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Episode 12 - Bettina Fischer, Co-Founder & CEO at Hivebuy
28 Plays1 year ago
In this episode, Sade is joined by Bettina Fischer, Co-Founder and CEO of Hivebuy, who shares her insights on what the first 100 days as a founder involves and how to actually get started with or without capital.
Bettina goes on to share what happens after the first 100 days and beyond.
For female founders, this is a must listen!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Bettina Fischer and HiFi
00:00:13
Speaker
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Women Talk Tech. Today, I'm joined by Bettina Fischer, co-founder and CEO of HiFi. In this chat, we discuss her career journey and her main motivation for founding HiFi and what she enjoys the most about being a founder of
Challenges and Strategies in the First 100 Days
00:00:28
Speaker
a tech company.
00:00:28
Speaker
We also discuss the first 100 days as a founder, as for many, the question of where to begin is super daunting. Beyond that, what happens after the first 100 days? Bettina shares her advice on how founders can make it past the 100-day mark and ensure their business is a massive success. Super excited for you to hear this conversation.
HiveBuy and Expansion Plans
00:00:46
Speaker
So, Bettina, tell me a little bit more about yourself.
00:00:50
Speaker
Thank you for having me. My name is Bettina. I'm founder of HiveBuy. HiveBuy is an e-procurement solution which is targeting mid-size companies as of now in Germany in the Dach region, so Austria and Switzerland. And we're now also expanding to a webshop B2B market. And we're located in Berlin. Our team is now 15 people.
00:01:12
Speaker
Yeah, I'm happy to be here today. Nice, nice.
Diversity and Inclusion in Startups
00:01:16
Speaker
And just to kind of kick things off on the kind of DNI topic, what does DNI mean to you and why would you say it's important to you?
00:01:24
Speaker
So DNI means for me to live in a culture and society that is super diverse and also that is kind of leveraging the benefits and the strengths that everyone has and brings to the table. And for me, it's really important because actually I'm the only woman in our startup, so we're now having one
00:01:49
Speaker
other women starting in September, and I just see that it's so much needed to have diverse teams in order to be successful. Yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. To be fair, I was, from the very beginning, say just to be fair, I was, to be fair, I wasn't the first, but I was the first female, and then, yeah, we soon hired.
The Unexpected Path to Entrepreneurship
00:02:07
Speaker
So, yeah, I do get what it's like to kind of be the first female, especially in a startup, for sure.
00:02:12
Speaker
Oh yes. Now think about founding this kind of startup and then you realize that you only find women who want to work, that you only find men who want to work with you. So yeah, take us back to the beginning. How do you get to where you are today? How are you now the CEO and co-founder of HiFi?
00:02:29
Speaker
Yeah, actually that's kind of a funny story because I never wanted to found a startup. I just worked, I used to work in finance and finance optimization projects and so on in bigger companies as Lidl and Salando and so on. And well, I realized at one point that actually my mental health was not that well and I didn't want to make other people
00:02:50
Speaker
richer where I don't follow their purpose and so on. And then I spoke with a lot of founders and other companies and actually I wanted to start a standard CFO career because I always did work in finance, I always did optimization projects, so I thought this would be the next step.
Inspiration from Industry Conversations
00:03:06
Speaker
And while I was talking with the dedicated founders, one of them told me, hey Bettina,
00:03:12
Speaker
If you're going to solve the problems that you saw in your last jobs, then I'm going to offer you a 50% position and also a first business angel ticket. And actually that's how I started and that's how everything began because then I had actually the, I would say,
00:03:33
Speaker
the capacity and also the money to really start thinking about something and how to solve the issues that I tackled in the bigger companies I work for. Wow. So the main motivation really came from not wanting to help rich people get richer. How cool.
00:03:50
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean, you see, when you're working in a bigger company, you always realize at one point that you're just like a really small part of it. And if you would be there, if you would be there, it's great. Or if you're not there, it's also okay. So that was kind of something that gave me a kind of crisis.
Navigating the Startup World as a Female Founder
00:04:10
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I guess what challenges have you faced as a female co-founder, CEO? How have you kind of found the journey?
00:04:19
Speaker
So being a first time founder, I think this is something that we also need to take into consideration. There were a lot of things. I mean, at the beginning for me, it was like just getting thrown into this pool of startups and this whole bubble in Berlin, this Berlin startup bubble is really big. And then it's kind of navigating through knowing with whom you need to speak, how you need to kind of position yourself and so on. This was really tricky.
00:04:47
Speaker
Also, when you're thinking, so actually I felt kind of alone being in a software as a service B2B startup back then. And what I learned or what were actually my problems back then was that I just, when we decided to do a fundraising round, I just pitched in front of men and
00:05:11
Speaker
Actually, then you just realize that they are just speaking with your co-founder, even though he's the CTO and he's not the one who's, I don't know, dealing with all of the numbers and also dealing with a business case and so on. But at one point I just sat there and I thought, okay, sorry, do you want to talk with me as well? Because actually I'm the CEO of the company, but you do you.
00:05:32
Speaker
Wow. So that, that was a challenge itself, you know, just trying to navigate being still the only female in the room with a room full of males making a decision based on your own company. Crazy. Totally. Wow. Wow. And on the flip side, what do you enjoy the most about being a female founder of a tech
Leadership Style and Personal Satisfaction
00:05:48
Speaker
company? What's like, what's your favorite thing?
00:05:52
Speaker
Actually, I really like to bring kind of a personal note into the fix. So compared to my co-founder, I'm rather more the leading part of the company. So I kind of try to give the team more space to express their feelings, to discuss things, to also kind of
00:06:15
Speaker
bringing up their characters, ideas and so on. So kind of enforcing this and this is a pretty cool way and I mean also I don't think that it's just like focus on being a female founder. I think it's just great that you have this kind of vision and this purpose and you can just do every day something what you believe in and
00:06:38
Speaker
It's, that's so amazing. Every day when I enter our office, I'm like, okay, crazy. We're here. Wow. Wow. How cool.
Advice for Aspiring Founders
00:06:47
Speaker
And, you know, really keen to dive into a really cool topic because I think becoming a founder can be scary, it can be intimidating. And I think to be fair, most women are probably put off by it just because of how overwhelming it can be. And I think those first 100 days, kind of like, I don't know if you've watched 90, no, what was it? The 90 day fiance where you kind of test out being married for 90 days.
00:07:10
Speaker
I love it. I cannot imagine being a founder very similar right the first 100 days are kind of make or break you're either gonna not make or break but it's either going to be amazing or you're going to think why did I even do this so you know let's start from the beginning because really keen to kind of know how you found it and how your experience has been so let's start from the beginning you have no capital how do I actually get started like where would you advise me to go
00:07:35
Speaker
So first of all, I would advise you to speak with a lot of people about it. So I see that there are a couple of founders, especially female, that don't want to share their maybe not ready ideas and so on. But I think this is super important that you really start to pitch in front of people that know you where you're not that nervous and so on and where you can kind of build the idea together with them. And at the beginning, it was also for me kind of
00:08:04
Speaker
overwhelming because as I said I was I was never keen to found anything so I never kind of
00:08:11
Speaker
I never looked into these kind of things. I never read the relevant magazines, newsletter, whatever. And I just was like, OK, well, we've got this idea. How do we start? And what we did at the beginning was really just we didn't think about capital at the beginning. We didn't think about how to do the business model and how to get the monetization about it. We really tried to speak with companies, with potential users.
00:08:39
Speaker
and trying to build this whole idea. So it's really about first identifying what you even want to do. Because you see that at the beginning, everything is kind of fluffy. So at the beginning, we were like, yeah, we want to build an e-procurement solution for startups. But then we realized, well, startups, they don't need e-procurement. They just order everything. And Amazon, they're happy. And they don't want to take care of this. And that's totally fine. But if you're speaking with people, it's kind of finding this
00:09:09
Speaker
does USP finding your ICP finding or defining actually a couple of hypotheses. I think this is something what we could have done better is really defining clear hypotheses and then validating them. I think we were just like let's see how it goes. But I think this would have been something what also would have given me the
00:09:33
Speaker
the right strength and confidence to also start later on with fundraising because as just everything happened and I really didn't have any hypothesis back then, everything just happened and I really didn't know
00:09:49
Speaker
if I did something right or if I was just lucky. And I really also didn't know if this is now really the ICP, the buying persona, whatever I'm now selling to. And are these even the right arguments that I'm currently using? So it's super interesting.
Funding Strategies and VC Necessity
00:10:05
Speaker
And I think this is actually the first thing that you need to do. And then afterwards, try to think about how you would like to monetize everything and then define how you would like to get capital.
00:10:18
Speaker
So I think it's not super important to directly, I think there's also one small mistake that we made back then is we directly thought, okay, the right approach is going to be the whole VC case. I mean, we raised our first money in 2021. The market was great back then. And we just had an idea and we found directly business angels and so on.
00:10:42
Speaker
I think nowadays, and also if I would found again, I would really try to apply for grants first because when you're applying for grants, you're also kind of forced to put everything on paper and to really make up your mind about what you're doing, building business cases and structuring everything.
00:11:01
Speaker
before you even start and then think about if you do you even need VC or VC money or do you even need business angel money if you decide that you need VC money then directly get in touch with maybe VCs and try to validate your idea and ask them what do you need
00:11:20
Speaker
in order to give me money for which stage? Yeah yeah yeah because that's so true and I think most people assume that to do well you have to go down the VC route and to be fair it's not the only way you can you can generate capital right and I think that for me would probably be a mistake I would make I'd be like yeah straight to the VCs let's get some more money but then also like how does that even work and for female founders we know the amount of funding is really low so that could be a struggle in itself
00:11:47
Speaker
Yeah, totally. And I think also that you're lacking the knowledge if you're doing it the first time. So you really need friendly VCs that are kind of taking you by the hand and tell you what to do and what not to do. And this is actually, if you're already at this point, I think that's not the right approach.
00:12:05
Speaker
Being now in this position, I would have needed to speak with more people about how fundraising works, what are the indicators, what are the KPIs and so on, in order to be more confident in the whole pitching part. What I also did at the beginning was, I really needed to
00:12:24
Speaker
to dig into this whole startup scene and I really went to all of the events and fairs and so Slash and Helsinki was an amazing event and so on and it's really kind of giving you also the feeling how startups work and also
00:12:44
Speaker
you see there that BC is not the only money you can get. And actually this was a great eye-opening event for me because I really realized that it's not easier, it's not harder, it's just super different.
00:12:58
Speaker
And this would have been actually a nice experience before. And you know, what was maybe one of the biggest struggles that you had in the first 100 days, because there could have been quite a lot, but what was there, if there was any like bigger event that you were like, oh my gosh, this is going downhill from here. What was the biggest struggle for you in the very early days?
Learning from Early Mistakes
00:13:20
Speaker
So not knowing anything made me believing everything from people that it seemed kind of reliable. Let's say it like that. So when, when, when an old white VC came to me and told me, Bettina, you need a salesperson in order to do sales for high five, I directly started looking for someone. And actually this was also my biggest mistake, like hiring.
00:13:46
Speaker
that early MVP sales, who didn't, I mean, founder, let's say this is the best sales that you can do at the beginning is also the easiest and cheapest one. And actually, these kind of things. So I really followed a lot of weird assumptions and weird people that I wouldn't follow anymore.
00:14:06
Speaker
Because everyone has something to say, you know, and everyone has... I think what is so crazy about this whole startup world is that the people are always seeming like they know everything, they have the biggest pockets, they have the most successful startup and so on. And then two weeks later you see that they're bankrupt and you see that that was always just like...
00:14:31
Speaker
lies or lies, but they're decorating a lot. And this was also making me super nervous because I always thought, well, okay, what did they do? And what did they do? How did they do this? What am I doing wrong?
00:14:46
Speaker
And I guess in the early days as well, when you don't know much, anyone that says anything, you're like, oh my gosh, that's gospel. Like, you know, for me, whenever I go to the doctors, I'm like, oh yeah, that's it. They know what they're talking about, especially when you follow it, you don't know. So I think in this case as well, when you are a first founder, you don't know much. So anything that anyone says, you're like, oh, okay, we must listen to that. So yeah, I could definitely see that being a big struggle for many startups out there, female, male, whatever the case may be.
00:15:15
Speaker
When I'm meeting other founders, it doesn't matter if male or female, I'm always like, can I talk to you honestly? Or do we need to do this whole dance and telling that everything is fine? And then all of them are like, oh, yes, finally, I can talk with someone. Oh, this is not good. And this is not good. And really, we need to change this and that. Okay, good. Yeah.
00:15:36
Speaker
yeah it's big openly with people yeah definitely and what about a big success you know in the first 100 days you know let's be honest we may not expect too much success but who knows some good makeup what about yeah what about some big successes you had in the very early stages i think it's really important to talk about the good thing it's not all doom and gloom it's not so much struggle it can be fun and it can be good
00:15:59
Speaker
I mean, actually, I think the first 100 days were a rare success because...
00:16:07
Speaker
you stepped out of your comfort zone, you really try something new, what you never did before, you kind of get positive feedback from people that you think they're reliable, but this was the other topic. But I think, I mean, this is like, it's a crazy journey that you're starting, and I think you should celebrate every step that you take into this direction. So at the beginning, we also applied for all of these.
00:16:34
Speaker
Microsoft accelerator programs, Google accelerator programs and so on. And every time, I mean, now I know that it's just everybody's getting in there. But back then I was like, oh my God, we made it to the Google startup program. Great. And we just celebrated everything. And I think this is super, super important. Yeah. How amazing.
00:16:53
Speaker
And I guess back to the funding topics, I think that's really interesting. For people that maybe don't raise funding in their very early days, they kind of use their own savings or they get a grant. When is the right time to then start fundraising in your kind of own personal experience? Are there any signs that people should look out for? When do you think, okay, cool, I need to go get VC money now?
00:17:16
Speaker
So I can first tell you how we did it and then I can tell you how I would like to do it now. So I mean at the beginning when we started fundraising funds we had our business model completely written down, we had a business plan, we knew what to do, we knew how to do and we were just like
00:17:38
Speaker
about to start with an MVP. And my co-founder already built a click MVP, but it was nothing special. But then we realized, okay, in order to really show something and to test something, which might be ugly, but in order to do this, we would need at least one developer. And then we realized, okay, maybe we should also
00:18:02
Speaker
try to get as much money as we can in a business angel round. So we really ask friends, business angels, and so on in order to invest in us with convertible loan agreements. And I think, so you spoke about personal savings and so on. Actually, I'm not a fan of putting all the money that you save for you and your financial stability into a company that might fail. Yeah.
00:18:32
Speaker
I mean, it really depends on your savings, but what is, if shit hits the fan, what are you doing if you're not like, I mean, you're not earning in the first couple of years, you're not earning a lot and you're kind of, I mean, you still want to live, you know?
00:18:50
Speaker
I'm getting married next week. And if I wouldn't not have savings, I couldn't save up much and with my, with my startup salary now. And I think this is really something what you really need to figure out, whether this is important for you. I would rather go with business ancients and maybe have friends, but we went with business angel and angels. And this was a pretty.
00:19:11
Speaker
Good idea. And then later the year, so everything took place in June, July. So one actually, one big learning boss, don't do fundraising in summer. No one's going to respond. But just for me, it was like, come on, how long are they on vacation? But then I realized we ceased.
00:19:29
Speaker
are not working in summer. So everyone's on vacation now, literally everyone, like I'm like, are they going to come back? It's been like six weeks now, what the hell? Yeah, totally. And I thought, okay, if they really want, if they really want to invest in us, then they're going to invest in us also in July. But well, I was wrong.
00:19:46
Speaker
And then we did it in September, October, another round with, I would say it's a boutique VC. So they did not a big ticket, but it was already an organized group of business angels with LPs behind. And yeah, then we somehow had a lot of money and then we just started. I mean, this was great, but looking back, I would have
00:20:13
Speaker
had, I would have put less money in development and rather start with a, with these click, with these click softwares where you can just click everything together and then it's okay. We have these click dummies and I would have had started with this so that Stefan and I, so me and my co-founder didn't need to hire people that early. Yeah. But on the other hand side,
00:20:36
Speaker
These people that worked back then with us are still with us two years later. This is amazing. Everything can be also positive.
00:20:49
Speaker
Yeah, that's actually my next question because I think funding is one thing and you need the funding to be able to hire. On the hiring side, again, when did you know it was the right time to start growing your team? Because I think for many people, the thought of having to pay more people when they don't have money is quite hard. So when did you kind of see the right sign to say, hey, now is the right time we need to start hiring?
00:21:10
Speaker
So at the beginning we just figured out what are the things that we can't do. So for example, for us, it was like really deep development. So we hire directly developers and then we made this mistake to hire a salesperson at the beginning, which was totally bullshit. So I would say you need to think about the things that you can't do or where you're not good in and then put the money there. So let's say we identified a gap in development.
00:21:40
Speaker
I thought that I would have a gap in sales, but actually if you're finding a company, then you should also be able to sell the product and you should start hiring a salesperson when you have, I would say 10 clients or something like this.
00:21:57
Speaker
when you really know what, when you really can teach them how the clients are kind of behaving in their sales cycle and so on. And this makes you even stronger in regards to fundraising because if you're pitching, you're a tool or your product
00:22:14
Speaker
three, five, 10 times a day, then you get also used to speak to other people. You get out of your comfort zone and you just get used to do this and you're not kind of, you don't need to make like directly the bigger hiring that are super expensive.
00:22:29
Speaker
Yeah, no, definitely. Because I think that that's probably a, you're right, if you can't sell your own company, who else can? So in the very early stages, right, sales is not so important, I would argue, probably the development, the actually getting the product up and running, and then you can kind of sort out the sales later when, when say you don't have the capacity to do it all, you know,
00:22:48
Speaker
Yeah,
Encouragement for Female Founders
00:22:49
Speaker
totally. And I guess from your side, Bettina, what's the one piece of advice you would give to a female founder or any founder? But of course, a female founder would be great. That you wish someone would have told you in the very early days. Yeah, what would that be?
00:23:03
Speaker
I think it's for me, it would have been something for me like you can do it. So there are a lot of people that already did it and there are a lot of startups that already failed and it's already a great step that you even started it and that you even try to solve a problem that you solve because this is already the biggest step and I know that
00:23:27
Speaker
Speaking of imposter syndrome and so on, I know that you're always kind of struggling with yourself and thinking about if you're really the right person doing this, if you're really the person who's doing the sales. So, it's like you always have these thoughts and I think everyone has these thoughts and it's about how you can deal with it. So, I read one book, it's from Horowitz, I think.
00:23:54
Speaker
It's the heart. The name is the hard things about hard things. That's at the beginning. Hey, everyone is struggling. Everyone has problems. It's about who's dealing the best with
00:24:09
Speaker
with these struggles and thoughts. So you need to accept it and you need to live with it. And that's, I think this was actually an eye-opening statement for me because I always thought that the others were much better than I was and so on. But then he was like, yeah, it's not about how everybody's facing these kinds of issues and obstacles.
00:24:32
Speaker
People that are succeeding are the ones that can deal with it. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. 100%. And I guess beyond that, you know, you've reached the 100 day mark, which is amazing, but it doesn't stop there. If anything, the first 100 days are really crucial, but what you do after those birthdays are even more important, right? So beyond the 100 days, the first 100 days, what happens? How do you still ensure that the business is successful and makes it through an another 100 days?
00:25:01
Speaker
So actually, I think that you can say it after 100 days if your business is successful or not. I think this is always, I think you're having these kind of thoughts that you always need to have a big milestone or something like this, but you won't realize for a long time that you're
00:25:23
Speaker
successful or not. So actually me being now two years into high five, I wouldn't say to you that it's 100% successful. So I wouldn't go out now and being like super proud. And so I'm proud of myself and I'm proud of the team. And I think we're doing a great job, but it's not that we now founded Apple or something like this, where we directly, UK nice, we made revenues, tons of revenues and so on. So I think it's about,
00:25:51
Speaker
What I think is important is, and also this is one thing, one advice that one of our VCs gave us, or gave me especially, writing down your monthly goals and measuring yourself against your goals. Because if you start measuring yourself, then you stop comparing and you also have this kind of
00:26:16
Speaker
reassuring that you're really good and that's what you're doing. Yeah, that's so true because you're right, you know, after 100 days, you know, you still got to keep going, right? It doesn't stop there. And there's probably so much work to continue doing. So yeah, no, I definitely get that.
00:26:33
Speaker
I guess from your side as well, what's the one piece of advice again that you would give someone that's reached a 100-day mark but still wants to continue and still wants to keep persevering? What would you say to that person that's reached 100 days but is still thinking, what the hell am I doing?
Supportive Networks and Communities
00:26:50
Speaker
look for fellow founders, look for founders who are on the next stage, speak with them and speak with them openly. I mean, there's a lot of bullshitting in this whole startup area, but you need to find a group of people that is communicating open and honest with each other. Because if you're always in this toxic group of people where everything is amazing and great and
00:27:13
Speaker
super successful and revenues as, I don't know, then you start, then it's just toxic, it destroys you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's so true because otherwise you just get so, yeah, you need help. I think, and it's okay to ask for help. It's okay to say, hey, I want to be around other female founders who are struggling just as much as me. That's not a bad thing. You need to have a supportive environment of wise, how do you kind of get through it by yourself?
00:27:40
Speaker
totally. And I also what I would recommend is finding these groups, find this group of people within the city that you're located. And so for me, I founded female founder in tech in Berlin.
Female Founders Network in Berlin
00:27:52
Speaker
So if someone is listening, and as a female founder in tech in Berlin just approached me, and I'm gonna add you to our channel, we're now 130 female founders there. And yeah, it's always great to meet up. And we always realize every time when we're entering this room that everything is kind of
00:28:10
Speaker
open, honest, and real, and authentic. And there's no one who's trying to destroy the other person. It's really encouraging and supporting. And the other thing what I think is super important is joining actually Slack channels, so founder Slack channels. There's, for example, one Slack channel from landscape BC, and it's called anonymous founders.
00:28:39
Speaker
Actually you always have kind of rants and there you have questions about the seas are also in i would say stupid questions comes to fundraising where you don't.
00:28:50
Speaker
I don't dare to ask someone else and you can always ask it there and that's super cool because everyone is anonymous and you don't know who you're speaking with and everyone is also super supporting because so when you're writing something down there, you have at least five people who answer this thread with been there done that you need to do.
00:29:14
Speaker
It's so cool. I love that. I love that. Oh, amazing. Well, Bettina, honestly, thank you so much for joining me. I think it was such a great conversation because I think there are so many women out there that are thinking really want to find a company, but what do I even do in the very first day? So yeah, thanks so much for sharing that and for being really open and honest about how the experience has been for you. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It was so much fun. Thank you.