00:00There's a high chance that your idea is pretty big.
00:02I think I'm a very much unhirable person.
00:05I wanted to create something.
00:12Welcome to The Big Question,
00:14the series from Euronews where we speak to some of the biggest names in business.
00:18I'm Hannah Brown and today I'm joined by Christophe Gerber,
00:21founder of Leif Rando and CEO and founder at Talon One.
00:24Thank you very much for joining me today, Christophe.
00:26So 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,
00:32in 2009 as you were finishing university.
00:35What made you decide to pursue that route?
00:37It's not as romantic as people wanted to sound.
00:40I had a friend call me.
00:41He was an investment banker at UBS in New York.
00:44He said, look, there's this food delivery thing in New York
00:47where I order food the whole time or when he's doing overtime.
00:51I was in uni.
00:52I like to do things and not be in academia.
00:56So this was, in a way, my get-out-of-uni jail card.
00:59You know, like a monopoly you can get out.
01:01And I said, you know what, let's just start that.
01:03I think I always make the joke that if he would have called me and said,
01:06look, I found the perfect way to sell toilet seats online
01:11and 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.
01:26Our research was bad.
01:27I think in the UK at that point, just it was already big.
01:30And I think at that stage where we were, I think I was 23 years old,
01:36the youthful not knowing, just let's do it,
01:41was 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,
01:50like look at all the competition there is,
01:52we would have probably never got into that market.
01:55But in a way, when you're 23, you have nothing to lose.
01:59You at uni, my parents said, what's the worst that can come?
02:02You've got to move back to your kid's room, which was nothing I wanted to do.
02:05But not actually understanding how big and competitive the market has helped us to start.
02:10And then I think we just executed a lot better than the rest.
02:20What kind of drew you to becoming a founder?
02:22And what do you think are the kind of important skills or personality type to be a founder?
02:28I have to ask my wife about that.
02:30But we looked at my school reports.
02:32And in my first report I ever got, which was after six months in first grade,
02:38it said, Chris wants to lead group work.
02:43And if he can't be the leader of a group work, he has a hard time motivating himself.
02:47So I think I want to lead, I want to create, and I always want to build.
02:52I want to build something.
02:54And I just could not see myself working for someone.
02:59I think I'm a very much unhirable person.
03:02I've never worked for someone.
03:04And I don't think that is a concept that works for me.
03:08Not everyone has the skill set, the resilience to be a founder or an entrepreneur.
03:15And that is okay.
03:16I think it would be a very bad world if everybody would be like me or like my co-founder
03:23Sebastian or an entrepreneur and founder.
03:25It would be a very unhealthy balance.
03:28So I think people need to tread carefully if this really is something they want to do.
03:34And some people are better left off in working for a founder in a sort of normal career progression.
03:44What advice would you give to new founders?
03:46Be critical about your own ideas.
03:48But also don't listen to everyone that's giving you advice on your ideas.
03:54For Lieferando, everyone told us this is not going to work.
03:58For Talent One, everyone told us this is not going to work.
04:02I think there's a fine balance between listening to feedback and understanding.
04:07Because there's a very high likelihood that your idea does not have the quality that it needs to produce a
04:15successful outcome.
04:16But there's also a lot of people that have no idea about what you know about your idea and what
04:20you might know about the market or the specifics.
04:23that could lead for your idea to be very successful.
04:27And to have that thin line of self-reflection compared with a good portion of Hybris, just push through.
04:36That is a very thin balance.
04:37And I don't know what the right balance is and what the right mixture is.
04:41But in a way, you have to push through.
04:42And so going back to kind of your career journey, after you sold Lieferando, back in 2015, you started Talent
04:49One.
04:50Can 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.
05:01So I said, why isn't there something that, where we could just buy that part of the tech stack and
05:07implement?
05:08And that eventually led me to think, okay, if this is a problem for me, it's probably a problem for
05:14more people, more businesses.
05:16Again, all the investors there that I spoke to said, it isn't a problem.
05:21It's not an issue.
05:22Then I called my co-founder, Sebastian, who I went to uni with, and said, look, I'm really good at
05:28productizing, building,
05:29but I'm extremely chaotic as a person.
05:31I need somebody to be my yang when I'm the ying or other way.
05:37So I need someone to take care of all the unpleasant part of the business, which is running the day
05:42-to-day.
05:43And then we started.
05:44Obviously, so you essentially do the tech side to allow companies to do rewards, discounts, promotions.
05:50Why is that so important for a company and their growth?
05:53In a nutshell, Talent One allows you to really be granular on promotions, discounts, moving inventory, moving overstock.
06:01And that's, we have a retailer that spends around 5 billion euros in deducted revenue through promotions.
06:09And that is because they just give blanket discounts, 10%, 20%.
06:14They give that to their whole audience because they could not so far target the customer groups based on the
06:19customer segments,
06:20repeat purchaser, someone who likes a blue, blue, someone who likes more like earthy colors,
06:27and connect that to the inventory levels they have.
06:30So if they could say they can reduce spend 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,
06:47or actually understand that you could have, you would have done the same purchase, not for 20%, but for 5%.
06:54And that led us to reduce their promotional spend by around 500 million euros.
06:59And finally, do you think this is kind of the key way that companies can drive sales and protect the
07:05bottom line?
07:05Or do you think there is other things that companies could do better?
07:08I think we are one part.
07:09I would never go as far as say you can save your business with Talent One.
07:14If you sell a product and that doesn't align with the values or the quality that you say it should,
07:20no Talent One can save you.
07:21I think managing rebates, promotions, 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 avoid
07:35brand dilution.
07:36Because if you always need to discount everything because you don't know how to do it right,
07:40it actually destroys your brand equity.
07:42Interesting.
07:43And on that note, thank you very much for your insights today and thank you for joining me on The
07:47Big Question.
07:48Thank you.
07:48Thank you.
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