind get profitably. Yeah, so that’s also a bit.
12:32.58
ARRtist
Um, yeah.
12:43.14
ARRtist
Very very different. Yeah I mean if you bootstrap and you can also bootstrap starting building a tech product with a service in parallel area so you have a service you’re consulting companies on their pans. You’re you’re getting some cash in and with the cash financing product development. So when you bootstrap.
12:43.21
thomaskohler
I Think different. How do you see that.
12:59.60
thomaskohler
Yeah.
13:03.12
ARRtist
I think the decision is always like okay where to spend the next one euro yeah so you get a euro and then it’s like okay, what ah what do I do with it. It’s the only euro I have yeah if you had to a ventureer case. You do a seat round you have two million Euro and then there’s a question. Okay, how do I distribute this two million Euro and then of this of course needs planning and. Hypothethesis. Okay, where do I want to go with this next two Euro which milestone do I want to reach what do I need to deliver to my investors and to the market to then get maybe a serious a funding of 10000000 in an extra. Yeah, so there are certain milestones let’s say easiest example revenue a r. Okay, to reach this revenue how many clients do I need to reach this to acquire this clients. How many fte on the sales side do I need and how many marketing budget do I need if I know my custom acquisition costs are x so if you have a venture case planning is key yeah and understanding your metrics quite fast and. And really distributing the money the right way. Yeah, it’s a very different game.
14:00.55
thomaskohler
And how would you choose a cofounder because you had now I think plus 15 companies you funded by yourself so you would you you have a lot of counders I guess so.
14:13.44
ARRtist
Yes, and a couple of companies I have the same cofounders because if you’ve chosen the right ones. It’s super fun and live to do the next venture together again. But yes, um, the very different co-founders and I mentioned like 4 companies are closed down again one also because the cap table and the co-founder. Um, consistently didn’t work out so to be honest, it’s a very opportunistic process I don’t have a venture studio approach like acquiring talent by a very quantitative way. It’s it’s usually.
14:49.17
ARRtist
Gut feeling and a common track record and previous projects. Yeah, so the cofounder of my first company olla which I highly appreciate and value a lot. He was working in 1 of my teams at Sallando. So. We had a lot of touchpoints. We get to know each other ah we get to knew each other we understood each other in a personal way. We all said some conflicts so we we had a lot of situations where we experienced how it could be working together and on the other side they got a good understanding of like the the skills of the other person and the industry knowledge and how they work. And this of course helped a lot to say like hey we can imagine working together on a venture. So my recommendation recommendation choosing a co-founder is definitely trying to create as many touchpoints situations and also conflicts as possible before because you only will. Get a good feeling of this relationship and this connection in tough situations. Yeah, if ah, the grass is green everybody plays football quite quite good. Yeah, it becomes more complicated if ah if the court looks like shit. Yeah, and then it’s a question. how can you and how can you play
16:01.92
thomaskohler
Yes, and um, do you have also some learnings of maybe a good experience and a learning experience in in choosing a co-founder.
16:11.60
ARRtist
A bit. What I mentioned yeah I think this one case which maybe I didn’t get the question right? Thomas can you elaborate a bit more what you’re meaning.
16:14.41
thomaskohler
So so maybe maybe with examples or so this would be super interesting.
16:23.40
thomaskohler
So yeah, if you maybe have some examples where you could say hey in that example, we had a very for me. This was a very positive experience and the right decision and there is maybe another example where you see oh it did not work out. Well so it’s it’s maybe a learning experience.
16:34.60
ARRtist
L.
16:42.35
ARRtist
Yeah I can I mean I can I can give some an example about ah about a signal. Yeah, So if you have different opinions and at a certain case or maybe make it even more clear.. There is a situation where it’s quite clear that someone is right and someone is wrong. Like just like a number like quantitative case and the person who is wrong like how will she how how will she react when she definitely recognizes that she’s wrong. Yeah, so it’s It’s a very clear Case. It’s quite clear person a was wrong or person B was wrong. And then if someone reacts in a very self-reflected way trying to analyze why she was wrong committing that she was wrong. Yeah, ah trying to get learnings out of it. How to do better Next time is a very good signal of. Person to work with the other cases and I probably did the same I did the same in my early career is like looking for reasons why someone else or certain Market economics and made me do the wrong decisions. So not my ownership not my fault. Someone else is responsible So This is like a very red light or red flex signal in a a personal relationship if this happens it’s It’s a red flacker so because then it becomes super difficult with clients. Someone is not self-reflected someone is like.
18:10.80
ARRtist
You know like it’s It’s not a good attitude.
18:13.80
thomaskohler
Yes, yes, um, totally agree and but on the other hand it can be um so I think if there is a really complementary team. Um also too free or.
18:17.92
ARRtist
Um.
18:21.00
ARRtist
Are.
18:24.86
thomaskohler
But before people I never saw it working out but free I think it’s also difficult I think with two it can be super um, simple from the constellation because there’s so not so many interdependencies and it’s also quite straightforward on how to split shares for instance, um, especially. 2 companies if 2 people start at the same time. Um and have similar scope right? Um, then I think it it really is and a nobrainer sometimes um like also did you start a company but just by yourself as well.
18:46.29
ARRtist
Yeah.
19:01.18
thomaskohler
And why not.
19:01.39
ARRtist
No, ah, um, because I I like people I like spending my life with inspirational minds around me I’d like to interact I learn from from other people independent if they are 1020 years younger than me. Um, I’m not a lone wolf I like social interactions. So and and I think it’s also like a correcting momentum to be very honest. Yeah, so everyone everyone does mistakes so it’s. Highly recommendable that you’re not going on a journey for yourself because in certain moments. Especially I’m a very risk a fine guy. Ah so like I would always go for the risk you know like I would say yeah, let’s try it. Let’s do it and especially for example with ola he. He just sometimes slows me a bit down in a good way. It’s like hey Julius let’s rethink this again. Do you really think we should do this. what is the what is the opportunity what are the costs here and then it makes me rethinking my my my approach and my my my decision to to try it out and. In many many situations. It’s a very good thing. Yeah, and then we just like skip decisions and don’t do it and the other way around. It’s working is the same like all it. Maybe it’s a bit more the conservative guy and maybe in some situations like too conservative to really achieve a and an output.
20:27.53
ARRtist
And in this situation then I start argumenting with okay this is the opportunity we should at least try. Um, let’s take a little bit of budget make an experiment measure and if we see there is traction then we go into it and then you know like this this power play I think drives very good decisions. And is a very correcting momentum.
20:47.49
thomaskohler
Yeah, it’s interesting and further and theory I I agree with you on that and how how did you then start building this ecosystem of artists That’s I think also tough to achieve in the beginning. It’s a lot of. For you need to put in and maybe at some point it’s then self self-sustaining but you also need to invest into it I Guess So How does this works to build a ecosystem of communities.
21:18.16
ARRtist
Yeah, um I mean I need to say I’m doing this also for the first time so it’s a big learning process for me. Um, so the journey the journey started with I’m helping Mike but for your companies and what I’m doing in my own companies is. Go to market and sales and my initial idea was to build a fresh sales conference because tax saless is way different than sales for foxkvargen stuff like this and so this was the initial idea and talked to a couple of people about the idea like I said before doing interviews and is there a pain butra. And then there was the feedback it was like yeah sales is a topic but we also have a problem with fundraising and we also would like to exchange about marketing and about product. So we said okay instead of doing a sales building a sales conference and this was the first idea. Ah, for like all levels of sales. We just? Okay, we are building a saas conference with all functions. But only we’re a very boutique approach just for high levelvel decision makers founders in sea- level and they say okay, how to build a like how to bring this people together in a best way is like okay, a digital format I was like hm. To form it difficult for exchange and a Zoom meeting with previous. Ah there was a decision to do the physical meetup and there was okay, the physical meter. Probably we should build a small conference and said okay, let’s let’s having the idea and then I was okay I’m not the guy who building a conference for myself for 500 people not the expert I not not the knowledge.
22:46.70
ARRtist
By coincidence my and current 2 co-founders which are long-term friends and I was at the first angel in their business in their last company they were running a tough mono clone called athletics so they did events for 15000 people to 20 times a year like on the biggest scale. So they new event. We’re open for something new I knew Sas no idea about event we we just met together I pitched the idea they said like okay, let’s do this on a on a halfday basis a half week basis and then we had like like a good team for for the pain and for the solution solution was a conference and then we just did outreach share. So I just. Okay, what’s the go-to market the go-to market is probably to have an interesting conference and sum we need a good program and a good approach in terms of people can connect if we have a good program and good speakers. People will buy tickets to come and if we have people and speakers then sponsors will probably also. Join because then there is an interesting target group for partners and this is what we did I just like did outreach to fifty sixty people said okay this is the idea. Um, we’re looking for interesting speakers for the first year and 10 people from 10 people I called nine said it’s a brilliant idea I’d like to contribute I like to join so. We build the program we sold the first tickets required the first sponsors that’s okay how how else beside a small conference. Can we contribute to the ecosystem and and forced the exchange between people is yeah okay, let’s do a podcast because we can all all year long can take the knowledge of founders and investors.
24:22.12
ARRtist
Making it accessible and in ah in a podcast and push it to the whole ecosystem for free. So we did the podcast and which worked out pretty well and said okay, what else can we do was let’s let’s let’s build a format where people can exchange during the whole year in terms of a slack community. So we build a slack community 700 saas founders now inside. No investors. No partners where they exchange about their problems all year around. So and so this is like how I approach it now like what other elements can help making the ecosystem of s sas and Germany and German-spe markets better step-bystep and we’re now building more and more modules on. Empowering the ecosystem here long monologue I hope there was clear.
25:03.91
thomaskohler
Um, yes, very clear and I think a very entrepreneurial um approach on how you should validate ideas. But I think the validation itself does not do the verry need to put in the work and get to the next step all the time. And then come with new findings with new ideas and see how how it’s perceived and um make something out of it because I think Also what is super important that you sold tickets. Um that you also actually made money from it. Yeah because ultimately at some point there needs to be a flow of cash.
25:36.18
ARRtist
I mean billing a conference for last year was 400 people full day location food drinks all included just costs like ah cost like a sixd digit number of money. Yeah, so and if you don’t want to pay this for yourself. It needs to be financed. Yeah, so. Ah, you need to sell ticket and some sponsor packs just to make a break even event for this like kind of small number of people and yeah I mean like last year acquiring founders I I would say I definitely did 20280 minutes course with sa founders. To pitch the idea and tell them about our vision of building an ecosystem and getting them to the to the to the to the first summit I mean was the idea on paper are you selling a product which haven’t been there so at a minimum did 250 calls last years with with founders.
26:24.87
thomaskohler
Yeah, you can can see the interarial spirit.
26:32.35
ARRtist
Absolutely I mean it’s like ah as I said, yeah, it’s like ideation then doing interviews validation of the idea and then like of course like building copy and the go-to-marke strategy to push the idea and as you say and in this case, it’s like. First acquiring participants in terms of tickets and then acquiring partners in terms of sponsoring. Ah so it’s a super entrepreneur. Ah I mean it’s a super clear. Go-tomarket case which just leads a lot of effort to do it I will not happen for itself.
27:01.82
thomaskohler
And what’s the goal for the next years with artists.
27:08.94
ARRtist
I mean as said I’m a very opportenistic guy. Ah like I do stuff as long as I have fun with it. Um I think the the beauty of artists is really like bringing super smart minds together. Yeah, like entrepreneurials entrepreneurs sea level executives investors and I think. Or to my mind this is like the biggest value of this ecosystem and platform talking to interesting smart people and learning every day. So um to make I mean there are a couple of things to make it bigger. It would be like opening the platform for not. Not and not exist except non-executives you know like a a s thers I think it’s not a good idea because then the quality of the product. The the conference will go down and I think there are a couple of cool more ideas how to how to and empower the ecosystem and more exchange so we’ll probably do a couple of more events all year around and. We are thinking about some formats for other targets groups. So next year on April we are we have launched the artist circus which is a festival for sales teams and success teams customer success teams. Ah very very colorful, very enabling. So I think. But let’s see if this works but the very cool indications of product market fit. So if you’re sales if you earn sales or customer success take a look at artists minusircus.com and yeah, but where will this go I mean an idea could be to build a fund on top of the ecosystem. Yeah because you have access to early stage.
28:37.55
ARRtist
Startups and capital on the other side. The idea could be taking the learnings building and own a unicon saas company. Ah with all the knowledge and learnings and and contacts with good access to investors and good access to to other founders. Idea could be handing this the conference over to a team and like doing something completely new ai like non-altar stuff. So ask me next year ask me in second years I will have different views on this right now I’m really enjoying the the process and the journey of doing it.
29:07.30
thomaskohler
I will.
29:12.61
ARRtist
Ah, without a 5 years vision to be on a summersa.
29:15.51
thomaskohler
Cool Yudis um, what is a guest that you know I don’t know what I should interview. Next.
29:21.13
ARRtist
Um, a guest you should interview Next What do you want to? What do you want to learn.
29:23.62
thomaskohler
So I think when we dive a bit more into the topic of Saas and how to build certain maybe Orcs team structures in a certain way. That’s interesting I Guess so.
29:34.79
ARRtist
I think I would recommend Robin Zudaman a founder and Ceo of talents connect. They have a super interesting arc structure they work in squats and their arc as super super interesting thing and can recommend.
29:41.30
thomaskohler
Oh yeah.
29:52.16
ARRtist
An episode I did with him and the artist on ai exactly about this topic. So if you want to jump in and listen this very innovative thinking in terms of how to structure an organization and is also like a very cool guy. Ah super empatic. Um, super smart. So definitely. Ah, ah. Definitely a good guest for for your show Thomas.
30:10.87
thomaskohler
I will I think I’m already in touch with him on two conferences I met him so we we planned this already so that’s a good hint again. So I will do so I I will I will thank youless for that night for your time and the great insights. So.
30:19.23
ARRtist
Absolutely it said said send my wishes please yeah.
30:29.00
ARRtist
Yeah, was a pleasure. Thanks for the invite and all the best going forward with you with your podcast and your business of course. Yeah building ah an agency service model and the Saas companies ah and investing I see some parallels. Yeah, thank you.
30:39.38
thomaskohler
Yes, just things.