Hello and welcome to the Virtual Frontier, the Podcast about Virtual Teams created by Virtual Teams. Disclaimer, all of our interviews are conducted virtually. I'm Daniel your host and I'm part of the team here to the Virtual Frontier in this episode. We welcome Joern Menniger a.k.a. Startup Jo as our guest. Jo is a true storyteller. Storytelling is a means for sharing and interpreting experiences.Human life is narrative rooted, and as humans we construct our lives and shape our world into homes. In terms of these Cronin's and memories, stories are something universal and can bridge cultural, linguistic and related divides. Joyce found his passion in providing us with stories and news from the Startup World. With his weekly shows and updates, he has become an important source for startups and investors all around the globe. Today, I talked with Joe about his own story during 2020, what he values most when scouting for new start ups and what most entrepreneurs get wrong while they grow their business and why it is so important to have the right attitude when it comes to failure.A quick mention of our sponsor, Flash Hub. Build your Virtual Teams systematically and methodically. Scale with your business at any time and make work better. You want to expand your knowledge of how Virtual Teams work and learn how to build your own team? Join the next Virtual Teams challenge and get all the tools and frameworks for it. If you want to learn more about the next challenge, visit FlashHub.io. If you like the show or subscribe on YouTube reviewed on Apple Podcast, follow us on Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon music or any other platform you like to podcast. You can also take the next step and get involved in our growing community activities. To do so, you can support the creator's work and patron gets to hear episodes in advance join exclusive live sessions and help us select guests and topics. You can also engage with our community on Discord. All the links you can find below in the description. So without further ado, let's dove into Episode 34 of the Virtual Frontier. Enjoy the conversation.

Hey Jo, welcome to the Virtual Frontier. I'm really happy to have you today on our show. I was quite exciting for me because as a big Podcast in the world of the in the top at 150 tech branch you're quite big for me, way over my head. But I hope I don't fuck it up today with you and just let's dive in. So if you would like to share a little bit of background, if you're coming, I'm really interested also to to hear your story about how you ended up in the whole startup environment and how it go for you and just take it ahead.

First, thank you very much for having me. Thank you for the invitation. Looking forward to this interview. It's usually I do with my co-host, Transatlantic News, New York, Frankfurt recording. Let's see how Mexico works here. That said, my name originally, Joern Menninger. But everybody knows me as Jo. I am hosting since twenty fifteen the start up Podcast startuprad.io, but I also started radio with the period in the name since January 1st. Twenty twenty one. I'm running this full time and before that it evolved from being a hobby to being a side business to being a hopefully viable full time business. I started out, as so many people do, with the vocational training in Germany after graduating from high school. Then I went in the bank, then I went on to study my studies, took me to China for half a year. I was actually. I was also doing some language school in Madrid. I, I was there when the attacks of Atocha took place. And I then went on to my internship in China. And basically after like being two weeks in Germany, I went from here to my senior year in Texas at Midwestern State University, go Mustangs, and graduated from there, came back, did an internship for my final thesis, and then I started out consulting. I've always been dabbling a little bit in startup entrepreneurship. When I was in university here in Germany, I started what they call a junior Enterprise. So basically students get together for projects and help like very small or small or medium businesses to do something. For example, we helped a plumbing company to to get the finances straightened out and stuff like that. So I always had like a side business. At one point in time, a friend approached me who knew someone who want to start a startup podcast. That was basically, I do believe, sometime in summer 2012. And I was being the co-host for quite some time. This project was shut down back in twenty seventeen. And then one point in time I did have the first interview guest in Berlin who wasn't a German native speaker, and he said, OK, I'm kind of a cage with German, but I would rather do an interview in English. I said, OK, let's go ahead. And that was the point when I started with English Podcasting. Then my former co-host and I talked on the German startup Podcast about it. And then basically we split everything in English, went to startuprad.io my own project and everything I did in German state with a German speaking Podcast. So if if you really go back in time, you should be able to find even content from twenty nineteen. If you're doing this on a podcasting app, you'll only see twenty fourteen and in the podcasting app you'll only see twenty nineteen. For the very simple reason that I started with an external hosting service back in twenty nineteen, I had to upload all my content at this point in time and no I could not produce more than one hundred fifty Podcast in just one day. That, that was just the upload date. And ever since it kind of spiraled out from there. So in twenty seventeen when I was still hosting all the files on my own website around Christmas at the website went down too much traffic, which, which was of course a good sign. Then I had the same issue in, in twenty eighteen around Christmas. In twenty seventeen I met the first appearances in international Podcast charts. Twenty eighteen again at one point of course I was, I was spending a lot of marketing and at one point I was even in the top ten back in twenty eighteen in the overall Podcast charts in the US. But don't overstate that because Podcast talks are like a composite of downloads and new subscribers. So that was just a lot of new subscribers coming on there and I haven't gotten why they do it for some time. But then I was reading a blog post because they are like a dozen, maybe three dozen really, really big Podcast. They're like small companies and they would have been always in the top and nobody could make it in there if they just go for downloads. That's why it's a composite and that's why we frequently appear on many, many different Podcast charts, because we do get new subscribers, but also frequently a lot of downloads which I like. So starting twenty eighteen. We've been in Podcast charts. Twenty nineteen. This kind of evolved in twenty eighteen. I was already nominated for the Benzinger Global FinTech Awards. I went to New York, went to London for the lend it and so on. And so ever since I've been doing more and more content and right now since I'm doing it full time, I'm actually running twice a week Podcast show. I'll do some blogging for the very simple reason that I am addressing a B2B audience and some of the content is really hard to transport just on audio and or video. That's why I'm writing it. For example, when I talk about investing the investment framework, investment numbers and so on and so forth. If you're just listening to numbers, it gets a little bit strange. Back in twenty eighteen, I was also asked then by my former boss to be startup Scout, and so I started working as a startup scout. And they only make me startup scout because I already had like a big network of startup contacts. And ever since I could like combine those two little bit podcasting and scouting startups. Eventually it didn't work out Corona struck. And that's why I'm now out here by myself. Twenty twenty one. Hopefully the years getting better than twenty 20. I hope so, and it was talking sorry, sorry, I had some specific questions, I don't want to talk all the time.

... because you're always a pro but let me ask you something. What got you really interesting or the interest in Startups and not whatever cars or airplanes making a Podcast about that. But why Startups.

Admittedly, I'm not a big car fan, so as of today, January twenty twenty one, I don't even own a car. So and before that I was driving for 22 years, the same old very first car.

And at one point in time it was just too old. It could not get through the review process. So all the Germans would know TÜV many other countries know that. So every two years you just have to show your car and show its traffic worthy and mine after being like almost twenty five years old. It did couldn't do that anymore. So I gave I'd give it up. And ever since I was not driving a car. Talking about entrepreneurship, I would say I always had a tendency to entrepreneurship, my mom loves to tell the story when I was four years old and I was out on the street selling strawberries from our own garden, admittedly, it's a very small town.So the only potential clients, we're neighbors. They were always smiling and buying food for a few Pfennig, german cents, a little bit of my strawberries. So I always had a tendency to do that. And actually, the more I learned about technology and what you can do with it, like talking AI deep tech the Internet, 5G and whatever is out there and coming in the future, you always see opportunities to do something with that. And I figured out I love to talk, as your audience can already tell. Um, so basically that that was a good place for me to start with my Podcast before that, I was dabbling in some some. Businesses like very tiny businesses, you cannot really call them startups. I was helping when I was living in China, a friend starting a language school, which was a chain at top five, five different language schools within a district of Beijing. I was once I was helping, I was together with a friend starting an Online antiquarian bookshop, meaning for use books for all books. And we had like church books from the eighteen eighties and stuff like this. It was a it was actually at the time when more Moggs and we buy here in Germany became big. But my partner at this point decided he would rather go for his Ph.D. than to do a startup. So we had to shut this down. And that's why I've been basically sticking with Podcast because I like it. And usually in Podcasting, I'm not talking that much on my personal Podcast. I always say it's a good relationship. If I talk like 20 percent of the time and the guest talks about 80 percent of the time, I'm afraid in this interview it will be I'm talking 90 percent and you'll be talking 10 percent.

I did make my notes 20/80 noted.

The pareto principal.

Jo, as I already hear from you like the last year of covid also that impact your business, with Deloitte when you when you were a startup scout. In general overview. What big changes you notice on in the startups over the last month. What, what, what, what changes came up. How how did startups evolve or decrease already? How do you cope with the situation as they are all like young entrepreneurs and they're still in the finding? Is there a big O-tone that can be solved or big story about?

Well, I would say like. For start ups, the big changes will be on the horizon, like digital only business models will become even more popular than they are today. The the big quarterly results of Amazon, of Netflix and so on, they're just the tip of the iceberg. They'll be much more coming even for startups here in Germany, the digital only business model will become more popular. Right now, many, many startups are in the survival mode. It wasn't particularly new for startups to work like in Remote and digital teams. I think that was more a change for the more established German corporates. I think that didn't change a lot here. But as I talk to many entrepreneurs, like frequently I have like, let's say, a dozen phone conversations a week with different startups, entrepreneurs, investors and people like you who reach out to me. So right now, I see a lot of ideas and preparation. But do you see the main changes are coming over time like there's no big band. Now, here's to complete change for the future. Just some startups, really some companies really been doing great here. Just think about Pellington, the Remote work company that offers you this bicycle and basically a Remote gym, Netflix, as I talked about already, that are the ones that are prospering now. But I do believe more digital businesses, more digital business ideas will be there up and coming. And right now there's some activity actually here in Germany. I do get regular emails. And today they they said one newsletter said a new record. One hundred twenty three startups founded like last week in Germany that they could track. So there is an entrepreneurial activity already starting. The startups are preparing ideas, but I don't think we'll see a lot until, let's say, ECDIS fall twenty twenty one, maybe even spring twenty twenty two is when really the changes will hit.

This is. Like, more, more, more on the Opportunities side, I see the developing world. One hundred and twenty three Startups in one week, So there's there's a lot of a lot of movement and ideas that are coming up. And startups and entrepreneurs are trying to cope with the situation and make the best of it. Right.

Yeah, the Chinese are always very philosophic and a crisis is for them, like a tow character word and one character is problem and one character's opportunity.

It's true.

And and I also saw this opportunity basically my yeah, you may know the trouble, but most of your audience won't know that. It's really always very hard to say how many subscribers, how many downloads you have because podcasting is extremely decentralized. And but what you can say is basically a download curve. So there's either bought, say, from Amazon music, from Spotify, from fail or something that looks oh, is their new content. Is there something you can download something or they snap there's a desktop computer or something else requesting there and you can actually track those requests pretty easily and I can feed those requests seen crowing like almost a thousand six hundred percent annually for my Podcast since the end of twenty eighteen, beginning of twenty nineteen. But there was like a really, really big growth in the last quarter of twenty twenty and hopefully that will continue.

So I guess people have also more time right now and or or else are more interested in seeing what's what's coming up.

I would say it's part of many things, we get more press coverage, for example, take you and crunch based recommended us, ask the only state Podcast from Germany on their list, English-Speaking Startups Podcast. We also do get a lot of coverage in other blogs and stuff like that. Plus people have more time at hand and Podcast thing when I started out. Many people ask what is a Podcast now? People say, oh yeah, I have a few Podcast that I subscribe to and people start just using it more, utilizing their reach out to the world in terms of podcasting more because there's a lot of good and interesting podcasts out there. And since I'm working full time here, as I told you, I work at least once a week until midnight, but I do take a longer lunch break. So I have lunch with my family and then I take a walk into this walk every day I listen to Podcast. There are a lot of very, very good podcasts out there. But admittedly and not necessarily listening to a lot of startup Podcast like by startup companies or covering startup companies and rather than listening to other stuff, because I'm basically focused on startups and take like 90 percent of my work life.

So there has to be something else like having a good time while listening to interesting people around the globe for philosophy or whatever is.

Something like this. But admittedly, I also listen sometimes to The Wall Street Journal, to The Economist and the like, the big guys, because in a Podcast you can because if if you talk to a person, if you have an interview like an Podcast interview with some people, you can get really, really more. Information out of this interview then like a written statement, plus it's almost the only way you can really get to know a little bit, a tiny bit the personality of your interview partner. Otherwise, it's very hard to just see that from something else. When you see an interview on TV, it's cut down to like five minutes, 10 minutes, sometimes even half a minute IT just a little statement or something like that. And there's something. I don't like too much, that's why my interviews are going on for quite some time, usually between twenty five and forty five minutes, where admittedly my audience has a tendency to prefer more, something like 30, 35 minutes.

OK, well, when we talk about Startups in general and you are an expert in this field, as you as well as you have worked in this particular field for many years now. When you get to know and you start up or a new company, what what is the first thing you're really looking for to decide to do something interesting? Or this could be something interesting or something that is of value or opportunity. What are the things that as a scout you were watching first or what are you looking at?

Um. I'm afraid I lost a little bit you first thing as a scout I'm looking for, right?

Yes the question is, what are you looking for as a as a scout and when when you reach out to new companies or when you're looking for new companies, what what is what is your main interest or what is it with the news that when you decide, OK, this is this is something I should look further into, this could be an opportunity in the future or I want to have to maybe on the Podcast or. Oh, how you decide how you go for them. But what are you looking for?

Usually nothing substitutes talking to the entrepreneur, C-level executive, their. What I usually do is like shaking my head because a lot of startups out there, they do very interesting stuff, but they are not good in communicating. And so when you go on a company's website, they do whatever and they call it and they say we call it da da da da. And that's basically a term they see as USP we only one doing this and that. But for a person not involved in such a company, it's very hard to understand what they actually do. I would say at least 50 percent of these startup company websites fail to communicate what those guys are actually doing, some of them are very good in highlighting the benefit for potential users. But in my former position as a startup scout, I was going for how those guys are doing it, because the idea was to bring them together with clients of my former employer and make something awesome, new, innovative out of that. And there was something I usually could not find on the company website. What I'm personally looking for is something unique. If you're now a market company, chances are very slim that I take you in the interview. I personally am also looking for to be content because there is. Always kind of a divide because B2C companies, they have to be good in marketing or they die B2B companies, they don't have necessarily to be very good at marketing. The problem is that kind of goes on through their lifetime, because if you look into like English speaking press clerks, press coverage, it's usually the B2C companies to highlight for one reason. It's more interesting to the audience and for the second reason the B2C companies are just better in doing marketing. So I'm personally looking more for the B2B companies that are not that popular. So basically, in the last few years, I frequently got the message, oh, we've been on this Podcast and this Podcast and this Podcast. Don't you want to do an interview with us as well? And usually my answer is just no. I'm looking for original content. I'm looking for content. Nobody else has like 80 percent. Of the Startups that I'm talking to, you don't have anything in English. That's what I'm looking for as a Podcast or as a Startups God, I was always looking at the technology. Is it stable? Can it potentially Guides like on a global level? How would it fit within the client? How are the prospects for the company, for example? Is it interesting for an investor? And and that will be the stuff I'm looking for, scalability and stability of the technological solution. And as well as the ability to kind of connect it like talking API, so stuff like this to other software, other Tools.

As I watched some of the episodes from your recent past. I got also the feeling that a lot of those entrepreneurs, they're not really used to to talk maybe through press or telling their story. You have like really to nudge them and get the story out. What, what, what, what, what they are really doing and find their story inside their company. That's the feeling I got some sometimes, not always. But it seems like a lot of those tech start ups, like the teams there, are like more introverted and they're really good and really experts and what they're doing.But I like to to communicate the story around the business, as you already mentioned.

Yes. That that is actually one of the points I'm trying to make. I try to give my air time, my coverage to startups who don't already have like 100 zillion articles, blogs, podcasts, press coverage, press articles out there about them that that's what I'm looking for. That's kind of my USP. And yes, usually I talk to you early or pretty early stage startups, which also means that I do have not. You are trained to interview partners there, which is awesome. But I already had it like one or two times in very, very early interviews. They done got a PR coach. The PR coach first looked on the Internet on a on all the interviews. What did the entrepreneur do? What did he say? And I've already received two requests to take interviews offline because they were a little bit too open to opinionated express, a little bit too much of what they were thinking for their new PR stuff. And of course, I complied with those requests. But it's actually something I like because it also tells you a lot about the personality, about the person.When the people are coached by PR stuff, when they do a lot of interviews, you can usually tell IT it tends to be a little bit more boring, a little bit more straightforward, because those entrepreneurs usually give frequent interviews and it usually goes along the same lines, which is, of course also interesting for me because it's a challenge to really get something new, something unique out of them.

When we talked about the start ups and like when things are not really settled in the first phase of of of scaling up, I found it crucial, like really getting on. A great team set up, but I also see that startups like fail often in this in this phase of where do you see the biggest potential they are on? When or where can startups and founders and entrepreneurs like really get into when they grow as a as a startup, maybe from two or three people, and then they might bump up their stuff and one day and they have like 20 or 25 or 50 people, they are like starting to struggle with this whole environment. What would what would you say is important in this phase of a startup?

You can always scale technology solutions, but you cannot scale people, so people are your limiting factor and at the most crucial asset of any company out there. Personally, I found the, let's say, first dozen Hyers of people you don't know, really crucial for the success of a startup. And it's also where the entrepreneur can do a lot of stuff, right? I could do a lot of stuff wrong because down the road in like 10, 15 years, maybe he wants to retire. He wants to spend his money and looks for a replacement. And maybe there is somebody who he had hired in the beginning who could replace him. That would be like the ideal long term solution. More frequently, I do see the people treat hiring more like project work. So basically they're looking for that's a current job. Check, check, check. Everything's fine. You hire this person, they don't really see that the environment is very dynamic and they may need to take on other roles over time that the company may grow too big to be a suitable employer for the skills of this person or something like this. So bottom line, you can do a lot of stuff, right, with the first handful of hires, but it's a make or break moment for almost every startup out there, especially if you hire like tech talent. If you hire like the first sales or marketing people, that will give an impression of a company out there. That is that a very crucial moment. And I would strongly, strongly recommend for everybody to really think about what they actually look for, to think about how they can establish a company culture. Because if you if you just hire people and give them a desk and say, OK, let's work, that is not the setup. We really established company culture. The first very first few hires are extremely crucial for the medium to long term success of your company. And maybe they even decide if there is a medium success for your company at all. That is one of points up. I really see frequently that they either suffered greatly or badly and for the to solved recruiting problems, that's usually a company that will be shut down soon.

I'm also seeing like this, this huge shift, since with the whole Corona situation doing it last year, that everyone was pushed in and Remote work situations. The companies, especially start ups right now, are also hiring people more, more globally. Right. Or Remote in the first place, which is, I guess, a good, good thing, because you can attract a lot of lot more talent that that fits to you or to your company. And you're not really restraint to getting them in San Francisco or in Berlin, which are already like cities or locations that are so expensive that almost nobody can move there or you have to pay so high salaries that's that for a startup that is not possible. And I see that with Flash Hub the company that we're working with, that there's a huge chance, especially for startups to scale quickly with a global workforce, with freelancers around the globe. And then you don't have to worry like months and months to get the right people at your place. You have to maybe work and focus on getting the culture right that you said before and getting you put the people on board and having the right space for them. But I'd like to know what you think about that change over the last months.

I think that's also something that will leave tracks. In the future, I see more and more startups before they've been pretty open to do like Remote work with like a handful of people. Right now I'm seeing more and more startups initially set up to be completely Remote or Remote as possible. I do think that's one of the consequences of the Corona pandemic. I do believe it is not yet well enough, understood how you can really establish company culture, a good work environment with like an almost completely Remote company. Hard to believe there's a lot of work to be done. And the people now at the cutting edge of this. They just have to do the work. I. Could not point to like any research, any publication, anything I've seen so far. They are like a good a lot of good pieces to the puzzle, but there is no complete overall picture how you could really do that. And of course, that is and will be a challenge for the foreseeable future, especially if you have people like from very diverse cultural backgrounds, let's say in different time zones with more or less stable Internet connection, so that that will be a problem for for the coming years.

Yeah, and you don't have to go so far for getting like better connections, you can just in Germany run into problems can arose ther still very quickly. I would like to dove a little bit more with you in to the mentality of creating start ups, as we talked before. I see a lot of times this mentality in Germany or in Europe, maybe speaking a little bit more general about this mentality when you go and say, OK, we have a great idea for a startup and we are we are going for it, and then they start up with their activities. And most of the times they have in mind, OK, this is our one shot and we have to get it right and best of get rich or sell the company later on for for for the highest bidder. And it doesn't really work out all the time. There is a lot of failure. And I put it here in my notes like a startup to fail. This is maybe a good word for that. But in Europe we have like this mentality that has to work out for the first time or try if it's not working right now, it will never work. And when you go in other countries in the US or America in general, there's more like this attitude. OK, I'm going to try it today. If it's not working today, I'd start a new thing tomorrow. So this is more like a learning process. How could like startups in Germany or in Europe getting more into this mentality of what is missing?

That's a good question. I do believe the mentality here on the side of the entrepreneurs as well as on the side of the investors are changing and changing for the better. I do believe public perception of like a failed startup entrepreneur needs to change, but that's nothing that'll happen in like the next five years. I really do believe that a lot of entrepreneurs are already here to really try this out and then just talk to a startup who raised hundreds of millions and I said, we're not out there yet. But if if when we start, you'll notice it, you'll see it, and we'll either fail fast and spectacularly or we'll succeed spectacularly. So even this approach is already has already arrived here in Germany.

Jah. So I guess it's also important from like as well from the founder's side, but also from the investor side, but to have this mentality that things doesn't have to work out in the first one. When I was doing a little research on the Podcast for today, and it's I guess it's more like in the in the United States where you have like this different rounds of funding. Right. And with the increased series of foundlings, like the things are getting more more serious. But early in the pre seed seeding states and the A rounds, there's like more this acceptance of failure. Right. And even if you go and look in the later stages, there are also like fallbacks where you could say, OK, this is just a phase where we can ask for more money because things are still not working out as we expected. And I would see that also, or I would like to see it also more in Germany on the German speaking market where we're seeing so as to like or you have to get all things first in order before receiving money or getting funds for your startup.

Mm hmm.I do believe funding is still an issue here in Germany, but I continually see it's getting better. It was close to impossible in 2013 to get startup funding here in Frankfurt. Right now, I would say it's not easy money. You don't go to two people and you end up with one hundred thousand euros. But it's better. I talk to a lot of investors here in and around Frankfurt. They do have the biggest business angel association in Germany, but they are not investing big numbers. What has been missing as a crucial step? What's already out there, for example, in Silicon Valley is entrepreneurs who have been very successful, maybe made an exit, listed the company and do have now a lot of cash on their hands to invest with an entrepreneurial mentality. That is coming but it's coming slowly. You can see it, for example, already in Berlin with a handful of VC funds set up by successful entrepreneurs. And I do see it more and more coming all across Germany. That is also like the investors, the entrepreneurs, investors, let's call them that way, that are a little bit more needed. And they tend to see more, even though not in sufficient numbers yet.

When we talk about crucial and also then are to to wrap up the things on. You as an expert, when you see start ups in general, Podcast are what I maybe the one or two topics where startups always fail or most often fail, and if you could give out a tip or a recommendation how to avoid that, that would be really interesting for us.

Not really sure if I'm a startup expert, but I do see two tendencies, either too small or too big. Like they are thinking, oh, well, let's do first do market around here and Frankfurt and maybe we expand to Germany. That's the one side of the coin. And the other side of the coin is like, yeah, in four weeks we're going to open something in Singapore and New York, on an extreme, like an extreme scale. I would say startups in general in Germany don't think enough about internationalization, global scaling. And they are way to ambitious plans are also still around. I talk to a lot of those extremely ambitious start ups, but it looks to me, at least right now, that they have not necessarily succeeded with those ambitious plans. So I do believe making reasonable plans is a good thing. Like you said, pre seed seeds, A funding. And then you can go into like global scaling. And that may change, depending on your startup, three to even six years before you get there, before they really, up to six years before there's really a reward for being an entrepreneur, for really scaling, for really selling your equity to potential investors. It's it's not that fast here in Germany. I see some cases in the US what happens quite fast, but also in the US they're successful companies which have been around for quite some time and did not just press a button and scaled globally, but rather they are they build up continually. And I think do reasonable planning look for your first hires and always make sure you have them, if you take external investors do your due diligence and make sure you do have an alignment of interest there. If you don't have it, your startup may fail as certain as when you hire bad people, as when you never get your tech straight. That are the crucial components like your product, speaking about tech, your employees and your investors. There was, for example, once an article in TechCrunch that more startups failed due to their investors than due to the market.

This is interesting. So the setup and also the investor sites and getting the alignments, is this really crucial in the first place.

It's never worth taking money from somebody you don't want to have a beer with on. It's never worth to have investors speaking like five thousand Euros, ten thousand v, up to one hundred thousand Euros that don't bring any added value to the table. I do have two very awesome investors in my company, but they are not, their financial contribution is small, but it's by far the smallest part, the lowest number of reasons for what I have them in my company, because they bring additional skills, they bring additional network, they bring additional capabilities that I don't have. That is something you would need to look for in an investor. Not only money, money, you can get pretty quickly everywhere. But keep in mind, investors can also kill your company pretty fast.

So that keep in mind here, Joe, thank you so much for taking the time today. I was really happy to get all the insights out of you and sharing this time. If people and startups or entrepreneurs wants to reach out or get connected with you or where they go and how, they could probably connect with you.

Basically, they could go to LinkedIN search for Joern Menninger, and they could also write me an email, Joe@startuprad.io they can www.startuprad.io or just punch in startuprad.io and they'll end up on my website. And if they just punch something into the contact sheet, then get straight to me or they can even find me on all podcasting apps. And there's always a feedback form that they can reach me as well as my Twitter LinkedIN account link in the show notes depending on your device sometimes. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

And I'm going to link all this, of course in our show notes

...down here, down here,

Great thanks again Jo for taking the time today it was really a pleasure.

Thank you very much.

I want to thank our guests, Joern, for joining us today. To find out more about the work of John, you should visit his site, Startuprad.io Dot Oil, and dive in to the shows he is producing. You can also get in touch with Joe on LinkedIN. Find all the links below in the show notes. You can subscribe to the Virtual Frontier on Apple, Podcast, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, Amazon, music, YouTube or wherever Podcast can be found. And while you're there, you can leave us a review. Please support us on Patron so we can keep improving the show and your experience on behalf of the team here to Virtual Frontier, I want to thank you for listening. So until next episode, keep exploring new frontiers.