Winstate

Why did you start your start-up, which problem do you address and how do you solve it?

Many companies want to find new customers, talk to partners and find high quality applicants. All these target groups can be found in the social media. But companies are failing to use their most valuable capital when it comes to promoting their business: Their own employees.

We are building a SaaS platform to enable employee advocacy by turning regular employees into active brand advocates.

Employees can create and share company approved content on their own social media networks with just one click - and be rewarded and valued for it.

How did you come up with the idea to start your start-up?

While working in different companies, we realized how difficult it is to find and share company approved content. We just could not understand it: Why do marketing departments create all these fancy pictures, stories and videos, but there is no easy solution for employees to use these resources?

What was the most valuable advice someone gave you during your start-up phase?

The most valuable advice was to test our hypotheses. It's perfectly okay to turn around and watch your hypotheses fail. The important thing is to come to a firm conclusion in the end. In the beginning we also went through several pivots until we finally came up with a product that resonates with the people we're talking to.

It can be tempting to come to a conclusion without trying it out - but even the most obvious things can be different if you take the time to listen to your clients and test your hypotheses.

What have you learned so far?

When you build a start-up, you have to act quickly - but sometimes you have to be patient. For example, after we shipped our pitch deck, we changed things around and shipped it again - and then again and again. We were too impatient. You have to keep that in mind: Don't rush things.

Where did you meet as a team?

Ben and Thomas met many years ago while working at Volkswagen Group - Lukas and Thomas have known each other for more than 15 years. We fit together pretty well: Thomas comes up with all these crazy ideas, Ben is a master at making it look good, and Lukas turns it all into brilliant code.

Do you still have a social life despite starting up?

We love what we do and have built our company on friendship. So social life and working life go well together.

If you could start all over again, would you do it the same way?

Probably not. By talking to so many different people we have learned so much - if we had had this knowledge earlier, we would have done some things differently.

For example, we would have put more emphasis on building our network. We knew it was important, just not so important. There are always new things to learn. But if you have everything available from scratch, where would the fun be?

Where do you see yourself in three years?

Of course we want to grow, move to a bigger office, hire more people and have a good time. Since we are independent of industry and markets, we can expand into many different countries. In three years we want to have a stable base in Europe so that we can tackle other continents.

Do you have an office cat/dog/turtle...?

Not yet, but we would like to have bunnies. Ben has two at home. If you've had a bad day, you can just pick them up and cuddle.

If an investor gave you $250,000, what would you do with that money?

We would definitely hire more technicians and spend some of it on paid ads. We are currently expanding our MVP - but after that we want to scale up quickly. There is a huge potential in additional markets that are moving forward. Our SaaS solution will come with a self-service online checkout, so it's really just a matter of reaching our target audience and adding essential functionality.