Bits&Pretzels 2019

Opening ceremony

Rossmann – LinkedIn co-founder from BlitzScaling

• BlitzScaling is scaling speed at the cost of efficiency or capital
  • Don’t solve problems with bad management, tooling, tech-dept etc. Focus on scale
  • The reason is to take over the competition
  • It is expensive – don’t BlitzScale when there is no competition

Company/startup size

• Family – 1–10
  • Searching for market fit
• Tribe – 10–100
  • Start scaling, market fit should be clear
• Village – 100-1000
  • BlitzScaling at full scale,
• Nation – 1000-10000
  • BlitzScaling only with a totally new idea/product
  • Generally going back efficiency

Elsa Barnadotte from Karma

• Mission to turn food waste into profit
• Let restaurants and shops easily sell soon-to-be-waste for 1/2 the price with Karma
• 5 % of Sweden already uses

My view as a Czech:

• It will fail in many places, one Sushi place in Brno tried to sell for half in the last 30 minutes
• Result: people stoped going to the restaurant in the last 3 hours and waited in a line for the 30 minutes of sale :(

OpenBiotics

• Rethink the already used

Zarah Bruhn from Social Bee

• Company employing refugees for 1 year
• After that let them fly away to companies on their own
• Zarah had the great courage, quit school, took pension fund to help others => over 200 refugees being helped at a time within 2 years after “startup” creation
• Business can be combined with good

Frank Niederlander from ???

• Founder != responsible leader

Barack Obama from Mr. President

10 minutes of warming up, singing and introductions

How to contact him?

• Contacted his agency
• Talked to many people from his inner circle
• They made custom video just for Barack
  • 90 seconds about what Bits&Pretzels is
  • Offered him a traditional Balvarian LederHose
• They did not reply
• Tried to put deadlines on it
  • Deadlines passed, so they pushed them
• They asked them to stop
  • They persisted! => It worked!

The Barák himself

• How did you help diversity in your presidency?
  • The greater mix and crosssection of people I had, the more likely it was that we would have fresh approaches on the problem.
  • You had to be intentional about it [increasing diversity] – these in charge has to reach out and they will find the great potential between the “outcast” groups
  • If you don’t reach out, the discrimination will come automatically – for example just because the of the culture view
  • How to make sure that the outsiders are not only in the room, but also speaking

Use your ears not only your mouth and you might learn something

• One of the current problems is climate change – there was big strike just last week. What do you think could enteprenours to do to help?
  • You look like an educated audience, so I think I don’t have to convince you that it is real.
  • Brita asked before the UN meeting in New York:
    • “Do you think the other world leaders understant the science of Climate change?”
  • I replied: I am sure they do not understand it at a level that you do.
  • It is just not enough to start working on Climate Change tech, but you need to talk about it and support in on the Govenmertal level.
    • The gas and oil received governmential support until they were fully integrated
• Back to your meeting with Greta. It blew up on Instagram – what kind of leader is she? I mean, she is only 16.
  • She’s extremely young. Kids should not have to do this. There are adults. We have responsibilities that we don’t meet.
  • We shouldn’t make it that hard for young leaders to have impact.
  • We did a meeting with the young leaders in Berlin and I saw that most of the people working on climate change here [Europe] are closely connected to the ones doing the same in the US

Kids should not have to do this. [Solve the climate change]

• How can you create enteprenourship anywhere?
  • I don’t think we can replicate the type of ecosystem that was created by itself in the Silicon Valley
  • I believe we can partially recreate and brew entepretional spirit in the University environment
  • If the spending is not provided to the academies, it cannot be transmited to the technology and innovation
  • States should be strategic about places that have great startup potential, but cannot raise the funds => wasted potential
  • We like to romanticize the idea of Anarchy and freedom, but the countries with no state are failed states with no roads, no police and no education
  • It is hard for small companies to break through before they get crushed
    • Finding the balance in state involvement is a hard problem
• Do you think the big companies should be broken up then?
  • I think there should be conversation – ideally started by the companies themselves
  • As we approach the edge of AI, there should be a lot of thought put into it
    • We want the benefits of those technologies
    • => We need a conversation: How to let those companies make the profit, yet benefit all
• Do you have and example?
  • I know the founders of AirBnB very well
    • They are not public yet => how do they change their vision for people not to share their houses, but also the experiences?
    • How to make sure not to lose those visions when you become multi billion?
      • Not loosing the vision is really important for hiring talent
  • There are big questions how to take the route the

Not loosing the vision is really important for hiring talent

• We talked about the bad part of technology, but it can also improve the lives. For example AI.
  • With AI, for example we have ML systems to achieve way better efficiencies for heating and cooling than any engineers could
  • Or Crisper, to move away from AI
    • It is now so cheap and easy that it is easily in wrong hands
• New behavior that improved your live
  • Sleeping – it’s like a drug! I feel happier
  • More time to read without being focused on a specific subject
    • As a president, there is always a problem in you inbox
    • The day-to-day consumes your live
• I hang out with my wife more
  • It was hard to catch with her since she was still angry of me running for the president
• You also wrote a book, right?
  • That has not imporved my life!
  • The writing is misserable, I want to have it written
• We live in a time where there is a lot of nationalism and populism on both sides of Atlantic. How do we deal with it and join/pull people together?
  • Some people think:
    • My status comes from how many people are under me, how many do I dominate
  • At Enlightment a new idea emerged:
    • We should respect each other even though we are different
    • Especially in Europe, this approach brought people to higher prosperity
  • We have to recognize that some mistakes we re made after WW1, WW2, when joining Germany together
  • The globalisation makes more winners but also more losers
    • More thinking should have been put into it
  • Peoples traditions, culture, gets threatened and we have to respect that
  • I think the earlier thinking leads only to more war and conflict
    • Europe knows the best where that leads
  • There has to be more weight put on the facts
  • The thing is:
    • If you are the best at something, this is a great time for you. You can go global.
    • Not all have the skills and means. There will be backlash for all of the people put behind.
• • If there is change in society, we have to change our institutions
    • Change the taxes, change the politics, change the focus
    • There never was a society where everyone could do whatever

I am optimistic. If your name is Barack Husain Obama and you are in the White House, you must be optimistic

• And why are you so optimistic?
  • I am optimistic because of the young people
    • Whereever I go, there are young people who go with courage and innovation and solve big problems –
  • If you had to choose a time to be born at, but you did not know where and as who you would be born, you would, on average, choose today.

Evening

Bavarian Champions

• Daniel Kraus from Founder of FLixBus
• Andreas Bodczek from CEO IDnow
• Markus Dickhardt from Co-Founder Roadsurfer from renting vans

• Andreas Bruckschogl from Co-Founder Ryte from automated website quality assurance

• Why is Munich a good place to start a startup?
  • 5 times more funding than in Berlin
  • More senior people, because of corporates
  • Mountains and other nature
  • Young talent driven for the mountains, skying etc.
• Why not?
  • Hard to get started for foreighners
    • Hard to start a company
    • Extra hard to get a flat
• Do you plan to expand abroad?
  • [FlixBus] US and Asia are our next targets for the busses
  • [FlixBus] Trains are the main and big focus for Germany and Europe
• Is there a wording for Munich that you would love to see? Something like Silicon Valey, Silicon Beach
  • Silicon Avalanche? :D
  • [FlixBus] I don’t believe it’s needed. You need to do serious work, actual work. With a name comes hype

Founder of DropBox

• How did you start?
  • DropBox was founded 14 years ago, but I got my first programming job when I was 14 because I found a Game bug
  • Noone is born as a CEO
  • Every 14 months your job as CEO changes completely – as if you were fired and rehired to a different company
  • The good thing is, none of those changes happen over night, but day after day
  • The thing that keeps me up is reading
    • Everyone thinks his situation is unique, but it is not. There are books about it.

Noone is born as a CEO

• Is there something you miss from starting the company («<)
  • I am actually coding again after many years – on my free time for fun
    • There is whole renesaince («<) in ML
  • I stopped coding few years ago, since at some point you need to give it to SW developer team
  • Now there is fresh air, because we just introduced a new product
    • It is focused on calmness and everything being well organized
  • I met a from SpaceX and asked him: Which tooling do you use? What does it take to put someone on the Mars?
    • A lot of emails and a lot of files
  • And then I realised that we need to solve it. Emails did not change since we had 5 of them per week.
  • We are the most productive if we are not interrupted 200 times a day
  • No meeting Wednesday – an idea going around Silicon Valley for quite some time
    • It’s great! So much done.

As a CEO, you have 100× more tasks than time. Yet all of the great enteprenours had the same 24 hours a day you have.

• I remember when I visited my dad at work 20 years ago
  • Many things were the same, yet it was so different.
  • He put his workcase at the door and did not think of

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