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Serial Entrepreneur Nacho Gonzalez Barros sharing his insights from Infojobs, Mailtrack & many more

In this edition, Podcast #32, Jordi Romero talk to Nacho Gonzalez Barros, who is typically introduced as serial entrepreneur, together with Juan Rodriguez, CEO at Camaloon and César Migueláñez, Product Director at Factorial. Nacho will share his story and experiences of launching and growing different businesses with us. Listen to our podcast on Youtube, iTunes or iVoox.

Nacho, what is your story?

I started in 1995 with one of the first ISP in Spain, called Intercom. I was 19 at that time and it was there that I saw how to start something. I got hooked and dropped out of my telecommunication studies. During this time at Intercom I was also very involved in the hiring process and really loved the part of finding talent. In this time about 100 selection processes went through me at the Intercom Group. This is where in 1997 I saw the opportunity to create Infojobs. We started with a technical co-founder and a business founder.

Actually we have had Albert Feliu and Javier Llorente as guests on our podcast as well!

Ah nice! Yeah, we’re all from the same family.

We spent a lot of years creating a company. Nowadays there is a lot of literature, but when we started out we had to learn as we went along. Infojobs went really well but that was just the start for me. When we sold Infojobs, I saw a new opportunity, the partners at Intercom trusted me and I set out to create Neurona, something like the Spanish LinkedIn, which I later sold to Xing, the German LinkedIn. Next I worked on Niumba, a web of apartments which was sold to Tripadivsor.

These three were the positive experiences but I have created a lot of failures.

There was Lincara — a social media platform focussed solely on the Spanish market. It was a disaster. Tuenti came along and we were not the best at executing. I was unfocused. We copied Friendster’s model but then Facebook came a long. Take a look at myspace and what happened when Facebook came along.

When you start, while trying the MVP, you can do other things but once you have traction you have to be all in, completely focused on the business.

Another example was Amigosfree, free dating site like plenty of fish. It’s the startup that had the most traction but we were missing a full time CEO. Dating creates recurrency, it’s a very attractive sector. And being free when Match and Meetic were paid was also a great advantage but here again the execution failed, I was doing too many things at the same time.

Now I am working on Mailtrack and it’s going very well — it’s a plugin for Gmail that adds a double check when your email has been read in Gmail. When somebody opens your email you are notified that the email has been read. We have 50 thousand customers with recurrent payments and are among the 100 extensions on the Chrome Appstore.

You’ve been working on Mailtrack for 5 years now. How does a product like yours evolve?

You put a pixel in the body of the email but technologically it’s incredibly complicated to create a product inside one of Google’s Apps. It seems really simple but technologically there is a lot of complexity behind it.

When you send an email with Mailtrack you add the statement ‘Sent with Mailtrack’ to the email. What part of growth comes from this virality?

About 45% of our growth is thanks to this virality.

Word of mouth is also important for us. There is a Wow effect upon seeing Mailtrack at work. Even people who are really into technology are surprised by this. It’s a very precise functionality nobody had worked on before.

In your past experiences there are either exits or companies that are closing. Mailtrack is going well but you haven’t sold yet. What is your plan?

The natural evolution is selling the company but we are not actively looking to sell, we are creating revenue. We have 2 million users and recurrent revenue — the most natural is that there is a CRM company in the US who sees this as a feature to their product. Not only valued by revenue and EBITDA but by the potential.

I don’t think of my company as my baby, I am a bit addicted to change.

Yes, so it seems. It seems like every 4 or 5 years you have a new idea.

I am really enjoying working on Mailtrack but the normal thing is that there will be somebody much better than me at scaling the company. I am much stronger at starting things and bringing them to revenues.

Do you do an autoscreening of your ideas?

Every time I am more rational and more of a realist when thinking about starting a project. Not obsessing about the solution but about the problem. Understanding the market, possible customers, talking to them. When I see that there is something that I need, that’s where I start with a project.

Dog fooding.

Yes, Infojobs was exactly this. I was a recruiter and I was going through 1000 of CVs so I really understood the problem other recruiters had. Now I am starting something related to hiring. I know the problem by heart. I see the problem and can visualize the solution.

I think before even starting to create a MVP you should go out talking to people to see if what you are thinking of is a ‘Must-Have’ or a ‘Nice to have’.

Fall in love with a problem before doing anything.

I think it’s important to recruit people close to you, early adopters, for a brain storming session about this problem and you really need to have a clear business models. There needs to be a clear business and you need to see that there is a space for you out there.

How are you going to start it?

Very cautiously as there is a lot of uncertainty. I am not going to raise capital but set out to better understand the market. Going from company to company to understand how they work, how they do recruitment and see if this solution could fit with their work style.

Listen to our podcast to learn more about Nacho’s plans for the future, how he sees the founder personality and what he thinks about the process of scaling a company. Learn more in this Podcast in Spanish on our Youtube channel, listen to it on iTunes or enjoy it through iVoox and subscribe to our newsletter to stay always up to date.

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Podcast #29 — Talking Insurtech with Eugeni Morales

In itnig’s Podcast #29 Bernat Farrero, CEO at itnig speaks with Eugeni Morales about his experience in the Insurtech and Proptech business. Eugeni is one of our partners at Factorial and someone we have the pleasure of working with day by day.

At itnig every Friday we sit down to talk with interesting people whom we meet throughout the week and we make a podcast (in Spanish) out of our conversations. You can listen to it on iTunes, subscribe to our channel on Youtube or enjoy it through iVoox.

For this Podcast #29 Bernat Farrero, CEO at itnig and Eugeni Morales come together to talk about the beginning of his career in Insurtech, what he has learned, how digitalization has shaped the sector and how he got involved with Factorial.

Eugeni, how did you get started in the world of insurance?

I had the chance that my family already had small businesses. I started to study engineering and straight out of college worked for a multinational company. After a few months I realized that this was not what I was looking for and started to work in a family business dedicated to insurance for medical sector. Eventually we sold the company to insurance executives and after this first experience in entrepreneurship I continued to create another business in the insurance sector.

In 2003 / 2004 I was leading a medical services business oriented to companies and other businesses connected to this. We had about 200 employees and revenues of 6 million Euros facilitating medical services to construction firms for example.

What are the margins in such a business?

When you work for insurance companies the margins are very small, whereas in the public sector you can reach a higher margin. All in all however it was very complicated work because you had a high costs for overheads for the doctors. In the end we sold the company.

Why did you decide to sell if the business was working for you?

It was a lot of work with high labor risk for a low margin. At that age, I preferred to have a less labor intensive business. We sold the company and I decided to go into the real estate sector. After living through the real estate crisis, I took a break in 2010 to travel the world and recharge.

Upon coming back to Barcelona I started again. This time I had the idea to start online. Not that I knew anything about Internet but I thought there were many opportunities. That’s when the idea of Insurtech started taking form.

The first online company I created was an insurance information portal — where you as a user could have access to all insurances you have, see the costs and compare them and contract new / switch insurances right through the platform. An insurance comparison if you will.

This business is where I lost the most money in my life. It did not work — I did not execute it well and the market was not ready.

The insurance sector is a very regulated business. You cannot apply lean or startup methodologies of trial and error if you are in such a regulated space. Regulations condition your philosophy of trial & error.

What went wrong? What was your go-to market plan?

I dedicated a lot of time to create the product and little time to think about what the user would want. Our time to market was delayed a lot because we needed to reach agreements with insurance companies. When we finally launched, the margin time we had to interact with the market, to have traction was really short.

We were an aggregator of insurance policies as app. For a lot of users it was the first time they knew how much they were spending on insurance, which insurance they had contracted and a chance to compare them.

What was your business model?

We worked as brokers, with a commission based on all insurances. However, the insurance companies at that time were not so interested in digital world. Now of course this has changed and they are investing a lot online.

From what I learned here new businesses emerged and I maintained a good relationships with an international broker looking at what online business can grow, what opportunities there are for brokers.

So what kind of projects do you do in Insurtech?

Different products like insurance cancellation for travel companies like Waynabox, Real Estate sector or even all kind of Classified sites like for example Wallapop.

We are not looking for distribution but rather new business models for insurances in the digital space. Where there is insecurity between buyer and seller, we can create an insurance product dedicated to bridge this gap.

An exempla is the fintech startup Marketpay. You buy a product from someone far away and you don’t want to go to physically pick it up and check it is in good conditions. We can do logistics and an insurance for warranty of product for you.

We work with escrow payments on the platform. The buyer pays for the product, the company keeps the money until product is received and validated by the buyer. Only once the product is checked, is the money released to the seller. If it turns out that the product does not work in the limit of 30 or 60 days, the product is returned — repaired or the money is reimbursed partially. We are part of this operational flow of Marketpay — creating a new insurance product that did not exist before.

Without escrow, without validation by the buyer this would be impossible.

In this way, I look for startups where we can test new products like this — before bringing it to a much bigger customer.

A bigger customer like Airbnb?

Yes, for example.

We created an insurance that covers the damage a visitor might leave in your house. The traveller instead of leaving a deposit, could pay a premium that covers the damage. That could be an option, substitution the deposit for a premium (which will never be recovered). There is a friction between traveler and renter. Renters needed to have money in cash- that makes it more complicated and we think that in this case for example an insurance would be better.

Airbnb can make a margin off the premium, on a deposit Airbnb does not make anything.

What changes do you see in the business? Is there anything that surprised you lately?

The model that I most liked could be the one used by Marketpay, using escrow but some would consider this more Fintech than Insurtech. Another interesting project I recently saw in the US is a company offering to cover certain risks but instead of asking for a premium they ask for more data of their users. If you give us access to this data and the buyer, we’ll cover the risk. Substituting the insurance for data could be a possible future.

What about Factorial? You got to know Factorial in the very beginning and you decided to invest. Where did you see the opportunity?

The strong suites I saw were and are that technology has a high importance. There is a clear market necessity, brokers were already doing it (benefits), so there was an existing demand. The capacity to monetize was diversified not just insurance but through other products as well. The commission is small but the volume is high and the segment is growing. As there is more pressure on our social welfare system, young people are looking more and more for private insurance — if they can get benefits by going through their employer why would they not do it?

Another important part in my decision was itnig. Knowing that itnig is behind Factorial meant that I did not have to worry that the entrepreneur would get scared, it’s not the fist time they are doing it, they know how to build a business.

In general, what motivates you when investing?

I only invest if I know about the sector, if I can bring contacts and add value, if I see a strong team and an infrastructure like an incubator that gives more security, behind the startup.

If I don’t know anything about the space the startup is working in I don’t go in.

What are you planning to do int he next years?

I have some ideas to start a business in Real Estate. And for the other projects, where I have invested I look to contribute the most to make it a success like Factorial or Marketpay.

Listen to our podcast to learn more about Eugeni’s story. Learn more in this Podcast in Spanish on our Youtube channel, listen to it on iTunes or enjoy it through iVoox and subscribe to our newsletter to stay always up to date.

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10 female entrepreneurs you should keep an eye on in 2018

Who they are and how they are overcoming their business challenges

Watch out for FutureFunded, a crowdfunding platform focused on training the next generation of women in technology, Bwom, an intimate health coach on your mobile and brand protection partner Red Points — and especially their leaders Cecilia Tham, Helena Torras and Laura Urquizu.

As women are still heavily underrepresented in the startup world, we think it’s time to shed some light on all those amazing female entrepreneurs in Barcelona who are already crushing it. In the beginning of this year we therefore took a close look at the Barcelona startup scene to identify female entrepreneurs who are working on promising tech ventures. Below we’re introducing you to 10 women in tech who we think you should keep an eye on in 2018. Why? Because they are awesome, and working on exciting projects that have a great year/future ahead!

We also asked them to share with us what their biggest business challenge was in 2017 and how they eventually mastered it. Here is our list of promising female entrepreneurs from Barcelona, and some of their insights:

Cecilia Tham is known as an innovation activist in empowering individuals and organizations by building communities to innovate for impact with design and tech. She is the co-founder of multiple companies such as MOB, Makers of Barcelona, a collaborative co-working community, FabCafe, a new concept that brings digital fabrication tools to the everyday environment of a coffee shop. Her latest venture FutureFunded is a crowdfunding platform focused on training the next generation of women in technology. Cecilia is also the founder of MEAT — an agency that enables companies for corporate transformation to innovate with technology.

Regarding her biggest challenge in 2017 and how she mastered it, Cecilia stated: “2017 was a really tough year for us because of many unexpected obstacles and events, from the unbearable noise of the heavy renovation work of our neighbor to the lack of leadership from my own decision to take 3 months off work to attend Singularity University. There wasn’t one major event that was problematic, it was an accumulation of multiple events, one after another throughout the year that had made it difficult. I myself was overwhelmed, but my team of 14 pulled together, each took on different responsibilities and tasks and really tackled every single difficulty that we had to endure, many of which I wasn’t even aware of. There were times when the situation was tense and even conflictive, but the team manage to resolve the issue on their own, something I gleam with pride now looking back. It was a hard year, but it was also the year where we learnt the most and the lesson I came out of 2017 is that perhaps good businesses make money, but great businesses make leaders.”

Helena Torras is the co-founder and CEO of Bwom, which aims to change self-care for women. Prior to that, together with the entrepreneurial team, she lead Abiquo, which she joined in 2007 as shareholder. Abiquo raised more than $28 million in VC funding and established operations in US, UK and Spain. Helena has also invested in more than 8 tech startups through Paocapital, and she is board member and mentor of several startups.

Regarding her biggest challenge in 2017 and how she mastered it, Helena stated: “My biggest business challenge in 2017 was not only one, but 3. First of all, we pivoted from a pelvic floor trainer app to a digital coach. Second, we were just a B2C company and we started to do our first steps on the B2B2C. Third, we adjusted and consolidated our team for the next phase we were facing. We went through it having a full commitment of the team, and with the incredible support of our investors, who not only helped us financially in 2016, but advised us and oriented us regarding the business decisions we had to take. We validated everything and although having big challenges, we divided them in small ones, to keep moving and improving.”

Laura Urquizu is the CEO of Red Points — a technology company that provides a solution for brands and content owners to counterfeiting online and digital piracy. Red Points is the preferred brand protection partner in the sporting, entertainment, fashion, editorial, design and luxury industries, providing unique products across the entire digital spectrum. One of her prior career steps was Capital Semilla, were she was subsequently responsible for the venture capital investments area and a portfolio of 90 investments.

Regarding her biggest challenge in 2017 and how she mastered it, Laura stated: “2017 was a year of aggressive targets, and we at Red Points are super happy to have surpassed expectations! It wasn’t easy, as one would imagine: we managed to grow 350% while staying customer-success oriented (the reason why our a churn rate is still close to zero). And we did all this while hiring and onboarding new professionals that doubled our team to 75 employees. The explanation as to why we were able to master our challenges is simple, teamwork: it wouldn’t have been possible without the true commitment of all our departments. This dedication is the main reason why Red Points has managed to arrive to 2018 as the #1 technology solution in online brand protection.”

Mar Alarcon Batlle is the founder and CEO at SocialCar and Co-Founder at Social Energy. Founded in 2011, Social Car is an Internet based P2P platform where car owners can safely rent their car to their neighbours. It’s the first P2P carsharing player in Spain. Mar is also a board member of Barcelona Tech City, Adigital and a mentor at Conector Accelerator.

Regarding her biggest challenge in 2017 and how she mastered it, Mar stated: “From its origin SocialCar has been a model looking for real disruption on mobility habits. The challenge itself was to make it feasible. After some years of evangelization, the challenge turns into consolidating the business. 2017 has been an amazing year in terms of results. However, the highlight of last year was the shaking impact on the industry. The mobility and automobile industry is finally is shifting to a world of real connected mobility services. Cars are finally seen as a mere mobility tool and not a status asset. Achieving that is a question of patience and perseverance. A long way to run without losing focus. Personally, the biggest challenge is to keep always filled with energy to keep running to improve things.”

Laura Fernandez is the Co-Founder and CEO of FutureFunded. Officially launched earlier this year, the Barcelona-based startup aims to bring more women to tech, by helping them crowdfund their education in renown coding schools. FutureFunded recently completed its first crowdfunding campaign and has already two new campaigns up and running. Aside from running FutureFunded, Laura has more than 5 years of experience as COO of Makers of Barcelona. She’s also a mentor for young entrepreneurs and a tech curator.

Regarding her biggest challenge in 2017 and how she mastered it, Laura stated: “My biggest business challenge has been an inner challenge I would say. To understand and accept that I won’t have the power to have everything under control, that nothing will be perfectly set up and done because a startup is an experimental project 24/7 and this shouldn’t stop you from moving forward. You need goals and objectives, more for your mental health than for the growth of the project itself, because those metrics will probably change every week because of the organicity and the own life of the project, at this very early stage. A startup is not a sprint but a marathon, so you need to keep yourself hydrated and this water is your team, your mentors, your users and the drive that it took you to start this adventure. So you have to take very good care and awareness of this water and your own hydration, to keep running as far as you want to get and this is also up to you.”

Gemma Sorigue is the co-founder and CEO of Deliberry — the online grocery store that delivers your food to your doorstep within one hour. Last year, Deliberry has received about €3 million in funding. Gemma has over 13 years of experience in e-commerce companies. She’s taken part in the startup and growth stages of top online companies like Atrapalo, Emagister and LetsBonus participating in different management positions as General Manager in LetsBonus.

Regarding her biggest challenge in 2017 and how she mastered it, Gemma stated: “Our main challenge in 2017 was to grow in sales while achieving operational profitability. We closed 2017 with +60% in GMV. We have managed to reduce the cost per order by 24%, thanks to technological improvements that allow us to have a more efficient operative. And we have doubled the revenue per order thanks to the new Revenue Stream CPG that we offer to manufacturers. Thanks to this, since Q2 we are in a positive unit economic and growing in sales.”

Carlota Pi Amoros is the co-founder and Executive President of Holaluz — a new generation energy company solely for 100% renewable green energy. The Barcelona-based company was founded in 2010 and was able to raise more than €12 million in funding. At Holaluz, Carlota is focusing on Strategy, Marketing and Fundraising. Aside from that, she’s a professor at the Universidad de Barcelona and the mother of three girls.

Diana Moret is the CEO and founder at PANDORAHUB, a Barcelona-based company which is accelerating growth stage startups in villages and rural areas. She started as social entrepreneur at the age of 25 founding the NGO which organized the DJs Against Hunger Festival (a charity electronic music festival) and the PACAS courses (Cultural Activities Program for Social Action). As a social innovation consultant she also designed and created the amusement charity campaign for families One Red Nose Day.

Beatriz Amilibia is the COO of SocialPay, which operates the two payment solutions Marketpay.io and Lemonpay. Marketpay enables escrow payments in the sharing economy, and provides a safe, immutable, double ledger API for marketplaces and e-commerce. Lemonpay enables individuals to trade (buy/sell) safely with each other. Before focusing on SocialPay in 2016, Beatriz founded another company called tuMédico.es.

Cristina Galán is the Co Founder and Managing Director of LOYALTIO is a tech company that leads the digital transformation of businesses and public institutions, offering end-to-end products and solutions, provides development, and offers consultancy services. Founded in 2014, LOYALTIO aims to become the loyal tech partner you need to make your digital projects come true. Prior to LOYALTIO, Cristina co-founded other companies like Bitcarrier and Profitail.

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EU-Startups.com moves in

EU-Startups.com, one of Europe’s leading startup publications, just moved into the itnig co-working space

With the start of the new year we are opening up our 5th floor as a co-working space to welcome talented individuals and promising startups to join us! Earlier this month, Thomas and Pablo from EU-Startups have arrived and are joining us in a collaboration, sharing their insights and startup knowledge not just with us internally but with you through our blog as well.

EU-Startups.com is one of the leading startup blogs in Europe with up to date information on startups, in-depth analysis of different sectors and many interesting interviews focussing on specific aspects of business. Next to the online publication, Thomas and Pablo are organizing the yearly EU-Startups Summit — this year to be held on the 24th of April with 750 founders, startup enthusiasts, corporates, angel investors, VCs as well as media people from all across Europe.

Thomas and Pablo met at MY-WAY, a project by the European Union thought to foster startup creation among students and asking what the EU can do to support them. Pablo was then working in Brussels with the student organization AEGEE and joined EU-Startups at the beginning of this year, focussing on the organization of the EU-Startups Summit.

They found together through a common interest for Europe and entrepreneurship, and the with the goal to foster innovation cross-boarder, spanning all of our countries and facilitating access to different resources. Undecided about which city to move to, Thomas finally settled for Barcelona last year as he thought it might be an easy pitch to convince event attendees, and future contributors, to visit to sunny Catalunya.

“Berlin might have more capital, cheaper rents and more tech talent, but I see a bright future and high quality startups here in Barcelona”.

While talking about the business model of EU-Startups as a magazine, Thomas talked about everything but a magazine. A job board, premium reports, a startup sourcing service, sponsored posts by corporates, and the EU-Startups Summit they are organizing since 2014 is what brings EU-Startups revenues. Actually we could be speaking about several business models.

Thomas, how did you get started writing about startups?

I was always interested in tech and new business models, and in 2010 I felt there is a need for an online publication that covers startups from a European perspective. More and more cross-boarder funding deals were happening, cross-boarder expansion, acquisitions, etc. So I started EU-Startups.com. Today the site attracts over 80,000 founders, investors and startup enthusiasts each month.

What have you learned from reading countless press releases a day?

You don’t learn a lot from reading press releases. I think you learn much more from talking to founders, investors, corporates and by doing your own research. Press releases always just paint the picture that a startup wants you to see. The reality looks often a bit different.

How should I pitch my startup to be featured in EU-Startups.com?

First of all, you should have something newsworthy to announce. As long as you didn’t invent a time machine or a teleportation device, the fact that your startup exists is not news. I actually have a little presentation on how to increase your chances to get press coverage, which I presented in some events. If you’re interested to read it, send a short email to [email protected] and I’m happy to forward it to you.

When you hear the word Blockchain what is the first association that pops in your mind?

It’s a hot topic. A bit too hot in my opinion. I sometimes have the feeling that all tech startups these days are either doing something AI, chatbot, or blockchain related. I mean it’s an interesting concept, but there are not so many actual use cases for it yet. In theory, yes. But in reality, we’ll have to see which kind of impact the blockchain concept will actually have going forward.

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Getting to know our future teams

As it’s probably the case with most startups, the biggest brake in our growth is the difficulty in finding the right talent. It’s hard to find smart, motivated and ambitious people who are a good fit at the right time.

In this post I am trying to reflect on what we have done so far, why we have failed and what we could do in the future. If you are reading this and are interested in working with us, I hope it gives you insights into how we think and what is a good way of connecting with us. Originally these ideas were shared between our teams while going through different interview process — sharing our learnings and failures.

It’ s a work in progress. With every interview and new person we meet we are learning and adding new thoughts to this reflection.

At itnig we have an internal HR team focussed on growing the different startup teams. With the exception of Camaloon who counts with their own HR team, I am thus in contact with each startup to understand their current and future needs. In this way, we have the advantage of being able to join efforts between startups and to find a the right fit for a candidate — it’s like a puzzle but with multiple places that connect to each piece. As the teams are working mostly on technological solutions we are looking for talented developers, product owners and designers as well as sales and marketing passionates.

Being one of the biggest stoppers in our growth means that we give the process of recruitment a high importance — a lot of what we do evolves around it and we have thought long and thoroughly about how to design a process of finding and connecting with the person in question which we try to transmit through all teams in our organization. Just as in the beginning of our startup journey the first new team members were old friends, colleagues and friends of friends, now as we scale up we have to find new ways of connecting with promising new developers, marketers, sales professionals.

When we call or invite a candidate for an interview we are most interested in finding out about the person and not so much in talking about us. Our first goal is setting the stage for an interesting conversation, giving all our attention to the person and bringing her or him to talk. Setting the right tone for an interesting conversation begins even before you lock eyes or shake hands — it’s in the preparation. To us it’s important to inform the candidate beforehand whom she or he will be meeting, what to expect of the conversation and how to continue in getting to know each other. It’s a long process of mutual discovery which can take months — a lot of times we won’t match the first time but keep in touch with talented people for the future.

What does it mean to interview at itnig?

These are a few ground rules we set ourselves:

  • We aim to give a brief introduction to situate the person: Who are you? Why are we here? — We try to find things in common just with the goal to establish a good ground for conversation
  • We are curious to learn about the candidate so we’ll try to let you speak
  • We ask open questions, it’s probably also what we encounter in our day to day lives
  • We try to remember that even though we can talk all we want about values, what really transmits them is our behavior (humility, curiosity, sense of humor, respect while treating other people, full attention to the candidate instead of computers or phones…)
  • As general traits for next team members we look for intelligence, flexibility, drive, ambition and a hands-on resolutive person — with the idea that this person can replace us and take over any part in our companies

Before the interview process

Before we reach out to potential candidates we want to be sure we are all on the same boat and aligned in what we are looking for in a person. We try to stick to these ideas in all the recruitment processes we do.

  • We want to establish a clear idea of technical / professional skills
  • We try to define what personality traits are important to succeed in this position (curiosity, team player, communication, organized..)
  • We agree on the frame of the process in terms of timings, people involved, steps of interviews and if we want to involve extras like written or technical tests, simulations (like role-plays), team get-togethers, cross-references, past work to check…
  • We aim to set our expectations for the future of this role, how the team will evolve, what we imagine to change in the next few months before reaching out to candidates
  • We strive to work out the big picture and convey what we think is the most interesting and appealing in this specific position

Only if we as an already existing team are clear and aligned on what we are looking for while talking to new people can we present a coherent picture and come to a conclusion.

Who we are as a company — What is in it for the candidate?

Other than talking about our individual company history, current daily work for this position and the vision and outlook for the future we think it’s also interesting to give a general overview of itnig and what this means for the development of the individual and the organization as a whole.

At itnig this means:

  • Technological base
  • Innovative products in their respective industries
  • Hard working, effort, do-it attitude & focus on execution
  • Ecosystem with shared open office space & events
  • Sharing of knowledge between different startups

We see itnig as a space open to learn and to grow, an honest and transparent environment with its feet on the ground, where we value effort, learn from our mistakes by trying and are focussed on the execution.

What is important to know?

In general, when I get together with a candidate for any of the positions, I am curious to learn about past experiences and educational background, to understand his/her current situation, expectations for the future, other interests and motivation for our particular startup.

  1. Reason for leaving current job. A straight question will probably get a superficial answer, so I try to look for details. Is the company / position in danger? Did the person disagree with team or company strategy? Is he/she doing a good job?
  2. Plans for future. I try to find out what the person is looking for in his/her future. What does he/she want to learn? How does the person imagine to work? What can we offer to the personal growth of the person?
  3. Personal life and extracurricular activities. A lot of the times what a person does in his/her ‘spare time’ says much more about him/her than the actual job. What are the causes they care about? Any hobbies? Sports? I try to find out what makes them tick, what moves them and where they see their most value.
  4. Motivation or interest in working with us. I ask the person why she/he is here. What are their expectations? What do they know about us? What is most exciting for them in our job offer or company? Ask how they chose which company to apply to, what they are looking for and whom we are competing against. I think it’s important to leave a lot of space for questions from the candidate.

How can we find out about personality?

After the technical and professional capacities of the person in question are clear to me, I am curious to find out more about him or her in terms of personality, values, hobbies and ambitions for the future. As this is a tricky part, we’ve tried to come up with some questions. These are also questions I ask myself and often stumble with the answer 😉

  • What are the qualities you appreciate most in your co-workers?
  • What traits make a person likeable?
  • What’s the most interesting you have learned this year?
  • What changes have you made in working with others to be more effective at work?
  • What extracurricular activities did you do in college?
  • Side projects?
  • Can you describe a time when your work was criticized?
  • Have you ever misjudged someone?
  • What are you especially good at compared to others?
  • What’s the one accomplishment you’re most proud of and why?
  • What do you think is the most important aspect or ability of your craft?
  • What do you want to learn in this year?
  • How do you inform yourself of changes in your industry?
  • What publications do you read?
  • What are you looking for in a company?
  • In what kind of work environment do you prefer to work?

I want to enjoy the conversation, make a friend, be curious!

In the end, there are no right or wrong answers but it’s a way of discovering more about the other person. What are their values? What is important to them and where do they compromise? Other than the professional talent, it’s also important for me to see somebody we are looking forward to meeting every day and spending the day together, solving problems and sometimes getting stuck on hard ones together.

What motivates us?

This reflection is not only important to do with the candidate, but also with ourselves. I as person on the other side of the table am conveying the same messages and am being just as scrutinised as the candidates.

I would say that as an organization as a whole this is what makes us come to the office every morning:

  • Being part of a successful business and seeing its growth
  • Challenging ourselves and exploring something new
  • Advancing alongside just as talented people whom we admire
  • Seeing our impact and knowing the mission of the organization
  • Tackling a difficult problem

For you as a candidate I imagine that this might be a very important part in the interview process: To be able to see the team you hopefully look forward to working with. It’s probably one of the biggest motivation being surrounded by smart people and doing things together.