One of the most important things we bring to the table is
experience. We’ve been building companies for over 20 years.
Let's take brand for an example. Especially in Germany,
sometimes we don't put too much attention on the brand and say
“It’s first about technology, let’s launch. It's an okay name.”
But branding is quite important. And what we
as Freigeist do is we work with you on the brand.
For example, when Kraftblock came to us,
the name was Nebuma, and it was not fitting their mission.
Or xentral was called Wawision before, and what we do is we
bring our experience to the teams and think about what's our vision,
what we want to achieve. And we need a brand that fits
to this mission that can deliver the values, the product for a
long term. And you have to think about basically the IPO,
so the initial public offering. What's a brand that's so strong that
can take you through the IPO?
And of course, many of our founders have worked for quite some
time with an existing brand. And for them
it's a very tough procedure to change the brand, but sometimes we
also met founders with a great brand, so we keep the brand.
But sometimes we have to go through that painful,
painful process and redefine the brand because in the long term it's
super important. Besides the brand, the storytelling is super important.
So what do you stand for? The “Why”. Why are you building
that product and when, for example, you take that poster child Tesla.
They tell the story that it's super important to change transportation,
to go to renewable energy. And it's not only the product but
also the story. Or take Peloton: A quite trivial product.
It's basically a bike with an iPad, but they tell a great story.
They say “We are a community you have to join”,
and that's also important because people want to buy into vision.
It's also important for your team. Why are we building that?
What's our mission? So storytelling, we believe, is critical,
and we support the teams to to tell their story,
to find their story for the customers, for possible new investors,
but also for their teams.
But of course,
it's not only about the brand and storytelling,
but also a superior product, and that's my role of the team
to create a product that's truly outstanding. When you take a digital product,
for example, it's about also the tiniest details.
There's micro interactions. How do they feel? Is every icon really designed
in a way that it makes fun that it's that
you feel the love that has went into the product.
Of course, we also have a lot of physical products,
and we try to work with the teams on.
How can we do it in a in a simpler,
better way so that people understand it right away. The air up bottle,
for example: It has to be very convenient and very easy and
basically fault-tolerant and nobody can can make mistakes,
which is not easy. And that's where we work with
the teams very intensively to have this product that
the customers will love and to guide them through the
process to develop this eager to go the extra mile in
delivering a truly outstanding product experience.
I had the pleasure to work
with Christian Reber, for example, on Wunderlist quite some
years ago now. But the learnings and the idea about building a
task manager, which is not a too complicated product,
just in a better way that, for example,
the field where you put in the task is already in place.
So you just have to put in the cursor and start typing,
using hot keys, using cloud synchronization and collaboration.
And that makes a big difference,
even in a rather simple product like a product manager and
together with Christian as the CEO and founder,
we managed to make it the biggest task manager in the world.
And this kind of DNA, so how you can
deliver a better experience that’s what we want to give to our
founders today and work with them on this special
deep thinking, like how you can make things more simple,
more outstanding, more enjoyable for your customer.
At Freigest, we back the most ambitious founders out of Europe.
It's truly about to want to change the world,
and most often our founders utilize some of the upcoming technologies.
It's like 3D printing, Blockchain, AI, Quantum Computing and so on.
So the toolbox of the future. And we like to back these
founders that have a very big ambition, a risky path in front
of them. But if it works out, if they can deliver their vision,
then it truly has an impact on our planet and can become
an international champion. These are the kind of startups were looking for,
and we are ready to back them.