Johannes Jäschke is a pioneer in the intersection of technology and mental health. From a college seminar to the forefront of digital well-being, Johannes developed Hypnu, a hypnosis app that gained significant traction during the pandemic. His innovative approach offered an alternative to traditional methods, addressing insomnia and anxiety without side effects.
After successfully exiting Hypnu, Johannes continues to inspire with his journey through the competitive startup world, exploring how he transformed an academic idea into a practical tool that changed lives. We also examine the nuanced differences between hypnosis and meditation, shedding light on how Hypnu distinguishes itself in the crowded digital wellness market.
Johannes shares invaluable advice for aspiring non-technical founders, drawing from his personal experiences and the challenges he overcame to create a successful mental health solution. Join us for an insightful discussion that reveals the intricacies of entrepreneurship and the impact of technology on mental health.
00:00 – Arvid (Host)
Hey, it’s Arvid, and this is the Bootstrap Founder. Today I’m talking to Johannes Jeschke, a software founder who found success comparatively early in life and is sharing all the ups and downs with me and you right here. We talk about staying in your niche, finding a buyer for your business and how to broaden your own horizon in your niche, finding a buyer for your business and how to broaden your own horizon. This episode is sponsored by Paddlecom, my personal payment provider of choice. If you run a SaaS and you don’t want to deal with all the intricacies of sales tax and having to integrate every single money-related thing yourself, I can really recommend checking out Paddle. And now here’s Johannes. Johannes, welcome to the show. You bootstrapped a business and sold it for a lot of money. That is amazing. You did it in your mid-20s that’s even more amazing. Tell me everything about your bootstrapping journey.
00:54 – Johannes (Guest)
Yeah, thanks for having me first of all. And I started Hübnu, I think like four years ago. I was straight out of college and I came was straight out of college and I came to the idea basically by accident, because I was on a seminar on the NLP seminar I don’t know if you know about it this is kind of fast psychology thing and in the evening they invited a hypnotist just for fun, so that we can experience a hypnosis show. And back then I didn’t believe in hypnosis. Oh, I should say that Hypnu, my startup, is actually a hypnosis mobile app, so we help people to fall asleep and reduce anxiety by using self-guided hypnosis sessions from various experts around the world. And yeah, that’s why I’m talking about the hypnosis stuff right now. And yeah, I didn’t believe in hypnotism back then, or I had like no clue about it, um, but I was open to it. I was like, okay, if they offer it, then let’s, uh, let’s just go on stage and test that out. And then I went up there and it was a quite amazing experience. It was an awesome feeling. And on my way back from the seminar to the hotel I was like, okay, very interesting, let’s dig deeper into that, because, yeah, I was just curious.
02:18
And then I found out that hypnosis itself has a very bad reputation. I mean, people think of hypnosis like it’s magic, or in the US people think it’s kind of related to voodoo and that stuff. And then I was like, hmm, interesting, it was presented to me in a very scientific way. I know how it works. I know there are like lots of studies, but the public perception somehow is different. So, okay, then I dropped the topic. And then a couple months later my girlfriend had sleeping issues. She couldn’t fall asleep because of an upcoming exam and her father, who by accident is a psychotherapist and also hypnotist, was like okay, I’m going to record something for you, maybe you can fall asleep then. And it worked. And then I was like, okay, now we got two topics combined, let’s, let’s do something about it.
03:08 – Arvid (Host)
I love how this is just like out of out of nowhere, right, Like that. That’s like one of these things that just happened. And then you, you combine your existing skillset and all, of all of a sudden, you got a business. That is really cool.
03:20 – Johannes (Guest)
Exactly, it wasn’t planned at all. It was just like I mean, I actually wanted to start a seminar business back then and then, like this thing came up and then I switched like to the new thing because I was just seeing like 30% of all people have problems with falling asleep. So yeah, it’s a huge market.
03:38 – Arvid (Host)
And it’s a growing market too, right, like I’m just thinking about meditation and like guided meditation apps, that kind of stuff. They’re becoming quite popular. People are taking care of their mental health, which is a wonderful thing. How was it competing with these gigantic players in the field? Or is hypnosis such a niche within the niche that you didn’t have to compete with them? How did that go?
03:59 – Johannes (Guest)
exactly. It was a worry like from day one, um, that we have those big players in the market who we are going to compete with. But then we found out that hypnosis attracts kind of a different person than meditation. So although we are solving the same problem, we’re solving it for a different subgroup of people, so to say. And the hypnosis people are more like do something for me, like fix my brain from the outside, and the meditation persons are more like I want to learn how to do it by myself oh okay.
04:34
So it’s more like a medical act of healing than this journey of self-discovery, exactly exactly that often changes, but in the, in beginning, it’s this fix me. You know this attitude.
04:49 – Arvid (Host)
Well hey, if people pay you money to fix them, that usually is a good business. Yeah, it is.
04:54 – Johannes (Guest)
And from a user’s perspective, it’s very attractive to find out Because, honestly, hypnosis does not work in 100% of cases. I would say it’s somewhere between 50 and 70%, but it depends. But the good thing is there are no side effects and you’ll find out in like five minutes. And if you look at what alternatives we have, if we have anxiety issues or sleep issues, I mean, we have to take some pills or something and they have severe side effects, they are expensive and they probably make you addicted when they work.
05:29 – Arvid (Host)
Yeah, can you even get addicted to hypnosis. Did this ever happen? I’ve never heard of this.
05:34 – Johannes (Guest)
I mean, maybe you can, but I mean, that sounds like a bench case.
05:37 – Arvid (Host)
Right, that sounds like a very rare occurrence. But yeah, that’s great and you’re right, I guess, like just using the app, in that sense you install it, you try it for a couple minutes and if it works, it works, and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. I guess that’s a very easy way to check. How did you turn this into a business? Because I think there’s a difference between knowing that something might work and then actually making it work. So what were the steps that you took there?
06:05 – Johannes (Guest)
First of all, we did a landing page test, or a fake door test, or whatever you want to call it. I mean, we just actually I did it myself. Um, I mean, I don’t have design skills so it looked pretty shitty, but it worked. I like designed an app how I imagine it to look and then I think, um, I’ve stolen some copies from competitors and I’m I mean that’s a bad practice, but I did it and it worked. And to build up a landing page, and then I sent meta traffic on the site and we had conversion rates and conversion in this term means people tried to sign up to get into the app of between 40 and 60% and yeah, which was super, super good, and because the app wasn’t available back then, we also had people who went into the imprint and tried to send emails to me and we’re like, man, your link is not working and I’m like, okay, now that’s a nice indicator of demand. I like that.
07:00 – Arvid (Host)
It’s about time you build something dude yeah right, and that’s what we did.
07:05 – Johannes (Guest)
Then, 30 days later, the app was released onto the App Store. It’s about time you build something, dude. Yeah right, that’s what that means, and that’s what we did. Then, 30 days later, the app was released onto the App Store. We built it with the help of a freelancer and a friend of mine, so we’ve been pretty quickly. As I said, my girlfriend’s dad had some hypnosis recordings so we could put them on the app, which gave us like a head start, and then we implemented basic subscriptions, like a yearly and a monthly one, and then we were in business and had the first sales pretty easily. I mean, traffic came through meta for a waiting list and then through the app stores that is amazing, that is wonderful.
07:41 – Arvid (Host)
And the fact that you already have content, I think that is a I mean, that’s just smart, like again intersecting what you already have with where you want to go, having those recordings already. I think that there probably may have been a lot of people who would want to build something like this, but they don’t have anybody who could create content that actually works. So, having access to this, how did you broaden that? Like, how did you find more people, more qualified experts to get these recordings from?
08:06 – Johannes (Guest)
In the beginning, I did a huge mistake, which was I tried to do it myself by learning hypnosis and try to record it myself. You know, I had this belief that I had to do everything myself in order to learn it, and this was super slow. The hypnosis sessions were not good. I mean, okay, some people told me, I have a voice where you can fall asleep to very easily, and in that context I took it as a compliment. But other than that, it was a quite slow approach.
08:38
And then we switched to reaching out to hypnotists around the world directly via cold outreach emails and we had a great mission and that was really helpful because we were like okay, we know hypnosis has a bad reputation and we want to turn it into a more evidence-based, esoteric-free kind of perception. Do you want to help? And you could help with providing us hypnosis sessions and you will also get an additional benefit, which is you get x percent of the streaming income that you generate on spotify and so you know. So we really try to make it a win-win-win situation for every party, and that worked phenomenally, so that we actually had to sort out most of the people to really like get to the best sessions out there and then I realized, okay, having spending like one hour on a call versus spending one hour on recording a hypnosis session, first one gives me 22,. Like one hypnotist had like 50 sessions. That’s the way to go.
09:42 – Arvid (Host)
Yeah, that is the only way to scale it too right, like to actually get the people who do the job well and pay them for it in whatever way. And I just focus on you actually building the business instead of hypnotizing people, which is pretty funny to think about that that is what you try to do for your business to become a hypnotist it’s. I mean, it could work right If that all of a sudden turned out to be the best way to do it, but these people are already out there and you just need to find them. One question, though like we’re both Germans and I would assume you started in the German market with your girlfriend’s father being also German how did the internationalization of this happen? Did you already try to go broad in the beginning, or did you kind of niche first? Already try to go broad in the beginning, or did you kind of niche first?
10:24 – Johannes (Guest)
No, I wanted to go to North America from the beginning because I Usually at the university, where I’ve studied international management before, it was a thing to just copy US businesses, which is, from a business perspective, it works, but it’s not the way I go about building businesses. I don’t like this approach. When it was clear that I had my own idea and I didn’t copy someone from the US, I wanted to go to the US to be the guy from the university who does it the right way. So that was clear from the beginning and that’s why we also started outreach with American hypnotists and then with Canadian ones, and that’s how we built the business there. And then the traffic also came through the app stores over there and it worked out pretty quickly. I think a couple of months after launching we already had like a 50-50 share of US and German revenues, and then US, of course, grew even more.
11:28 – Arvid (Host)
Did you also go into other countries, other locations than like English and?
11:31 – Johannes (Guest)
German. No, we didn’t do that because we didn’t saw a need for that, and with hypnosis it’s also kind of a cultural thing. I don’t even know, to be honest, if Asian regions have something like that, and yeah, that’s very interesting.
11:49 – Arvid (Host)
I don’t know either, but I’m also not an expert. I’m just it’s funny because with my business I have a similar approach. I allow English speaking stuff and maybe some German speaking stuff, but I don’t have French podcasts or French whatever on my platform because I don’t speak those languages. I couldn’t do quality control. That was my reason, right? I want to be able to listen to this, understand it and have a sense of if it’s good or not. And how could I do this in a language I don’t speak? So it makes perfect sense. And then, obviously, cultural differences yeah, I wouldn’t even have thought of that. That’s a good point, because I think you’re absolutely right.
12:21
Hypnosis and even meditation, to me personally, all this mental health stuff I always thought was wishy-washy, it was kind of esoteric, just if you have to believe in it. How can it be true kind of stuff, right? And I know that there is quite literally from my own experience over the last couple of years, that there is a benefit to embracing your own mental state and maybe the spirituality beneath it, or maybe just the ability to calm yourself and get into a state that normally would not be accessible to you. And if hypnosis can do this. That is wonderful. If guided meditation can do this, that is wonderful. If just non-guided, just random meditation can do this. All of this is great, but I had to jump over this hoop of esoterics or voodoo or whatever you want to call it. I love that. You made it scientific, and what I find most impressive is that you reached out to experts telling them help us make this more scientific. I think that must be something that every single hypnotist has to struggle with, right.
13:24 – Johannes (Guest)
Definitely, definitely. And I think it’s one of the biggest issue with many things that are actually quite helpful, especially for the mental health topics, because I mean, I love those esoteric people for like using it and embracing it, but I think the way they embrace it is not suitable for the masses, for the public, because if I have to believe in something so that it works, as you said, then it’s just difficult. You know, I think maybe, but maybe it’s a cultural thing for us, like Western people, that if there’s not a study, but maybe it’s a cultural thing for us, like western people, that if there’s not a study, then it’s probably not real or something.
14:00 – Arvid (Host)
I don’t know, but more academics thing probably right, like the the german engineer stereotype kind of thing as well. But I think that people are anxious about embracing things about themselves that they don’t know about right, like they are anxious to opening up the door to the inner deep psyche and allowing this to come out. So they would rather say I don’t believe in this stuff, let’s just keep suffering through our life indefinitely, and I think people also fear to become someone very different.
14:33 – Johannes (Guest)
You know, when you look at the very spiritual teachers, you know I wanted to get the benefit of like calming down, but I don’t want to spend my rest of my life in a rainforest sitting on a stone meditating, you know?
14:46 – Arvid (Host)
yeah well, I I love that you took this approach generally. I think that made it very appealing to to people who just needed their problem fixed right. And so when did you start the business like? How long did it take you to go from like first idea to to exit?
15:01 – Johannes (Guest)
um, I started it right before covid hit. Um, I don’t know the year exactly, but it was a very I mean, for us it was a very good thing because, of course, um, at the time of covid, more people had anxiety problems and so on and I mean we could help a lot, um, but it also meant our business was like exploding overnight. So it was a good time to start, and then I sold it. I mean, the beginning of the sales process was like in the middle of this year, so I think it was between three and four years, but it felt a lot shorter than that. Honestly, when I, when I started, I was like the average startup takes five years to sell and I’m like, oh, I want to do it in one year. And now, like, looking back, it’s like it felt like nothing.
15:52 – Arvid (Host)
So, yeah, one year is. But hey, if you have the right growth numbers and you have the right buyer, it might be right. You never know. So I know you sold to another hypnosis company from Canada that’s where I live and how did that go? How did they reach out? How did you negotiate? What was that process like for you?
16:17 – Johannes (Guest)
shout how did you negotiate? What was that process like for you? So the most difficult part of the whole journey was taking the decision to actually sell it, because I had the idea of selling it over like a long time. I even thought about it in the beginning, but it felt like miles away and I also didn’t like the feeling of, okay, what comes after that? If my baby is gone, then what am I going to do next? So reaching that decision was the hardest thing.
16:45
But once I said, okay, I’m going to do it, then selling it was quite straightforward, even super easy. I mean, I have kind of a background in marketing and sales. So I have to say selling my own company is like exactly like every other sales process out there and it’s I mean it’s more emotional that that should be said, because I’m really attached to what I’ve built over the last years. And if the buyer starts to negotiate, then it’s like a lot of money that goes like up and down on a daily basis based on what he’s finding, on the due diligence and I mean not that he’s finding a lot of things, but everyone is negotiating. It’s an emotional roller coaster, but from the process I think I bought an online course from.
17:30
They got acquired, but they had an online course on how to sell it, on how to sell your business.
17:36
And then I just did exactly what they said in an online course on how to sell it, on how to sell your business.
17:37
And then I just did exactly what they said in the online course and I was like, okay, um, like prepare your numbers, write down the document of, um, the things of value in your company and all of that stuff. And then I’ve had like a two line email which I’ve sent to basically everyone who could be interested in selling the business. Oh yeah, before that I made a list on, like Apple Notes on my note phone, like who could be interested, and of course it’s all of the competitors, direct or indirect, and then also the people who are on the platform already, like the hypnotists, and that’s how I then got in contact with the buyer later on and I actually worked with him almost from day one. Back then I’ve never even imagined that he could be the one who buys it later. So this is a huge learning here Everyone can be the buyer, because a friend of mine also had an exit and it was exactly the same story Could be.
18:38 – Arvid (Host)
I mean, it’s probably one of the strongest relationships that you have with people in the industry is with early customers, particularly early customers that have seen you go through all the motions and build this bigger and bigger and bigger thing and still stay in contact with them. There’s probably no stronger bond that you can possibly have than that. So I’ve heard this a couple of times that it’s like the shadow customer that turns out to be the acquirer in the future, and that’s great because you were just honest with them every step along the way. They’ve built this trust-based foundation over many, many years. Often, man, that sounds wonderful, and you already talked about the emotional rollercoaster, because I think that’s something that too often happens to people that know that it’s going to happen, yet they’re not prepared for it. Did you prepare for losing your baby? Like you’re giving away your child? Does it still hurt? Like how does it feel?
19:31 – Johannes (Guest)
I didn’t prepare, although I heard a podcast about that. I don’t know why I didn’t prepare, because in the process, this was like I couldn’t believe it that this is actually happening right now. And when it happened, like when we’ve signed a deal, oh, that day was actually. That was a really. I was really sad. I was almost crying that day, like literally almost crying, and that felt very emotional. And I know I sat down in a cafe, bought like my favorite latte and all of that stuff and then sign it in the sun Because maybe it’s going to be an important, you know day later, later on. So I wanted to celebrate it, but it was like really deep and then it was like it was gone. You know, then somehow my, my mind separated this and it’s like, okay, now it’s gone, what next? And then I, I actually fell into a hole, not on a bad way, not like that I feel depressed, but more like okay, um, what now? What, what next? And there was a void which, yeah, I needed to fill.
20:36
It was a process, but the worst parts I would say were like the diligence part, or no, it’s not even the diligence, but talking the first time to the buyer and then he asked all the questions and I exactly knew where I like fucked up in the last years and then you know, the fear of him discovering that was huge. But actually then talking to him wasn’t that problem. I mean I’ve been pretty transparent and I think you have to be, because it comes out anyway and he reacted. I mean it wasn’t kind of a big deal to him. It was a way bigger deal for me.
21:12 – Arvid (Host)
That’s an interesting observation. I think you’re right that the due diligence stage is that point in time where you really look into your business. They look into your business. You’re still running it. At the same time, too, right, you’re still trying to grow it as much as you can to increase its value, and all of that. You look at everything you are doing and you’ve ever done and you’re planning to do with some extra effort, and that highlights the good stuff, obviously, but it also highlights all the stuff that you’ve tried to forget over the last couple of years?
21:39 – Johannes (Guest)
Yeah, exactly. And then it comes up again.
21:41 – Arvid (Host)
Yeah, comes up again because it has to and you have to deal with it. You have to either explain it or fix it or just admit it to yourself and then to others. It’s a very emotionally upheaving phase in your business and you’re lucky in that way. You actually went through with the deal. Imagine now doing this, doing due diligence, and then the deal falls through. And then you have to keep running your business and you do it again because you found another potential buyer and it falls through. And then you have to keep running your business and you do it again because you found another potential buyer and it falls through again. Like a lot of people go through this cycle of having your innards ripped out, looked at and then back together and then you keep running the business right. So that’s yeah. It’s important to understand that the due diligence phase is quite stressful.
22:24 – Johannes (Guest)
Yeah, it’s crazy. I mean not by the workload but by the psychology that’s attached to it. You know it’s not really a lot of work. Let’s be honest here. I mean if you’ve run the business reasonably over the last years, then it shouldn’t stress you out.
22:41 – Arvid (Host)
But hey, there’s always something right, like with this business. There’s always a fire burning somewhere. Well, I mean for you. At least you had a hypnosis app to use. I guess that’s great. Did you ever? Did you use your product yourself?
22:53 – Johannes (Guest)
Yeah, of course, I really believe in like using what you’re building when you’re like kind of at least part of the target group. So I did that and it was always nice to like listen to what I’ve built and all of that stuff.
23:06 – Arvid (Host)
Yeah, I like that, to listen to what I’ve built and all of that stuff. Yeah, I like that, and it’s also the nice promise that you can make to yourself to be able to spot these things along the way in your life. Like these things you need things you might find useful and then turn them into something bigger. I like what you did with this. As an entrepreneur, I think that’s our magic power, it’s our superpower is to see a problem, see a challenge, and then turn it into a business that actually, hopefully, is profitable and can be sold, can be acquired by somebody. Knowing that, you’ve been entrepreneurial from an early age and I’ve been like this too. I think we both started probably around the same time, like very early teens. Are you going to try to be a serial entrepreneur? Where do you want to take your entrepreneurial journey from? Here, because you’re comparatively young, to a lot of founders, right, so you have a lot of time. So what’s that journey looking like for you? What do you plan?
23:59 – Johannes (Guest)
I definitely want to continue like I worked over the past couple of years because I don’t know, but I’ve heard this from a lot of other founders Once you’re like into founding companies and you know once it worked for the first time, even if it’s only a bit, then you kind of maybe you get addicted.
24:16 – Arvid (Host)
I don’t know, but it’s it’s.
24:17 – Johannes (Guest)
It’s so much better than everything else I’ve done so, um, but, but I’m young.
24:24
There might be something else that comes up where I said, okay, that’s even better, let’s see.
24:30
But right now I haven’t found anything, so I’m going to continue with founding.
24:36
One thing I’m doing is building a mentorship program where I want to teach founders who have a non-technical background to start with first tech venture, give them feedback, because I really believe, although I can’t make anyone more successful, I can help them to avoid the pitfalls, and especially with tech, when you build your first tech product, there’s so much you can fuck up if you have no clue about this and, let’s be honest, most agencies will just rip you off if you have the money or techies often fail to find the easiest solution.
25:11
They build great products, which is nice, but at a very early stage, easy solutions is way more useful, and I mean those are just like a couple of things and I really believe that I can help with my experience to avoid some pitfalls. I’m working on having a little mentorship program here and then, of course, I want to practice what I preach. So I want to do everything that I teach in the program and build another venture like a case study venture on top of the methodology, but I have no idea about what, so let’s see what comes.
25:47 – Arvid (Host)
Hey, you have time, and that’s the thing in entrepreneurship up with the methodology, but I have no idea about what, so let’s see what comes. Hey, you have time, and that’s the thing like in entrepreneurship the what usually appears at some point, right, like you will see it when it’s there. You don’t know what it is, but if we all knew what it was going to be the thing that we’re building, then it would be risk-free and we would be able to plan every single step along the way. That’s just not how it is. I love the mentorship approach because mentorship will also allow you to look into other people’s minds, right, you’re going to have your mentees and their perception of reality, and maybe just even from seeing how yours slightly misaligns with theirs or does align with theirs will give you more clues as to what should be done and what can be done.
26:25 – Johannes (Guest)
Yeah, this is super helpful. I mean, I already have some mentees and I’m talking with them like every week and it’s so helpful just to see. You know, three weeks ago I had someone and I helped him to build a B2B sales funnel and he was like, man, I’m losing so many customers. I don’t think that works. And I’m like, okay, let’s go through your numbers. And then so many customers I don’t think that works. I’m like, okay, let’s go through your numbers. And then he had like a closing rate so the percentage of people that actually sign after they’ve been on a call of like 60 to 70 percent. And he was like, oh, I’m losing for like 30 to 40 percent of the people.
27:03 – Arvid (Host)
I’m like man you are so lucky.
27:06 – Johannes (Guest)
Yeah, this is such a crazy good closing rate. Like your focus is completely off.
27:11 – Arvid (Host)
Keep doing whatever you’re doing and and you know that was so insightful to, to, to, to see that, and yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s the knowledge, and I’m a I’m an engineer myself, Like I don’t have a background in marketing, Don’t have a background in sales. So to me, I mean, I probably also would feel that anything in terms of conversion rates above 20% is great. But that’s just my experience as a founder in the past. Right, having gone through all of this and a closing rate of 60% man, I would like that, please. Right, how does he do it?
27:41
But yeah, getting the outside perspective, that is the valuable part of a mentorship, and I’ve been a mentor to many people on a regular basis for years now too, and sometimes just being able to speak about a thing, just have a chat and to have me poke tiny little holes in the argument, that often either strengthens the thing that they’re doing or makes them think about other things that they should or could be doing at that point. So mentorship is a wonderful way of sharing your knowledge. I love this. Same thing I did After I sold. I went into writing, I went into teaching, I went to Twitter and all of that and started podcasting and whatnot. To see you actually go and help people in their individual moments of need is a wonderful thing. I really like this. It’s awesome, so you’re mentoring people. Have you already started a new business, though, or are you still waiting for that portfolio thing?
28:30 – Johannes (Guest)
Yeah, I mean, next to the mentoring, I jumped into biotech. I had a chance to lead a biotech company. It’s not a startup anymore, it’s a skate up. I mean we have around 100 people on our team and we had again a technical founder, a doctor, who needed some business assistant, and so I had a chance to look at this business and help him outbuild structures and all of that stuff, which was quite cool and interesting.
28:59
But one very important thing with biotech and with startups in general is the speed to failure, because I believe that I can’t predict the future and I know that one out of 10 businesses is going to work and of course every entrepreneur thinks he’s like the one out of 10. And I get that. But I mean I’ve built four businesses. Two of them failed, so I know both sides somehow and I can definitely say one out of 10. Yeah, realistic. So it’s a numbers game and the only thing I can do to be successful playing that game is to fail fast, because I have to fail nine times to find one right thing. But it’s not normally distributed, so maybe it’s also 20 or 30 failures and if I joined a game of biotech which is very slow, then failing for like 10 times can take up to 20, 30 years, and I like to be successful when I’m young, so this is not a suitable strategy to reach my goal.
30:04 – Arvid (Host)
So that’s a great perspective. I think that’s a lot of founders do this by doing a lot of things in parallel, like the many small bets. Approach right, where you have all these little things and you see which one is promising, you call the rest and you focus on that one, which is probably not going to happen in biotech, particularly not as an employee. Right, like if you go into a company as an employee or a after the fact founder, people expect commitment for many years and you only have so many, many years like segments of your life. So that’s a very smart approach. I like this. I like this. You could easily get lost for the next 10, 20 years in one industry and the whole industry might be a wrong bet.
30:42 – Johannes (Guest)
Yep, right, and then that’s super risky. I mean, maybe I’m always wondering because I’m like so risk averse, I don’t like risk at all. So what am I doing in a startup world? But I try to embrace that risk aversiveness and try to really apply that to the startup game. And just for me it’s just a game of minimizing risks and it seems, yeah, it could be a good approach. But yeah, so biotech is super interesting, love it. But well, I already made up my mind. It’s not what I’m going to do in the future. So let’s see what comes around next year.
31:18 – Arvid (Host)
Yep, I think that’s a wonderfully optimistic perspective, right, because there’s always something that needs to be done, and you’re going in there with the open mind of somebody who has done stuff before and is now just looking for the opportunity.
31:31 – Johannes (Guest)
Yeah, exactly. I mean, there are so many problems out there and as long as there are problems, there are potential solutions, and solutions are businesses.
31:40 – Arvid (Host)
Is there any particular interest outside of biotech or any kind of technology that you’re really excited about right now?
31:45 – Johannes (Guest)
Well, I’m not technology focused, I’m more like problem focused, um, and to me it just has to be like a real problem. Because when I look at um the german version of shark tank, for instance, which is called hülle der löwen, like cave of the lions it’s so um, it really, it’s it annoying and I really get angry when I see how much bullshit is presented in there Like it’s like ridiculous. I mean we have so many problems that are worth solving and you know that’s what I care most about. It’s a problem that’s actually worth solving. Society gets better. It’s not like the next luxurious dog food or something. I mean it’s okay, no offense here, but it’s not like the next luxurious dog food or something. I mean it’s it’s okay, uh, no offense here, but it’s not the right thing for me. And if it’s then also software related, scalable and I can play in my my strength of like marketing and sales, then even better in germany.
32:41 – Arvid (Host)
You also have to fight the the whole rocket internetization of startups, right. It’s kind of what you mentioned earlier with the university days where everything needs to be a clone of the American thing and then it grows in the local market. I think it’s a great approach if you have the infrastructure for this and if that is what you do, that’s great, but it’s by far not the only way to build a business right. So to not look for something to also do like somebody else, but to actually look at the actual existing challenges in the market, in many markets, in whatever kind of market you might be looking at, that’s the right approach. I really like this, and the focus on software also cool. What do you think of AI as a thing that is kind of impacting everything right now? Is that going to impact your journey as well? What do you think?
33:30 – Johannes (Guest)
I mean I’m a Chachapiti power user, so there we have it. But I think a lot of the stuff is like overhyped. Of course I mean it’s useful, but I mean this is just. I don’t think I can add value to the conversation here because it’s like, of course it’s useful, but I think it’s used as a buzzword, especially when you try to get capital way too often, and having AI is not a USP, I would say it’s like not having AI is like the special thing at the moment, you know. But I’m not excited about this as a new technology Because you know, know you can be like a technology founder or a market founder, and I’m really not into the technology side. I just look at problems, opportunities, and if ai is a tool for that, nice.
34:18 – Arvid (Host)
If not, then I don’t care that’s really refreshing, because I’m more on the technology side of things, which you probably could figure out by my questions that I’m asking you, but it is nice to hear that this may not be as important as I think it is.
34:30 – Johannes (Guest)
That’s really cool. I might be wrong as well.
34:33 – Arvid (Host)
We both might be, who knows?
34:35 – Johannes (Guest)
That’s why I didn’t see it in two years.
34:37 – Arvid (Host)
Yeah, but I like to see the market focused, the priority of the market and the challenge, the problem focus, because you can apply so many technologies to a problem that you find out there. You could even just apply people as a technology to the problem and then you have a service business right. So it’s nice to see you focusing not on tech, which is something I like to do, but to focus on where this goes and what it should be helping people with. That’s really cool. Well, if people want to follow you on this journey of exploring what comes next and what the next big business that you hopefully sell for millions is going to be, where should they go? Where should they follow you?
35:18 – Johannes (Guest)
Definitely LinkedIn. This is the platform where I’m most active at. Just add me on LinkedIn. I will post updates, website links and all of that stuff in there. And the easiest thing is just reach out to me. I answer all of my messages. It may take some time, but I answer every one of them.
35:39 – Arvid (Host)
I mean you’re busy, right, like? I have the same problem, like DMs on Twitter, dms on LinkedIn. That’s just sometimes it takes me a couple of weeks to reply, but I’ll be there at some point. Yeah, I’m going to put the links in the show notes. Man Johannes, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your journey. It’s really, really cool to see what you’ve been doing, what you are doing and where this is going. All of this seems very well-planned and hopefully fruitful in the future. It’s been really cool to chat with you. Thanks so much for sharing your journey.
36:09 – Johannes (Guest)
Yeah, thanks for having me, it was a pleasure.
36:12 – Arvid (Host)
And that’s it for today. Thank you for listening to the Boots of Founder. You can find me on Twitter at arvidkahl A-R-V-I-D-K-A-H-L. You find my books on my Twitter course there too. And if you want to support me on this show, tell everyone you know about PodScanfm and leave a rating and a review for this podcast by going to ratethispodcastcom slash. Founder, it makes a massive difference if you show up there, because then the podcast will show up in other people’s feeds and that will truly help the show. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful day and bye-bye.
