Running Past No
I recently went one on one with Florian Gschwandtner, founder and former CEO of Runtastic, which sold to Adidas for $239 million. Florian is a serial entrepreneur and investor.
Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?
Florian: I think for both start-ups Runtastic & Tractive it was a similar experience. The biggest challenge is to get started and find the right founding team. After you’ve started, don’t expect anything and in our case we got a lot of NOs. The good news is that it was never a setback and more of a motivation for myself - each NO was a YES in my head and that’s how we started.
Whatever the challenge, be part of the solution!
Adam: How did you come up with your business idea? What advice do you have for others on how to come up with great ideas?
Florian: I think the idea is important, but not most important. Of course it’s always helpful if you have a connection to your idea or it solves a problem, which you’ve experienced yourself. More importantly in my opinion is to have the right founding team and people you trust and you want to work with.
Adam: What were the key steps you took to grow and scale your business? What advice do you have for others on how to take their businesses to the next level?
Florian: Having a business model from the very early beginning helped a lot, because we made money from the very first day. I think it’s necessary to create a business with a “plan” and we grew slower at the beginning, but we learned about our data and customers and could optimize for the future. Now we have a very strong growth and do understand our unit economics.
Adam: What are your best tips on the topics of sales, marketing and branding?
Florian: Good people in the team and give them some freedom to try out things. Marketing in the digital world always has a performance component and it’s important to understand the math and the numbers here.
Adam: What do you look for in companies you invest in? What advice do you have for entrepreneurs on the topic of raising capital and what advice do you have for fellow investors?
Florian: I’ve invested in more than 30 start-ups and my biggest learning is that the TEAM is the most important part. Quite often the idea from the beginning will not be the product of the future and the team has to pivot into another direction. This is totally okay and that’s the world of entrepreneurship. For an investor it’s important to identify whether the team is capable of doing so and understanding how a business should work.
I’m investing most of my time in technology-driven start-ups and therefore it’s crucial for me that there is a good CEO (somebody who can pitch the product) and a very good CTO.
Adam: In your experience, what are the defining qualities of an effective leader? How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?
Florian: Leadership becomes more and more important and an effective leader has a good mix of delegation and defining the direction where the company is heading. Leading by example is always the starting point and I expect from a leader that he or she makes decisions and takes risks. In addition to that it’s a must-have to invest in your leadership skills all the time. Start easy with books (Start with Why, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, etc.) and then try to follow leaders from all around the world - that’s one of the big benefits of the digital world :)
Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading and managing teams?
Florian: Be the leader who you’d like to follow! For me that means: Try to set ambitious goals, try to have an education plan for your people and try to speak to them quite often and provide feedback and ask how you can help them to achieve their goals.
Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives and civic leaders?
Florian: Get started and don’t have a plan B.
Adam: What are your best health and fitness tips?
Florian: As the co-founder and CEO of Runtastic I always loved to do sports and I still love it. I think being fit is one of the most important skills nowadays for running a business. One of my tricks is that before I start an important business day, I will do a run in the morning. Only for 30-40 minutes, but then I already have all the oxygen and power in me to kick ass :)
Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?
Florian: Don’t listen to the naysayers :)
Adam: Is there anything else you would like to share?
Florian: Sure, I’m posting a lot about my entrepreneurial stories and learnings on Instagram and LinkedIn - feel free to follow me under “florian.gschwandtner”