Misfit Founders
Misfit Founders
The Gritty Path to Tech Leadership - From Truck Loader to Tech Leader: A Conversation with Björn Döhler
When the road to success is paved with potholes of failures and detours of uncertainty, few navigate with the finesse of my guest, Bjorn. An IT entrepreneur with a zest for life that transcends his professional endeavors, Bjorn's story from loading trucks to leadership at Resolution is a a story on resilience, adaptation, and the intricate tango of co-leading a tech powerhouse. As Bjorn imparts his knowledge on the challenges that lace the path of entrepreneurship, from the financial strains to the enlightening failures, it's impossible not to get wrapped up in the raw honesty of his journey.
This episode is anything but a monochrome look at the IT and sales landscape. From his own leap from print marketing to the digital domain of Deutsche Telekom to Bjorn's management of diverse teams, we unravel the essence of nurturing self-responsible individuals and the peculiar hurdles of melding services with a product-centric sales culture.
In the complex business environment where competitors interact with collaborators, outcomes can sometimes be unpredictable. Yet, Bjorn and I share our experiences within the Cisco and Atlassian networks, offering a detailed view on how collaboration and competition can coexist. He also focus on growth, emphasizing the importance of timing, innovation, and curiosity in maintaining entrepreneurial momentum. We express our dedication to ongoing growth, underlining that curiosity and collaboration are essential for both business and personal development.
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Running a services business is super interesting, but you can have really hard times and we had it every year. So you have 10 great months from a revenue perspective, but you have always these two bad months, and when these two bad months happen in a row, you start doing a list okay, which people need to be late, of when it's getting worse.
Speaker 2:There's so many founders and entrepreneurs where what's going to happen in the future is very clear. There they have like somehow like super tunnel vision, and they ignore that, either intentionally or unintentionally, and then realize, oh, we're screwed.
Speaker 1:Never accept the status quo but also never change a running system. Especially with AI and in our industry, nobody can foresee what is valid in two years, three years or four years. It triggers a lot of questions which we need to ask as a humanity and having open eyes for all these new things.
Speaker 2:Bjorn, you have a very interesting coming of age in a sense, and getting to where you are today, so I'm quite keen to have a chat with you. Thanks for having me. Let's quickly start with an intro of who you are. Yeah, the company that you work currently, that you yeah, co-ceo for longer, for longer yeah yeah, did I say for now uh, currently.
Speaker 1:currently it was okay like oh, there's an announcement at the end or something like that For the rest of your eternity and maybe a bit about your background afterwards.
Speaker 2:So who's Bjorn?
Speaker 1:Who's Bjorn? Yeah, I'm Bjorn. No, I'm 40 years old, now 40 years old.
Speaker 2:Niki was right, you look younger than me. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1:Thanks a lot. Yeah, and I'm working in IT hardware and software since oh shit, since I was 19.
Speaker 2:So a long time already.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what's my background? I'm interested in classic IT stuff computer software, blah, blah blah and so on. Also interested in a lot of other things scuba diving, sailing, playing games, e-longboarding and so on.
Speaker 2:Building a house. Building a house. It was a project of the last three four years, and it's still the project.
Speaker 1:The last three, four years, and it's still the project. I mean you also own a house. You know there's every time a new smaller project or something to fix and so on All the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's what I'm doing, what I enjoy. I started yeah, what I said already in 2000 with an apprenticeship classic as an IT sales manager. Okay, so I really learned IT stuff. So that's not really common in the industry. Normally people have a little bit of different background or went to university first and so on. I started directly with that. Yeah, invented two times my own businesses, failed with one and stopped the other one on purpose and had a lot of different jobs, mostly just for one year, because after a year I was bored. I'm more excited about new things. But, yeah, in the current role I'm working as co-CEO for Resolution, focus on the sales marketing, partner stuff, cloud development and I'm doing this since 2009 now. So, yeah, also five years working with Chris, which was in the previous episode.
Speaker 1:But I'm working with him since close to 15 years now, so we work together in a previous episode. But I'm working with him since close to 15 years now, so we worked together in a previous company, so he hired me two times, so the first one was not a mistake. No, we're having fun. We are both loving what we are doing. We're both loving to do it in a smaller size team with 30 people. We both enjoy to work in bigger companies with a couple of thousand employees. But Chris had a little bit earlier the point that he said back to a smaller team, and I followed him two years later because I was in the same situation. After a smaller sabbatical and world travel, came back to the company and realizing that's not so super interesting. In the middle management you get a lot of spreadsheets from your teammates and create a new spreadsheet for your boss.
Speaker 2:yeah, um, so yeah and that's what I'm doing. So I wanna I wanna talk a bit about the um co-ceo a bit and how that dynamic works. You don't see often a co-ceo um set up in organizations, but I'm curious it sales why. How did you get into that?
Speaker 1:um, it was when I was in school. It was relatively early, quick, that I don't want to do an A-level and going to university and so on, and I had some holiday jobs in summer, tested a lot of different things Like what, give me some examples of things that you tested. I also worked on. The strangest holiday job was I did it for six weeks I loaded trucks, so lorries with just air-conditioned channels the whole day. Six weeks, six days, air-conditioned channels.
Speaker 2:They're heavy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but they are of aluminum and so on, so it is possible to do it.
Speaker 2:Were you doing by hand or with a forklifter? No, no, no, it was by hand, it was sorting it into the lorry.
Speaker 1:Then the next came, six days a week. For six weeks I earned a lot of money. It was a well-paid job and I was 15 or 16 at this time and it paid my driver license, it paid a better computer, it left a little bit money for the first car and so on. It was a good job, but it was also relatively clear I don't want to do it for my life. And then I went a little bit more in the digital things. I had another job. It was more marketing related, but at this time it was still print. Marketing was a big thing. So I worked a little bit in an agency. I said, okay, that's super interesting. I said okay, that's super interesting. But at the end, when I applied for these apprenticeships, I got also the job possibility with Deutsche Telekom, which is a German telecommunication provider, and at this time my mother simply said, hey, it's a much safer job as a small agency, so maybe you should check this out.
Speaker 1:And this job role was relatively new because they defined these IT sales person-ish thing as a job role, a person who understands technology and sales and sales. So a little bit as a to bridge the gap which you have normally between sales departments and technical departments or, on the customer side, technical departments.
Speaker 2:I see.
Speaker 1:So that was super interesting.
Speaker 2:And that's what you liked. Yeah, Was that the first time you were like actually, I kind of enjoy this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally, because it was super interesting. You've learned a lot of things about hardware. It was a telecommunication company, so you learned a lot about telecommunication networks and today I would say, also super interesting stuff. But what I'm doing now is much more interesting to working with applications where you have a direct user connection. So putting fiber somewhere, fiber on the's not, it's not so much end customer or user feedback, um, but you also learned, uh, or you got some insights in how software development works, how hardware is working and so on, um, yeah and um. After this, uh, it was two and a half years. Yeah, started 2000,. Finished early 2002. I said, yeah, definitely I should go more in this direction and focused obviously on sales and IT. After, this.
Speaker 2:So you see, your mom was right On some point.
Speaker 1:Yes, Definitely with a job role, but not with a company, because I left Deutsche Telekom immediately after the apprenticeship Right.
Speaker 2:But she guided you in the right direction. Right you realized something that you like and you carried on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, always take care about the stuff. What mom says.
Speaker 2:And you said you had two companies, one you failed with and one you folded intentionally. Talk to me a bit about that. When was this? Was it after your role at Deutsche Telekom, or did you have other roles afterwards.
Speaker 1:Deutsche Telekom was an apprenticeship. After this I worked a little bit on construction sites for a year because, it was hard for me to find a job and then I did these classic interior stuff, so building walls in houses or destroying walls or whatever.
Speaker 2:So you were doing that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So you've done a lot of manual labor in your lifetime?
Speaker 1:Yeah, but at this time it was just, I applied, done a lot of manual labor in your lifetime, but at this time it was just I applied for a lot of jobs and it was a hard time for the IT economy. And when you're at this time, I was 20, roughly 20 years old, so applying as a junior sales person. Not that many opportunities, exactly. So it was just bridging a little bit uh the break uh with this work. Um, yeah, then I worked, uh as a, as a sales or account manager for another internet service provider, solution. Yeah, after, after two jobs, after two jobs, I I realized that I worked at this time in a city close to Berlin, potsdam, a smaller city, and I worked for an internet service provider there and later then for, yeah, you call it solution provider or, yeah, system integrator, and I realized that companies in the small and medium businesses are having very difficult times to handle IT projects, mostly because they don't have a dedicated person for doing.
Speaker 1:IT stuff. They don't know how to handle all the suppliers and how to manage the time effort but also how to manage the projects internally. And my approach was a consulting approach, so that I was a little bit like the outsourced IT manager for them and I worked for free as long we are doing projects and I collected then 10, 20% of the project revenue from the supplier, so I had a smaller supplier network.
Speaker 2:Okay, I see.
Speaker 1:They quoted their stuff and so on and they knew okay in. In addition, they need to pay me.
Speaker 2:As for them, I was an external salesperson or external consultant, but at the same time um I worked in the interest of the customer yeah, but that's a really interesting, uh, business model and quite, um, effective because you know it, because it's the customer that needs things done. It's not like in the sense that these providers would go and say, hey, by the way, and when they do, most of the small to medium sized businesses will say, no, I don't have money for this, so they usually have a need. And if you're there completely for free, we'll say, no, I don't have money for this, so they usually have a need.
Speaker 2:And if you're there completely for free. It's like, well, why not, I'm going to get this person, they can deal with figuring out what the best option is for me. I don't pay them anything and I just pay whatever the work needs to be done from the supplier. That's actually quite smart, but was this something that was quite popular as a as a model?
Speaker 1:and at that point, where did you inspire it from? Um, that was more inspired, mostly inspired from experience, because I um had these small and medium business companies as customers before uh in these when I worked on the previous job for the uh internet service provider. So it was just the obvious thing. They don't have time for proper IT projects, proper IT equipment and so on and there was no way for them to solving it easily. And at the same time I saw smaller system integrators and they struggle with sales a lot because they're paying a lot of money to salespeople but they have always this hard onboarding phase with every customer, a couple of appointments and so on.
Speaker 1:And my idea was there is a way to shorten this timeframe. Just when you take out a little bit of the sales-ish thing from a customer, from the system integrator perspective and also from the customer perspective, when you have in both directions a trusted advisor role, then you can connect things much faster. That was I haven't seen it before, but I also haven't done research. I was simple to young, said okay, let's try it, I can't lose anything. There was no investment or something like that needed. It was simple to young, said okay, let's try it, I can't lose anything. There was no investment or something like that, needed it was just me and running around and doing it.
Speaker 2:I do see a challenge with that dynamic though.
Speaker 2:So you said that you were tending to the customer's best interest and stuff customers best interest and stuff but it's very hard to do that when you have a profit to gain from suppliers and you know other people that are not, so, let's say, kind-hearted um, would massively take advantage of that because one you can, um, you can have these companies lobby you as a supplier, yeah, and you might be pushing their product, although not the the best fit to the customer, to the customer, because these guys, you know wine and dine you and give you the biggest discount and so on. Yeah, um, and then it's also potentially, you know, I've seen this especially nowadays with TikTok. I see so many of these TikToks where these suppliers or you know, handyman or things like that, take advantage of their customers by just injecting more cost and expenditure to a work that was supposed to be tiny, right? So how did you get the trust of these companies? Was it mainly because you worked with them in the past?
Speaker 1:Yes, and recommendations I mean. I totally see this conflict of interests.
Speaker 2:Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1:And then I would also say nowadays without no, nowadays it would be more complicated for doing it, because the world is more global today, but I worked at this time in an environment of a small city, so it means what was a way for getting new customers?
Speaker 1:The most important way was recommendations. So when one customer would realize, okay, björn is doing somehow a little bit bullshit here because he earns money from the supplier and so on, immediately all future customers in this small country would know it. Yeah, so recommendation was one important point. And the second point was that a second channel for new customers, where all these small and medium business events which you have in smaller towns, organized from I don't know parties or whatever, and yeah, also there it was, yeah, word of mouth relationship. So it was super important that you are trustful and your customers trust you, and there's always a second or a third project. So at the end, I did it for a little bit more as one and a half years, a classic project cycle where over minimum, a couple of weeks, longer a couple of months, and I handled two, 20, 30 projects in parallel and that was also enough. So it worked really well. The biggest problem was that it doesn't scale.
Speaker 2:It was just you. Yeah, makes sense. So was that the reason why you closed it, or what?
Speaker 1:happened? Yeah, somehow. Yes, because I realized after a time it doesn't scale. And it was a starting point where companies provided more and more managed services to customers. At this time it was more a big enterprise-y thing. I said, hey, that will also work in small and medium businesses. And I had one customer who was interested in that and they had a new office, 20 employees and so on, and I said, okay, I can sell you all the stuff as a managed service on a monthly fee. And I said, okay, I'm going in the pre-investment, buying all the things for my suppliers and charge to this customer. The problem was a little bit I bought all this stuff and we also installed it, but then the customer was bankrupt.
Speaker 1:So it means I had IT equipment for 20 people, including network server storage, firewalls, all the stuff that you need, and no income for this equipment. And yeah, a huge invoice, huge already paid invoices from suppliers.
Speaker 1:then I got afraid from the situation that I have a lot of debts on my bank account and was afraid to solve this problem somehow in these um yeah, with the uh to solve the problem on the way. Okay, I need more customers, or something like that. I ran away and just went to. Okay, you need a normal job now where you can earn money with a monthly paycheck. Started to work in addition in a bar as a waiter to get rid of these steps on the bank account.
Speaker 2:So that was the reason why it failed it was. It's sometimes daunting, especially when something like this happens, and it's like fuck this. I'm just going to go back to a stable, secure job and like not to get into these fuck-ups and ruin my future with financial debt and things like that. Well, at least now I know where the roots of your impulsive buying comes from.
Speaker 2:Yes, For those that don't know, björn buys a lot of gear like myself for for not just filming but various technology stuff. So you like to to buy and try gear. But I think I might've uncovered the roots of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, potentially that must have must have been.
Speaker 2:Might have been your first. Uh, yeah, take by um a rampage, yeah yeah, yeah definitely so. Then you got a job like um, when, when was this?
Speaker 1:it was, uh, somehow around 2005, 2006. Yeah, 2005, 2006. So it was shortly before the World Cup. The Football World Cup was in Berlin, and, yeah, that was around this time. So what did you do afterwards? I had the job. What I chose was a job in a marketing agency.
Speaker 2:So it was an agency.
Speaker 1:I mean for a young person like me. Amazing was my first agency experience A lot of other young people, so we worked 16 hours per day. You were in the office Saturday, Sunday, Totally crazy.
Speaker 1:I quit it after three months because I realized it's not super healthy just being at home for having a shower and then going back to the office. But it was close to the World Cup and I realized a lot of companies searched for people with point-of-sale marketing during the World Cup to sell I don't know flags from every country to all the fans, and so I said okay, let's open a business and being a little bit of point-of-sale marketing consultant after working three months in this marketing agency and it worked out really well.
Speaker 1:So it was the best four weeks or best World Cup one I ever had, because I had three jobs in parallel and one job was just organizing. There was a company and they produced thousands of flags of every country in a small plastic ball and their idea was how we simply hire some guys and they can sell it on the street. But that was not allowed. So and a friend came with this problem to me and said hey, they hired me as a project manager and now I'm searching for people with ideas how we can sell these thousands of balls to people. And we realized that on every fan area in every city in Germany you had the classic sausage beer and fan article stuff, etc. But you had always these small shop booths where people sold plates, handmade plates or whatever, and we found it feels a little bit wrong.
Speaker 1:It looks misplaced in a fan area, but this was the situation in every city, and I had a chat with a guy who owned the booth in Berlin and I proposed to him that when we can have 50% of his space, we would put all the flex with the balls, blah, blah, blah in it. But we also provide additional salespeople and they, uh, sell the flex with the ball but also their stuff for free.
Speaker 1:We just need to make a little bit space nice um, and I asked him and it was funny wise, there was really the connection. I asked him if he knows the people on in the other cities as well and he said yes we're friends, we're.
Speaker 1:There were also some intro events and so on organized from the FIFA when they organized all the stuff. So he had all the contacts. I called some friends. I said, okay, you in Düsseldorf, you need to go to this. You talk to the guy. That's the story. And in two days we organized that this company had a selling space in every fan area in Germany. And that was the job. I was paid with a revenue share and a day rate and so on.
Speaker 1:It was good. At the end I was a little bit bored. I worked in parallel as a VIP driver for a company who flew in a lot of people and it was my job to pick them up at the airport, bring to a hotel and to the stadium and so on. It was super funny because it was a classic management level of a huge worldwide company who produce washing powder and so on. So super interesting chats and I had for free a car. Yeah, that's the whole time. Yeah, so super interesting time. I tried to do it to do the marketing point of sales stuff after the World Cup a little bit longer, but yeah the World Cup was amazing, but after this, a real work starts, finding new customers and so on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I checked relatively quick that this would be a super hard way to extend this business and went back to a job where I said, okay, job, and again, more it technology thing, more sales, because I still had some debts on the bank account. Um, so, back to this route and, yeah, that at the end brought me together on some point with chris reichardt.
Speaker 2:um yeah, that was um how many jobs did you had in between that um world cup summer and um getting the resolution role?
Speaker 1:um, I worked for a distributor Cisco IT distributor after World Cup for two years, then switched to an IT service provider for nine months. Then a headhunter called me and I joined Chris' other company at the time.
Speaker 1:So three jobs. The company was called Intech. It was a classic service business with a different sales approach, that our customers were other IT solution service integrators and so on. We haven't sold our services to end customers, we just extended the workforce of these service integrators. Workforce of these service integrators. And yeah, that was brought me together with Chris. We did it together. He sold the company to the distributor where I worked before. Funny wise, I did four years there and then I joined Resolution.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so three and a half four jobs, roughly so three and a half four jobs roughly and your this second business and the hustle which was the summer, the summer marketing.
Speaker 1:Marketing stuff.
Speaker 2:What year was this again? 2006. 2006,. Okay, so from 2006 until today, how come you haven't gone and done something of your own? What is is it like? Is it not that um big of an interest? You're like more working with certain teams being part of others mission. Do you consider it your mission? So what kept you from saying I should go out and start something from scratch again?
Speaker 1:I think I lost a little bit the idea in 2007, 2008. It was not in my mind. And after the sales job for the distributor and after the job for the system integrator, I joined Chris and the previous company and this was the first time that I had a job longer as two years. Normally my average time was a year, so the longest so far two years.
Speaker 1:Classic founder thing like searching for the next thing yeah, but um, joining this company when I joined, uh, intact had 35 people and when chris sold it it was 120 or something like that. Um, it had already the oh no, I had the possibilities to figure out a lot of stuff by my own. So the sales part was relatively fresh. It was not settled. It was creating and building a lot of workflows, figuring out how you can sell the service and so on.
Speaker 1:So, I would say my day-to-day job was like being the owner of the company without being it, without the risk, without all the responsibilities, and it was a great team. So at this time there was not a minute the idea to do something different. It was a stressful job, but we managed to hire higher grade people and it was really. I normally hated when people saying this are companies like family and something. I believe that should be split it on somehow. But um, I need to say this was really like them. Um, and it was. It was cool, it was interesting.
Speaker 1:So you were busy with your day-to-day stuff. You learned a lot of new things, you met a lot of interesting people. I was allowed to define my own services. It was first a lot about engineering and installation services and on some point we went in the direction of consultancy business and, and a couple of years later we sold business coaches to big telecommunication providers Again Deutsche Telekom. So that's where the circle closed and we sold sales, education things, sales consultants to these teams to accelerate their processes and so on. So there was not really a need to, to, to, to start something, uh, by my own.
Speaker 2:So you, you, you kept yourself busy and engaged in all of the stuff that you think and that. That. Did that continue when the company got acquired? Um, did it, did? Was it the same dynamic? All or all of a sudden, you felt like you had to constrain your role a bit more, in a sense.
Speaker 1:I mean it was super interesting because the company got acquired from a company where I quit before so hi teammates hi again, and I mean Chris, when he got the offer, he called me and the colleague and um, we discussed it and so on. Is it? Is it a good idea? And running a services business is super interesting, but it's. You can have really hard times and we had it every year. So you have 10 great months from a revenue perspective, but you have always these two bad months, and when these two bad months happen in a row, you start doing a list okay, which people need to be laid off when it's getting worse.
Speaker 1:And at this time there was also the rumor that the company who bought us will open a services business anyway. So with us, without us, okay. So, and that was clear, when we are not joining this journey, then we have a huge competitor. And with this aspect in our mind, we joined the company and for me, it was a challenge. First of all, it was for me the possibility to step up, to manage teams and so on. So this happened immediately with the acquisition. So here that's your sales team now have fun, good luck and so on.
Speaker 1:But at the same time, it was also the bigger company, was at this time in the phase of a new SAP integration etc. And SAP integration in companies with 4,000 or 5,000 people are projects over four or five years. And it was a hardware distribution company. So it means joining as a services company, where your product are humans and services was a big challenge and I found this challenge super interesting. So how is it possible to implement a services business in a big spaceship like this as a group of yeah, 120 people, and how to grow it and how to invent new services. We worked mainly for Cisco Systems, but this distribution company had hundreds of vendors where they had contracts and where they delivered their hardware every day and inventing new services for other hardware providers who were interesting solution providers, was a huge challenge. I really look forward to it.
Speaker 1:It was super cool but, yeah, at the end, after four years of all the integration stuff and so on, companies like this living from quarter to quarter, so you have a quarterly goal, you need to achieve it yeah, perfect. When you don't achieve it, you have a lot of meetings and on some point all the stuff was settled. So our team size, just the services team size, was 400, 450 people in Europe. At the end I managed a sales team in Europe. So Spain, uk, france, classic Nordics countries in Germany. So, yeah, having this international management role and I realized after, yeah, it was maybe nine months or a year, that's not what I want.
Speaker 1:So, being in a settled environment with these quarterly management stuff, and where it's hard to change things, and that was, at the end, the reason for saying, okay, I need to stop this but did you enjoy managing a team?
Speaker 2:because it sounds like to me, it sounds like when you're doing, you're um innovating, you're inventing, you're creating sales products right products, yeah to to sell, and so on um prior. And then you, you got acquired and you got assigned a team and it was an opportunity for you. So you were looking, looking up, for that was it what you imagined in a sense. Did you enjoy it?
Speaker 1:you learn a lot let's say it like this probably you need to ask my ex-teammates or my actual teammates, because Probably you need to ask my ex-teammates or my actual teammates, because some people moved also to resolution.
Speaker 1:No, I enjoyed it a lot. I mean, in all the previous jobs and all the stuff that I've done, I measured one year how much time I spent on the phone. It was a year of statistics. I counted every flight, how often I missed flights, and so on, and I came to an average phone time of nine hours per day. So it was always a job of talking to people, and managing a team is talking to people.
Speaker 1:So, and managing a team is talking to people and understanding what their needs are and so on. I think I have. When I honestly ask my teammates and so on. I would say I can only manage teams where the teammates are also self-responsible and also having a little bit these. Okay, I'm the company in the company.
Speaker 2:Yeah, entrepreneurs, yeah exactly.
Speaker 1:So I can't I would say I can't manage a team where people need a step-by-step guidance every day. So in onboarding phases and so on, yes, and then for new stuff, totally. But then I'm good, then I'm good in challenging uh, people and also, um, accept challenges together, that, um, we try to figure out together how we can solve project x, y, that, or how can we achieve the next quarterly goal, which is bigger as a goal before, and so on. So be having these partners in crime, partners in crime yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:So um is um an environment where I would say, yes, I'm good in it and I like it. Um, what I mean? You know me, I love excel spreadsheets also a lot. And, um, I mean, you know me, I love Excel spreadsheets also a lot and figuring out how I can get learnings out of data points or whatever, and trying to solve problems with proper data in the background and figuring out what is a good next step. And that was super interesting in this big company in the beginning as well. But after a while, it's the same report which was shared every week, every quarter, every month, and so on.
Speaker 2:Have you ever had the opposite of that in terms of teams, as in, let's say, you having to manage a lot more, tightening the harness in a sense, because people are a bit all over the place or not 100% motivated? Have you ever dealt with that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, also in the same job. I mean, the idea of the acquisition of the services company was that the services scale, also from a sales perspective. So, and this company had already worldwide sales teams and we had special services sales teams. But one part of the job was to educate the other sales teams on how to sell services Right sales teams and how to sell services Right. And after the acquisition we came in as youngsters and, yes, we have the best product after sliced bread in our pockets.
Speaker 1:Here is a data sheet for a service for a classic Monday or whatever. Start to sell it and then you learn they're not selling it. What's wrong here? And um, it took me years to understand why it was not possible to convince them, um, to sell services and um, this was working many years with a lot of different sales teams. Spread it in germ or in Europe and try to solve this problem. But at the end it worked out when we hired people who traveled every day from sales team to sales team to sales team to just remind them go sell services, um and this was um. This learning was interesting on some point. I mean, they were super good sales teams, but they had what, what, sorry what.
Speaker 2:What were they selling? Were they selling uh products, hardware, hardware.
Speaker 1:So normally they. They are the go-to person for companies like go-to person for companies like IBM Computer Center and so on, and when IBM wins a project, then IBM calls them and says, okay, I need 100 servers of this with this configuration, blah, blah, blah. So they were distribution salespeople. So a distribution salesperson is more an account manager as a salesperson. So you've got a request, you fulfill the request and then it's fine. But I learned they have different priorities and I also learned how to make changes in a big organization like this.
Speaker 1:We had the amazing idea of every salesperson has measured a margin or a revenue or whatever. It was somehow margin what they are doing. And distribution business is a low margin business. They normally deal with 2%, 3%, 4%, 5% margin on the stuff, and we defined all services as 100% margin. So we said, yeah, that's a game changer, every salesperson will love this.
Speaker 1:But it was not the case. So they all understood that they can earn more money with that and can easier achieve their goals. But there were more barriers and this took us a while to understand that it's not just, or for some reasons, for this salesperson it's not just about money. So far I always thought, okay, salesperson is triggered from money. That's why they're working in sales. I mean, I worked many years in sales and when a salesperson answers honestly on what is motivating you, it's the bonus, the bonus at the end of the quarter. I also love the job and so on, but working in sales and being a good salesperson, the alignment to a goal and the willing to overachieve this goal is a very important motivator.
Speaker 2:Right, Well, that makes sense. Do you reckon that selling services is harder than selling products as a salesperson in a sense?
Speaker 1:It depends a little bit on the product and also on the service. I mean in selling services, it is totally needed to understand the problem of the customer and what the customer wants to achieve. So it means in the sales phase, or the classic pre-sales phase, you need to get as much as possible a proper understanding about the project.
Speaker 2:So you have to be technical, you have to be knowledgeable of the subject matter yeah A lot more than knowing the specs of a product Exactly.
Speaker 1:And you invest a lot of time to doing this. So normally you're not paid in this phase. It's your investment as a company and having salespeople in customer meetings, pre-sales consultants or engineers and so on that was always gambling how much you want to invest in this potential project or this potential project and so on. Invest in this potential project or this potential project and so on. I think this is a major. This is definitely harder, as in classic product sales, because what in product sales it's a customer has a proper understanding that he needs to start an eval or he needs to buy the product and then he needs to implement it somehow, but then you are more in the adoption phase, or how can we make it work? You're not in the sales phase anymore.
Speaker 2:So I think this so it's an easier, it's a clearer transition to when you're like on, the sales phase versus, let's say, onboarding and company-wide adoption and so on, whereas with services, what you're saying is that it's a lot more of a blurry line in between when you're still in sales or whether you're in.
Speaker 1:Blurry is a perfect description. We often started with project and nobody was aware that the project already started, because the pre-sales phase immediately went and a proof of concept installation and you haven't sent a final quote and you haven't an order for this and you're already working on customer side.
Speaker 1:So yeah um, but I think on, on the other hand, on services. Services is the benefit that when something is not working out as it was planned, you can normally act much faster as a product company and you have also very often an excuse oh sorry, the product has a bug. So then you're out as a service person, you have definitely the discussion who's paying the bill now for all the additional hours and so on, but it's not your fault. In the product business this is different, because normally it takes you much longer to fix problems on a product, because as a product company you need to think about when I change the feature a little bit in this direction or that direction. This has an effect on all the customers yeah, exactly you're.
Speaker 2:You're tailoring to with with. You're tailoring a solution to multiple consumers versus the one which is a service and that's, that's the easier part of the services business.
Speaker 1:So in services business you can solve things individual, yeah, and that's exactly what you want to avoid in a product business, because you end up with 10,000 different versions of your product.
Speaker 2:So, I suppose, were you relieved, were you concerned, were you scratching your head when you rejoined resolution? And now you're. You're selling products instead of services it was.
Speaker 1:It was a relatively funny conversation. I just met chris because I was back from from world travel and three months later. So I had this point where I realized, okay, you need to do something different. And I was also at this time a little bit sick of the services business because it had already a size where we managed 120, 130 projects in parallel. So it means escalation was, it was always escalation mode Engineer is sick, product is buggy, whatever and at the same time a lot of pressure on sales numbers. So it was handling spreadsheets and escalation calls in parallel and I said, okay, I want to get rid of these two things management spreadsheets and escalation calls. So it was relatively clear that I want to do something with products, because a product can't be sick Okay, it can be buggy, but not sick, and something potentially in a smaller company. But this was more optional. So, and yeah, it was.
Speaker 2:Why was it not a strong preference, for example?
Speaker 1:Because I was also interested in at this time 2019, was also interested in at this time 2019, was this IoT topic relatively famous.
Speaker 2:Right, and a lot of big companies do IoT, yeah, so that means I looked at jobs like.
Speaker 1:Bosch in Germany was a big player at this time, had amazing visions for IoT. I said, okay, when you want to go in the product company and should be IoT related, then it's potentially a bigger company. So that was not a must-have the smaller company. I explained this to Chris. We had just met for lunch. He was already working 100% for Resolution, left the company two years earlier and then he said to me I'm searching for a co-CEO, or maybe I'm searching for a co-CEO.
Speaker 2:Maybe he usually does that. Even when we start a discussion of investing, he's like maybe I'm interested in investing.
Speaker 1:Exactly Now, and then I was a little bit surprised from that, because that was totally not my intention. I had this on my radar, that this could be an option, and then Chris said, hey, you can simply join a partner meeting and you get a little bit of an idea how the whole ecosystem works and what the dynamic of the ecosystem is, because we worked together before in the Cisco ecosystem and it's also a super nice ecosystem. I loved to work with all the partners, but it was also a super well-established ecosystem, pressure on margins, very competitive and so on. And Chris explained to me how Atlassian ecosystem is different it's more friendly, partners talking to each other and so on. So, well, okay, sounds interesting. So let's visit a partner. And then, um, uh, he also invited me to the app week in 2019 in berlin, to just the after party, and I think you also met chris there the first time wait a minute.
Speaker 2:I think I vaguely remember something. I think I remember you at one point telling me that you weren't part of oh yes, you did tell me. I remember it was this weird thing. You were telling me that once you invested, in Jigsaw you were telling me that you weren't part of.
Speaker 1:Resolution at that point Exactly. It was a little bit difficult because a lot of people asked okay, for which company are you working?
Speaker 2:I can't say it I'm independent.
Speaker 1:Yeah and yeah. These were two events and I mean, at this time I already knew half of the resolution team because same teammates as before. So and after these two events and meeting the people and stuff, yeah, yeah, that's, that's uh super interesting. So for the for the people.
Speaker 2:I understand that. As in um you've worked with, you know this team is familiar and such, but what was it about those events that made you decide? Yeah, I want to be part of this.
Speaker 1:I mean also, every ecosystem is changing and when you ask, nowadays, atlassian Partner, how much the ecosystem changed in the five years, nowadays Atlassian partner, how much the ecosystem changed in the five years, but I think at this time, I also believe that it still exists and that's still outstanding for the Atlassian ecosystem, that there's really a partnership between competitors.
Speaker 2:Oh yes.
Speaker 1:That people are open for a chat, a discussion or brainstorming some stuff without having immediately the intention. What is in it for me? That was, for me, really attractive because this means you can learn a lot, you can ask people about their knowledge, their experiences and so on, and you can also open, discuss new ideas without shielding it to all potential competitors massively. So that was one part. And then I never worked with a software um and um or software as a product and I had somehow a rough understanding okay, there is something, versions, people develop something, then it's finished, it's a new version. But that was it so. So and yeah, a little bit my school knowledge of development while developing with Turbo Pascal or something like that, a snake game, so that was my software experience. So far.
Speaker 2:I mean, I've never done that, so you have something there.
Speaker 1:You haven't missed something. No, you haven't missed something. No, and doing this and at the same time, being in a relatively technical environment too. So I mean you can work for a software company which, like Atlassian or like an app vendor in the Atlassian marketplace, with a lot of technical background I mean you with Jexo, you had also Persona's project management was a big thing or is still a big thing for the apps when you say okay. Also, your customer base is super interesting. You enjoy to understand the success story from a customer and what a customer is doing with your stuff, and I think that was also an interesting interest or important part, important topic for me that I'm interested to work also with these customer environment, besides all the partners and so on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can completely agree with that part of the atlas in ecosystem for for a while I don't know if you did, but I've never seen anything like it. I've never seen, like you say, competitors, people fighting for the job and confluence, users, attention with their products and their solutions also being in the same rooms and just being users' attention with their products and their solutions also being in the same rooms and just being able to chat about stuff without seeking to harm one another or to get something out of it. It was quite new to me. Have you ever had something like that in the past in workplaces and ecosystem environments?
Speaker 1:So the competitive environments.
Speaker 1:No, the collaboration in between competitors and brands, yes, but it was then a well-defined project with a lot of contracts what is allowed, what is not allowed before you start to work or talk to each other, and so on. In the Cisco ecosystem you had a lot of big players and then a lot of smaller services companies and there was a collaboration between the smaller services companies. And there was a collaboration between the smaller services companies because they also need to be realistic, that they can't solve every customer problem alone, and so on. And they extended their workforces with sharing projects etc. But it was always a hard discussion because it was completely different from the margin on profit perspective.
Speaker 1:Companies in these more established ecosystems need to think about, to balance much better how much time and money they invest in a specific idea upfront before it starts earning money. And it's the same in I think that's also in nature a little bit of software environments. I mean developing software means you invest six months, 12 months, 18 months in developing a product and that maybe pay out in a year, in three years, in four product and that maybe pay out in a year, in three years, in four. So and in in a hardware business it's really more okay there's a project we ship the hardware, we install it, we get the money, and that's why the margin is much smaller and that's why the room for ideas and the room for this openness collaborating that competitors collaborating with each other is much, much smaller. But we had this situation as well.
Speaker 2:Do you think there's any risks of an ecosystem where competitors are allowed to freely collaborate, because I suppose, like for example in the Cisco environment, the fact that there was a lot more structure and a lot more do's and don'ts were, for very specific reasons, to prevent certain things. Do you think there's a bigger risk in environments where there's a lot more freedom and getting into challenges, issues, disputes, things like that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think there are many aspects which are influencing the style or the actual nature of an ecosystem. So, first of all, in most of the cases the ecosystem is organized on a specific topic product, technology, vendor, whatever. When it's like in the Atlassian ecosystem, the vendor is controlling a little bit the ecosystem, but he's more moderator and I think vendors like Atlassian are responsible for also giving a vision and to share their vision that the ecosystem can create smaller visions which fit to that and more individual visions for specific use cases, whatever.
Speaker 1:So that's a really important part. At the same time, the major player in the ecosystem, in this case Atlassian, is somehow responsible for harmonize and balance the ecosystem. So for I mean, we have it already in some European countries that you have too much solution partners, European countries, that you have too much solution partners. This creates the competition to customer about customer projects and so on, and this ends up automatically in less collaboration. So when companies like Atlassian are driving these ecosystems Cisco made the same on some point that they said, okay, we need to get rid of some of these solution partners, we need to balance it a little bit more, but the cake is big enough for everybody in the market that they can do this creative work and so on. And then, at the same time, it's also about all the parties in the ecosystem.
Speaker 1:When one attendee of an ecosystem starts to not breaking the rules but find new ways to win projects, for example, I don't know discounting a little bit more, as are all the others and so on, this is very often a trigger for a really bad journey. It feels like a bad journey in the beginning, but I strongly believe it's the nature of an ecosystem. When it's coming from a healthy margin where you can create a business on it, and so on, it's always the case that the margin after a couple of years is lower and automatically, uh, people are, people are more competitive. Yeah, um, so yeah, it's like in a family. Yeah, everybody has his role and sometimes you have a fight, but mostly it's totally harmonized or that's what, where everybody is going for.
Speaker 1:But kids are growing up and doing their own stuff and so on, and that's how I experience ecosystems that there is a life cycle in these ecosystems and then companies leave. Other companies join with fresher ideas. Companies who are from the beginning in the ecosystem are also often losing creativity and so on, are blocked from the classic business, from new ideas. But I really enjoy the Atlassian ecosystem. I think it has at the moment the moment momentum that Atlassian develops a lot of new stuff with every new feature or new product. Marketplace vendors or solution partners are potentially punished because they have a successful app in this environment or a successful service in the environment.
Speaker 2:Like Resolution, eh yeah a little bit. Too much success.
Speaker 1:No, not really. But yeah, it is the case that we, as Resolution, we are in the lucky situation that we know that most of our products will be obsolete in a couple of years. We don't know in how much years it's maybe three or five or ten, hopefully ten Because there is no way for our data center product in cloud, and I personally find this is a good thing that we know this. Most companies don't know when their business will be disrupted. So we are in the lucky situation that we know it upfront and this gives us a clear task. We need to be creative for new apps, other apps, we need to try out things, we need to experiment, and so on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think you've been doing great since. Since I met uh christian, and then yourself and and resolution, I realized that it's a uh, a company that's probably always always going to exist because you have that sense of adoptability. Right, even when we met, it was the whole kind of server announcements and so on, and Resolution was already looking at strategies of, you know, getting into cloud, partnering up with others and so on. So I think that's one thing that you have and you know it is a. I'll say it is a skill, because there's so many founders and entrepreneurs and companies out there where the what's going to happen in the future is very clear there yeah they have like somehow like super tunnel vision, and they ignore that, either intentionally or unintentionally, and then realize oh, shit, we're screwed.
Speaker 1:I mean it's I don't know the episode with Chris yet, but I'm sure he has explained his strategy and you can think by your own. But you also need to understand that you can't have every amazing idea and when you have the possibilities to bet on other characters who can have these ideas, and good in involving ideas and executing the ideas and you should invest in it and um that's exactly what he said yeah so you guys are very in sync, which is great.
Speaker 2:yeah, that's why you're co-CEOs. Speaking of co-CEO, why co-CEO? How did that come? So you said that Christian was looking for a co-CEO.
Speaker 1:Yeah, why yeah? Why you should ask him that no.
Speaker 2:Was it simply like hey, I'm the CEO of the company, I deal with so many things. I want someone to split those things with, or what was the thinking there?
Speaker 1:Yes, I think what you described is definitely a part of it. So, chris, his background is technical. He has a lot of knowledge in other things. He has knowledge in marketing and sales, but he's not a sales and marketing person, but he has a. He recognized good campaigns or what is good and what is bad, and he's super good in understanding when things could work better.
Speaker 1:And I think at this time Chris was on a point with the resolution that the team grew over the years and developers and so on, but grew faster and he saw the potential that this could be more successful when he makes space for a second responsibility, because if he makes space, he loves the technology and when he can talk all days with developers about an interesting topic, then he will do it and he does it also, and we are relatively similar, so we are both relatively quick, interested in new things. So this has the benefit that you can test a lot of stuff, experiment a lot of stuff. You're not afraid of experimenting, but you can also lose relatively quickly a direction and when you have two people, it's co-CEOs who are interested in a lot of things but both realize okay, this is our journey. At the moment, we need to focus on this. This is our journey at the moment. We need to focus on this. Then this gives, at the end, resolution, the possibility to be more successful.
Speaker 1:And when I joined, we were 14 people, now we are 30. So it was not just okay a co-CEO, it was also the enablement of increasing the teammates and managing them and so on. And yeah, he was, I think, also honest with himself that from a marketing perspective, so far, he did the basics Very successful. I mean, resolution is and he well, we are and he was in the lucky situation that the Summer Single Sign-On product was an amazing idea. It generated revenue as one of the first apps in the marketplace without marketing, without sales, without everything just an app in the marketplace, without sales, without everything, just an app in the marketplace. But he also realized that this is now the time where the basics are potentially not enough anymore.
Speaker 2:It's not going to last forever. Yeah, in a sense, although it lasted pretty darn long.
Speaker 1:And it's still there.
Speaker 2:It's still your flagship product. What are you looking, what are you looking up for for related to your future as a professional? Oh, that's, that's a really good question and I didn't tie it into any time frame or anything, any area specific, just because I want to see the first thing that comes into your head, like when you think of your career moving forward. What's the one thing that you're looking up for?
Speaker 1:I mean, as you know, we invest in smaller companies and founders and startups and so on, which is amazing. And you, with your team, jackson, I mean you were the first investment from us and it was a successful investment also from a resolution perspective and I personally learned a lot out of it.
Speaker 1:It was, in the beginning, possible to share a lot of things from our experience and my personal experience with you, but relatively quick quick it was more a conversation that we um chatted about our experience and on some points you came up with much better ideas or with a much better experience and things, what we still had on the list we are simple, too slow.
Speaker 1:So you accelerated a lot the pace of um ideas and also with um other ideas, um back to us and we are now involved in three, four or five companies in different businesses. So we also extended our investment outside of of Atlassian ecosystem thing. So I invested in two companies who are focusing on movie optimizing with software or the movie business. And I think back to your question, I would love to be able to say in a couple of years that we had similar successful stories, like with Jaxo, that every of these startups is successful and that I was personally a part of it. So I'm at the moment heavily involved in one of these startups to finish their product readiness and so on. So I'm learning a lot about the movie market at the moment.
Speaker 2:That's cool.
Speaker 1:I'm able to share what is our experience in software development, because they are all experts in the movie market but not in software development and I want to be potentially in four or five years best case on a movie conference with a very successful product and successful founders and I want to be able to say, yes, that was the right way and the right journey, and I want to do the next couple of years exactly what I'm doing now, so I have the freedom to pick projects. We have a great team. I love to work with the team every day. I have daily challenges. I'm triggered and motivated from challenges. That's my fuel and, yeah, I have no higher goal at the moment. I'm happy with what I'm doing.
Speaker 2:It sounds like you live a blissful life, one full of motivations and aspirations, but blissful nonetheless, and I think it's also a. It's a testament of what resolution is and what you and christian were able to achieve, which is, you know, build this environment where you're generating revenue.
Speaker 2:it's successful, but, most importantly, you get to work on the cool shit that you want to work on which is very important, like making the the work uh place, a, a place where you enjoy and you're delighted to be in, which is, which is awesome, um, and it's also great to to see that um, to hear you talk about jexo as the og of your investments and the North Star, in a sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely, you set up the threshold. At the moment, every investment needs to be more successful to be the new North.
Speaker 2:Star and a smooth ride, relatively smooth ride.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think maybe Chris has explained the same story in this episode, but there's always a point of timing. You can have a good idea and the idea is amazing, but it's the wrong timing. You can meet people they are amazing, but it's the wrong timing for a joint project or a joint journey or whatever. And I think everything came together. You set up an amazing team. It was the right time that you met Chris, that you discussed an investment and so on, and it was the right time for your products, for your product ideas. So you definitely understood what the market needed and and I mean we have 46 apps on the marketplace. I know that a lot of good ideas stay with 50 installs and that's it. So, um, and you personally strong belief in oh, that's the best, but no customer think like this yeah, true, true yeah, no, that's good close off usually with three flash questions okay one.
Speaker 2:What is a quote that you live by? A quote yeah yeah, okay that's the word we can go with. I'll tell you along the way. So I answered this one and then we'll go to the next one. You don't get all of them at the same time. Which camera do you want to?
Speaker 1:have Fail better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, fail better.
Speaker 1:That's a quote, so flash question, so a short answer. Yeah, that's a short answer.
Speaker 2:Okay. What's a book that changed or impacted your life, be it your professional life or personal life? Okay.
Speaker 1:First of all, I need to read more books.
Speaker 2:So do I.
Speaker 1:No, I would say. The first book which comes to my mind is from Max Barry. It's a novel, it's called Company, and he worked 20 years for Hewlett Packard and wrote a very humoristic, sarcastic book about companies as organizations and how people interact in these organizations. It's an amazing book. It pictures a lot of things which happens in reality, with a very sarcastic, humoristic addition in it. And yeah, when you ever worked in big companies and, uh, you always think, oh, I'm the only person who had this experience, and so on, read this book.
Speaker 2:It's amazing yeah, yeah, okay, especially the sarcastic and humoristic, because at the end of the day, you have to make banter of these things that happen after a while If you do it instantly, you're just a jerk. But if it passes some time and you apply banter, it just feels funny.
Speaker 1:I can't spoil the book, but when you've read the book you will understand what I thought.
Speaker 2:Okay, cool, I'll read it. And then last question what is a good habit that you advocate for? Positive habit, don't say smoking yeah yeah, I know I also.
Speaker 1:I want to quit this, and now we have it on record.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm gonna clip this moment.
Speaker 1:You said you quit yeah, um, now, I think, um being interested and being open for new things, um it's's, I strongly believe, never accept the status quo, but also never change the running system. But for we are now living in a world which acts so super fast, and this sentence was valid the last 10 years, last 20, last 30, last 50 years.
Speaker 1:So, but especially with AI in our industry, nobody can foresee what is valid in two years, three years or four years, and not just for the industry, I think. Also the whole AI thing triggers a lot of questions which we need to ask as a humanity.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, and being interested in that and trying to understand what's going on there and experimenting with that, and always being open for experiments instead of focusing the old passes. So that's what I tried. It's not really trying to do it simple, I'm interested in things and looking around. So it's sometimes bad because you're super fast distracted and you're going in this direction, but no, I would say that's a good habit, having open eyes for all these new things, yeah, and experimenting with moderation.
Speaker 2:Not like us, we experiment a bit too much sometimes. No, thank you so much and, honestly, just having this conversation with you right after Christian, it just makes me realize how alike the two of you are. You have your differences in different characters definitely different characters, but in terms of some of the notions and the thinking and the philosophies, in a sense, you're very alike and that it makes a lot of sense on why you partner up and you're still running Resolution together as it stands. Also, thank you so much for joining me on this. I was looking forward to have you as well as Christian, so I appreciate you talking through your story and the mishaps and the wins as well.
Speaker 1:Perfect, thanks a lot again, that's my opinion story, and the mishaps and the wins as well.
Speaker 2:Perfect. Thanks a lot again. That's why I think
