No one really talks about this when discussing physical industry events. People don't go for the content. Here and there you may learn something in a session or you may get the chance to listen to someone live whom you admire or wanted to get access to. But this isn't the major draw of physical industry events. You go to be amongst people. You go t...

I've had my eye on a Keychron keyboard after I saw a bunch of reviews on various tech sites over the past year or two. It seemed quite hyped and the original Kickstarter project blossomed out to a full blown company with a bunch of various keyboards on offer. I was forced to be patient as it took forever for them to bring out a German version. I co...

I enjoyed reading Ben's essay this morning about his thoughts regarding online conferences and how things in this regard pan out going forward. I have to admit that I've been thinking quite a lot about this. As someone who spends time on the road at events (more so earlier as a VC), I have been asking myself where do we go from here? Simply taking ...

Well, yesterday Twitter decided to let all their employees work from home indefinitely. They have something like 5000 employees so this made the news everywhere. It's definitely been on my mind as the CEO of a small company and it's hard to get away from with all the news regarding this out there. Nevertheless, it's far too early to tell whether th...

There's been so much written about hustle porn and one of the most outspoken people on Twitter is @dhh on Twitter. He is one of the founders of Basecamp and with his cofounder, has even written a book about it not having to be crazy at work. As much as I like to agree with him, the reality of the world we live in is often nuanced. As much as I'd li...

Michael and I have been at this game quite a while at this point. Nevertheless, one thing I realized is that I often repeat myself to both people whom we are hiring or whom we are telling about what we do. We have a very specific type of person whom we like to hire. Further, both Michael and I have our very own styles of management (or in my case, ...

20 years....that's one way of saying it. You could also see it differently....about two weeks of work. We're finalizing our round at Receeve. It's been quick outside of the admin and we were able to raise more than we need. Therefore we asked some folks to wait for a further financing round. I don't want to jinx anything but I remain confident that...

Somehow, during the span of my career, I've had multiple groundhog day type occurrences. I feel we are in the midst of one right now. My first occasion was the bubble bursting after the turn of the century. Then we had the 2008 financial crisis. Now, we have what I'll call the Trump crisis and unfortunately, there will be more before I am done as t...

I recently read a post about needing a "strenuous age" to start again. I highly recommend reading it if for no other reason than to see the parallels between the turn of the 20th century and now. It's scary how similar things seem and a bit worrisome what those parallels will lead to. Nevertheless, this article came at an interesting time for me. H...

A lesson I learned far too late in my business career is that you have to also take instead of just giving. That may sound harsh but you would be wise to heed these words, especially if you are early in your career. Everyone is talking about "giving" nowadays and "paying it forward" but be very cautious about this. It sounds nice when preached but ...

Bear with me as many generalisations are to follow. via GIPHY "Nobody reads Powerpoints anyway!" I heard this from a business acquaintance recently and was initially taken aback by that comment. The brunt of what I have done over the past twenty years in business has involved Powerpoints (or more recently Google sheets but you know what I mean.) We...

I've basically stopped using Facebook for anything more than as a channel to post content for people who are there and are interested in it. I hardly ever go to Facebook to consume content. I also long ago deleted the app from my phone as I simply saw it as a distraction. Nevertheless, I have to chuckle when I hear people talking about the death of...

We're so misled by what we often read in blogs and press stories or see on TV shows. One way or another, we tend to react to drama and they who produce content feed on this. In reality, there is often very little drama or noise when things go terribly wrong. This is why people are so often surprised to see things fail....marriages, businesses, vent...

After having had a similar conversation a couple weeks ago with some Scandinavian VC's and now again yesterday with an old VC friend from Germany, I thought it was time to write something about it here. The title may be a bit misleading. This isn't about some new meme on Instagram. It's about the fact that if you look at the European landscape of s...

A couple years ago I bought a house outside of Hamburg. This led to one major change in my life which wasn't the case for the past twenty or so years.....a long commute in the car. I drive in and out of town when in the office in Hamburg and it takes about 45 minutes each way. To keep it at this length I leave the house usually at 6am or earlier an...

I'm not sure this is news to anyone who knows me well but I haven't really publicized it much. Contractually, today is my last day at the Otto Group. We parted on good terms, and there is no real juicy story to tell. We simply no longer saw eye to eye on strategy and how things were going to be run. After over six years, I decided it was time to mo...

You can make decisions in business and life in one of two ways. You are either all in and have no fallback plan. Or you have a Plan B in case your initial decision goes wrong. There are variances in between but let's forget those for now. I'll refer to these options as "all-in" or "multi-plan" for our purposes here. All-in is pretty easy to define....

There is a problem in most organisations that teams want to generally be in agreement when making decisions. I think this is a mistake. I was pleasantly surprised when recently reading a Jeff Bezos investor letter where he specifically alluded to this issue. He spoke of “disagree and commit” when it came to decision making at Amazon. This is a wond...

So I’ve had this conversation a couple times in the past two or three days and felt that it merited a blog post. There are two times which come to mind today where you should always decide on something by being completely digital about it. Either you want to do it (“hell yeah”) or you don’t (“fuck no”)! The general concept comes from Derek Sivers a...

I'm always been a bit torn about marketing. I've been pretty adamant with startups in the past to not focus too much initially on marketing but asked them to be very aware of needing it down the road. 7 or 8 years ago there was a lot of back and forth on just how much marketing is necessary for startups and when. Brad Feld and Fred Wilson both wrot...

As I've had to answer this question so many times at this point, I thought I'd just save myself the time in the future and make a blogpost out of it. If you are going to apply to work for us at Liquid Labs, you have to speak German. No, it doesn't have to be perfect but it has to at least be conversational. No one expects you to sound local....I be...

To understand this post you are going to have to first go and read Max's post as well as Mark's initial post. Go ahead....I'll wait. The response below to Max was simply too long as a comment on his Facebook post and I prefer to share it with everyone. Max, first things first: I am not trying to argue in one direction or the other but technically y...

Most people at this point know that I am originally from Slovakia. Although I grew up in the US, I was born in Bratislava. Although "home" never really was the country of my birth, it somehow always remained who I was. You can only imagine my dismay at having so many times heard my friends and acquaintances from there actually very negatively speak...

I've struggled forever to keep my mouth shut. If there is one thing I have tried to work on over the years it's saying less than more. I've been reminded again and again that you often achieve far more value by listening than talking. More so than not, I have left a meeting scolding myself for opening my mouth far too often and not letting the othe...

I recently picked up a camera as some of you may have seen from my social network posts. I have some thoughts about this which I wanted to share. I picked up this camera for most likely some uncommon reasons. I am not a good photographer. I love taking pics but I am far from good. I had a Fuji x100 which I loved initially but used very little towar...

It’s been some time that I’ve again been with a corporate. Those who know me told me often that they bet I’d be here for two or three years and then gone. That was over four years ago. To be honest, I too thought max three years and I’m moving on. Surprisingly, lots of things went right and I’m quite certain that this opportunity exists with many m...

There is forever a problem to be found, regardless where you may look. Inevitably, corporates are really good at this. There are a ton of people within large organisations whose job it is to find problems. They aren’t necessarily there to solve them yet they are incentivised to look. As much as this sounds like an issue, it’s one of the odd godsend...

I read a blog post the other day from a well respected VC. This is someone whom I know and whose blogging I have been following religiously for years at this point. Nevertheless, I was for the first time turned off by what they had written. The reason is that this VC was quite wistful in his thinking and honestly was completely off. Were you to go ...

I changed gyms about a year ago due to logistics. Nevertheless, one very odd thing occurred to me at the new place which dumbfounded me for quite some time. A lot of people came into this gym and didn't shower after working out. This seemed very odd to me....on top of being kind of disgusting. Were all the people coming by bike and showering at hom...

A couple of years back I was enamoured with the idea of reputation and the reputation economy. I even came close to joining a startup focused on reputation but am glad I didn't. I even had an idea to start my own business around the management of online reputation. Unfortunately, I don't believe that the evolution of our online behaviour is healthy...

This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone but it bears reminding. Never blindly trust market data regardless of whom it comes from. I remember all the years of reading business plans and seeing market data referenced. So and so market is so large and so forth. Such and such is booming right now. Useful at times but usually bullshit. At best, it w...

There have been multiple angles when it comes to reporting on wearables. They were all "dying" after a report came out last year. Now again, people are arguing that the days are numbered for wearables. Unfortunately, two years in a row people are getting it wrong and will continue to do so. Let's start off with a definition. For me and the purpose ...

As a former hockey player, I love using this Wayne Gretzky quote from my title.....too often at times. Yet, It reminds me over and over of how to think in business. There's been this exit in the German market announced officially yesterday that has received quite a bit of press, including my own. One of the aspects that hasn't yet been written abou...

Someone made a comment this morning about offering large amounts of equity at the early stages of a start-up's life to find employees. It went along the lines of labelling the folks that are incentivised by equity as either fools or mercenaries. It basically implies that you are either dumb or tactical to take a large equity stake early as your mai...

I wrote a tongue-in-cheek tweet this morning after seeing someone post slides Mike Butcher was presenting at an event. pjozefak Want to get on @TechCrunch? @mikebutcher explains how. http://t.co/wKjOiLPv7n OR pro tip: be smart & say "I'll sponsor your next event!" ;-) 22/02/15 10:58 He was discussing how best to get bloggers to write about you and ...

I've seen this happening over the years but it seems to have come to a fever pitch in the past year or so. Ever more people I run across or who apply for positions have held the title of "Entrepreneur-in-Residence".....better known as EIR's. This has become one of the most loaded terms in the startup world. The majority of the folks don't realise t...

This is one hell of a biased post so let me get that out of the way right off the bat. Being that I am from Slovakia and was just there for the Slovak Startup Awards, there is no way that this post could be considered impartial. But so be it. Having spent the past 2,5 days in Bratislava to attend the awards show as a jury member, I had the opportun...

This is more of a fun post but there's a point to it. I was listening to a podcast this morning where Tony Robbins was being interviewed...he's out promoting his new book. I have to admit I bought it based upon the press it's been getting more so than actually being interested in the topic. Nevertheless, he makes an interesting point in the intervi...

Don't believe in email. No, don't use it at all! It's the easiest Form of communication but also the easiest way to go unnoticed. If at all, you'll be responded to at the receiver's pace and that hardly ever matches yours. Everyone I work with hears me stress the importance of phone calls. There's nothing better than getting someone on the line. Fu...

It's been an interesting year so far. I think we all concur that there is a lot of hype at the moment in our startup world. I presume there is more to come as I don't see any kind of downturn in the next 12 months or so. Nevertheless, one thing has been really annoying me recently. The amount of badmouthing and bashing I hear is excessive. It all c...

I'm surprised when people tell me they don't know how to go about getting a new job or feel stuck. It's not necessarily easy to find a new job but it's definitely a simple process. The best way to go about it is to TELL EVERYONE that you are looking. I could practically stop right there and you'd have all the advice you need. Let me explain a bit t...

There's a reality in life when you try to succeed....regardless of what you are striving for. I'll call it "The Suffer" and I won't label it as good or bad. It just is. Note, it's not Gladwell's 10,000 hours when I talk about The Suffer, although the two are related. I'm referring more to the little things that you never talk about in hindsight. Fo...

I read this article this morning and found it somewhat compelling in terms of why Gen Y is unhappy. I guess a lot of it simply makes sense and not just for Gen Y. Yet it completely falls apart at the end. The advice given is not unique and I've read it often. I take issue with all of it. 1. Stay Wildly Ambitious This is "delusional", to use a term ...

I was happy to recently see that apprupt had sold. This was one of my early investments at Neuhaus Partners and in hindsight probably one of the more fruitful ones. Did it deliver crazy returns? Not really. Was it internationally known and a market leader in a super hot space? Also not really. Then why is it relevant? Well, it's an investment I mad...

So it's been a couple hours now that the news is out: Facebook purchased WhatsApp for ?16B (plus ?3B on top for employee retention). There's plenty of press out there about this so have fun sifting. Nevertheless, it seems like there are two things missing from the analysis of this purchase. 1. Facebook just made every damn other messaging app that ...

I've done my share of reference calls in my career and to be honest, the majority were basically crap. This isn't to say that I am the best individual when it comes to making reference calls but in hindsight I always wondered whether I benefited at all. Further, I always ended up questioning more why the person whom I spoke to was actually given as...

Mark's post on what you should look for when picking a VC saw a lot of play the past couple of days. As usual, Mark writes extensively about what he feels he would do when deciding which investor to work with. As usual, his posts give great and thorough advice. Unfortuntely, in this case, I think he's taking the wrong approach to the problem. Furth...