00:00There's a higher chance that your ideas produce. I think I'm a very much unhirable person. I wanted
00:05to create something. Welcome to The Big Question, the series from Euronews where we speak to some
00:16of the biggest names in business. I'm Hannah Brown and today I'm joined by Christoph Gerber,
00:21founder of Leif Rando and CEO and founder at Talon One. Thank you very much for joining me
00:26today, Christoph. So first of all, I just want to talk to you a little bit about entrepreneurship.
00:29You founded Leif Rando, Germany's leading food delivery company, in 2009 as you were finishing
00:34university. What made you decide to pursue that route? It's not as romantic as people wanted to
00:39sound. I had a friend call me. He was an investment banker at UBS in New York. He said, look,
00:45there's
00:45this food delivery thing in New York where I order food the whole time or when he's doing overtime.
00:50I was in uni. I like to do things and not be in academia. So this was, in a way,
00:57my get out of
00:58uni jail card. You know, like a monopoly you can get out. And I said, you know what, let's just
01:03start
01:03that. I think I always make the joke that if he would have called me and said, look, I found
01:08the
01:08perfect way to sell toilet seats online and we can solve the toilet seat market, I would have done that.
01:14So it comes down to, I wanted to create something and not just be theoretical in university.
01:20And so at that time, that was a real gap in the market that you spotted here in Germany?
01:24No, it wasn't. Our research was bad. I think in the UK at that point, just it was already
01:29big. And I think at that stage where we were, I think it was 23 years old, the youthful not
01:38knowing,
01:38just let's do it was the competitive advantage, which helped us to conquer the German market.
01:45Because if we would have done the proper research on a sort of McKinsey BCG style, like look at all
01:51the competition there is, we would have probably never got into that market. But in a way, when
01:57you're 23, you have nothing to lose. You at uni, my parents said, what's the worst that can come?
02:02You're going to move back to your kid's room, which was nothing I wanted to do, but not actually
02:06understanding how big and competitive the market is, helped us to start. And then I think we just
02:11executed a lot better than the rest.
02:20What kind of drew you to becoming a founder? And what do you think are the kind of important
02:24skills or personality type to be a founder?
02:28I have to ask my wife about that. But we looked at my school reports. And then my first report
02:34I ever
02:34got, which was after six months in first grade, it said, Chris wants to lead group work. And if he
02:43can't be the leader of a group work, he has a hard time motivating himself. So I think I want
02:49to lead,
02:50I want to create, and I always want to build, I want to build something. And I just could not
02:56see
02:56myself working for someone. I think I'm a very much unhirable person. I've never worked for someone.
03:04And I don't think that is a concept that works for me. Not everyone has the skill set, the resilience
03:13to be a founder or an entrepreneur. And that is okay. I don't, I think it would be very bad
03:18world if
03:18everybody would be like me, or like my co-founder Sebastian or an entrepreneur and founder,
03:25it would be very unhealthy balance. So I think people need to tread carefully if this really
03:32is something they want to do. And some people are better left off in working for a founder,
03:41in a sort of normal career progression. What advice would you give to new founders?
03:46Be critical about your own ideas, but also don't listen to everyone that's giving you advice on
03:54your ideas. For Lieferando, everyone told us this is not going to work. For Talent One,
03:59everyone told us it's not going to work. I think there's a fine balance between listening to feedback
04:06and understanding because there's a very high likelihood that your idea does not have the
04:11quality that it needs to produce a successful outcome. But there's also a lot of people that
04:17have no idea about what you know about your idea and what you might know about the market or the
04:22specifics that could lead for your idea to be very successful. And to have that thin line of self-reflection
04:31compared with a good portion of Hybris, just push through. That is a very thin balance and I don't
04:38know what the right balance is and how do you, what the right mixture is, but in a way you
04:41have to push
04:42through. And so going back to kind of your career journey, after you sold Lieferando back in 2015,
04:48you started Talent One. Can you just tell me a little bit about actually what Talent One does?
04:53We worked a lot with promotion in food delivery against our competition
04:58and we needed to build everything in-house. So I said, why isn't there something that,
05:04well, we could just buy that part of the tech stack and implement. And that eventually
05:10made me to think, okay, if this is a problem for me, it's probably a problem for more people,
05:15more businesses. Again, all the investors there that I spoke to said, it isn't a problem,
05:21it's not an issue. Then I called my co-founder Sebastian, who I went to uni with and said,
05:27look, I'm really good at productising building, but I'm extremely chaotic as a person. I need
05:32somebody to be my yang when I'm the ying or other way. So I need someone to take care of
05:39all the
05:39unpleasant part of the business, which is running the day to day. And then we started.
05:44Obviously, so you essentially do the tech side to allow companies to do rewards, discounts,
05:49promotions. Why is that so important for a company and their growth?
05:53In a nutshell, Telling One allows you to really be granular on promotions, discounts,
05:59moving inventory, moving overstock. And that's, we have a retailer that spends around 5 billion
06:06euros in deducted revenue through promotions. And that is because they just give blanket discounts,
06:1210%, 20%. They give that to their whole audience because they could not so far target the customer
06:19groups based on the customer segments, repeat purchases, someone who likes a blue blue,
06:24someone who likes more like earthy colors and connect that to the inventory levels they have.
06:30So if they could say they can reduce bent or promotional discounts by 10% in that case,
06:38without actually influencing the total turnover. So they would sell exactly the same amount,
06:44but don't incentivize people that would buy anyway, or actually understand that you could have,
06:50you would have done the same purchase, not for 20%, but for 5%. And that led us to reduce their
06:56promotional spend by around 500 million euros. And finally, do you think this is kind of the key
07:02way that companies can drive sales and protect the bottom line? Or do you think there is other
07:06things that companies could do better? I think we are one part. I would never go as far as say,
07:10you can save your business with talent one. If you sell a product and that doesn't align with the
07:17values or the quality that you say it should, no talent one can save you. I think managing rebates,
07:23promotions, discounts, your loyalty program is one part of the relationship you have with the customer.
07:28And we can really help you save or increase your margin on your products while also helping you to
07:35avoid brand dilution. Because if you always need to discount everything because you don't know how to do
07:39it right, it actually destroys your brand equity. Interesting. And on that note, thank you very
07:45much for your insights today. And thank you for joining me on The Big Question. Thank you.
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