368: Johannes Jäschke — From Hypnosis Innovation to Business Exit
Download MP3Hey, it's Arvid, and this is the Bootstrap Founder. Today, I'm talking to Johannes Jeschke, a software founder who found success comparatively early in life and is sharing all the ups and downs with me and you right here. We talk about staying in your niche, finding a buyer for your business, and how to broaden your own horizon. This episode is sponsored by paddle.com, my personal payment provider of choice. If you run a SaaS and you don't wanna deal with all the intricacies of sales tax and having to integrate every single money related thing yourself, I can really recommend checking out Paddle.
Arvid:And now, here's Johannes. Johannes, welcome to the show. You bootstrapped a business and sold it for a lot of money. That is amazing. You did it in your mid twenties.
Arvid:That's even more amazing. Tell me everything about your bootstrapping journey.
Aaron:Yeah. Thanks for for having me, first of all. And I started with Upnew, I think, like, 4 years ago. Was straight out of out of college. And I came to the idea basically by accident because I was on the seminar, on the NLP seminar.
Aaron:I don't know if you know about it. This is kind of fast, psychology thing. And in the evening, they invited a hypnotist just for fun so that we can experience a a hypnosis show. And, back then, I didn't believe in hypnosis. Oh, I should say that Hypno, my startup, is actually a hypnosis mobile app.
Aaron:So we help people to fall asleep and reduce anxiety by using self guided hypnosis sessions from various experts around the world. And, yeah, that that's why I'm talking about the hypnosis stuff right now. And, yeah, I didn't believe in hypnotism back then or I had, like, no clue about it, but I was open to it. I was like, okay. If they offer it, then let's, let's just go on stage and and test that out.
Aaron:And then I went up there, and it was a quite amazing experience. It was an awesome feeling. And on my way back from the seminar to the hotel, I was like, okay. Very interesting. Let's dig deeper into that because, yeah, I was just curious.
Aaron:And then I found out that hypnosis itself has a very bad reputation. I mean, people think of hypnosis, like, it's magic, or in the US, people think it's it's kind of related to voodoo and and that stuff. And then I was like, interesting. It was presented to me in a very scientific way. I know how it works.
Aaron:I know there are, like, lots of studies, but the public perception somehow is different. So okay. Then I dropped the topic, and then a couple, months later, my girlfriend had, sleeping issues. She couldn't fall asleep because of an upcoming exam. And her father, who by accident is a psychotherapist and also hypnotist, was like, okay.
Aaron:I'm gonna record something for you. Maybe you can fall asleep then. And it worked. And then I was like, okay. Now we got 2 topics, combined.
Aaron:Let's let's do something about it.
Arvid:I love how this is just, like, out of out of nowhere. Right? Like, that that's, like, one of these things that just happened, and then you you combine your existing skill set, and all of all of a sudden you got a business. That is really cool.
Aaron:Exactly. It wasn't planned at all. It was just like I mean, I actually wanted to start a seminar business back then, and then, like, this thing came up, and then I switched, like, to to the new thing because I was just seeing, like, 30% of all people have, problems with falling asleep. So, yeah, it's a huge market. So
Arvid:And it's a growing market too. Right? Like, I'm just thinking about the meditation and, like, guided meditation apps, that kind of stuff. They're becoming quite popular. People are taking care of their mental health, which is a wonderful thing.
Arvid:How was it competing with these gigantic players in the field? Or is hypnosis such a niche within the niche that you didn't have to compete with them? How how did that go?
Aaron:Exactly. It was a worry, like, from day 1, that we have those big players in the market, who we are going to compete with. But then we, found out that hypnosis attracts kind of a different person than meditation. So although we are solving the same problem, we're solving it for a different subgroup of of people, so to say. And the hypnosis people are more like, do something for me, like, fix my brain from the outside.
Aaron:And the meditation persons are more like, I wanna learn how to do it by myself.
Arvid:Oh, okay. So it's more like a medical act of healing than this journey of self discovery.
Aaron:Exactly. Exactly. That often changes, but in the in the beginning, it's this fix me, you know, this attitude.
Arvid:Well, hey. If if if people pay you money to fix them, that usually is a good business. But,
Aaron:like, the idea And from from a user's perspective, it's very attractive to find out because, honestly, hypnosis does not work in a 100% of cases. I would say it's somewhere between 50 70%, but it it depends. But the good thing is there are no side effects, and you'll find out in, like, 5 minutes. And if you look at what alternatives we have, if we have anxiety issues or sleep issues, I mean, we have to take some some pills or something and they have severe side effects, they are expensive, and they probably make you addicted when they work. Yeah.
Arvid:Can you even get addicted to hypnosis? Did this ever happen?
Aaron:I've never heard of this. I mean, maybe you can, but
Arvid:I mean, that sounds like an edge case. Right? That sounds like a very rare occurrence. But, yeah, that's great. And and you're right.
Arvid:I guess, like, just like, using the app in that sense, you you install it. You you try it for a couple minutes. And if it works, it works. And if it doesn't, it doesn't. I guess that that's a very easy way to check.
Arvid:How did you turn this into a business? Because I think there's a difference between, knowing that something might work and then actually making it work. So what were the steps that you took there?
Aaron:First of all, we did a landing page test or a fake door test or whatever you wanna call it. I mean, we just or, actually, I did it myself. I mean, I don't have design skills, so it looked pretty shitty, but it worked. I, like, designed an app how I imagine it to look, and then I think, I've stolen some copies from competitors. And, I mean, that's a bad practice, but I did it and it worked.
Aaron:And to build up a landing page, and then I sent, meta traffic on the site. And we had conversion rates and conversion in this term means people tried to sign up to get into the app of, between 40 60%. And, yeah, which was super, super good. And we because the app wasn't available back then, we also had people who went into the imprint and tried to send emails to me, and we're like, man, your your your link is not working. And I'm like, okay.
Aaron:Now that's a a nice indicator of demand. I like that.
Arvid:Uh-huh. It's about time you build something, dude. Yeah. Right. That's what that means.
Aaron:And and that's what we did. Then, 30 days later, the app was released onto the App Store. We built it with the help of a freelancer and a friend of mine. So we've been pretty quickly. As I said, my girlfriend's dad had some hypnosis recordings so we could put them on the app, which gave gave us, like, a head start.
Aaron:Yeah. And then we implemented basic subscriptions, like, yearly and a monthly one, and then we went in business and had the first sales pretty easily. I mean, traffic came through Meta, through a waiting list, and then through, the app stores.
Arvid:That is amazing. That is wonderful. And the the fact that you already have content, I think that is, I mean, that's just smart. Like, again, intersecting what you already have with where you wanna go. Right?
Arvid:Just having having those recordings already, I think that there probably may have been a lot of people who would wanna build something like this, but they don't have anybody who could create content that actually works. Right? So having having access to this, how did you broaden that? Like, how did you find more people, more qualified experts to get these recordings from?
Aaron:In the beginning, I did a huge mistake, which was, I tried to do it myself by learning, hypnosis and try to record it myself. You know, I had this belief that I had to do everything myself in order to learn it. This was super slow. The hypnosis sessions were not good. I mean, okay.
Aaron:Some people told me I have a I have a voice where you can fall asleep to very easily. And in that context, I took it as a compliment. But other than that, it was a quite slow approach. And then we switched to, reaching out to hypnotists around the world, directly via cold outreach emails. And we had a great mission, and that was really helpful because we were like, okay, we know hypnosis has a bad reputation, and we wanna turn it into a more evidence based, esoteric free kind of perception.
Aaron:Do you want to help? And you could help with providing us hypnosis sessions. And you will also get an additional benefit, which is you get x percent of the streaming income that you generate on Spotify and so on. You know, so we really try to make it a win win win situation for every party, and that worked phenomenally so that we actually had to sort out most of the people to really, like, get to the best sessions out there. And then I realized, okay, having spending, like, 1 hour on a call versus spending 1 hour on recording a hypnosis session, first one gives me 22.
Aaron:Like, one hypnotist had, like, 50 sessions. That's the way to go. Yeah.
Arvid:That that is the only way to scale it too. Right? Like, to actually get the people who do the job well and pay them for it in whatever way. And then just focus on you actually building the business instead of, hypnotizing people, which is it's pretty funny to think about that that is what you tried to do for your business to become a hypnotist. It's, I mean, it could work, right, if if that all of a sudden turn out to be the best way to do it.
Arvid:But these people are already out there, and you just need to find them. One question, though. Like, we we're both Germans, and I would assume you started in the German market with your girlfriend's father being also German. Like, how did the the internationalization of this happen? Did you already try to go broad in the beginning, or did you kinda niche first?
Aaron:No. I wanted to go to North America from the beginning because, usually, like, at the university where I've studied, international management before, it was a thing to just copy US businesses, which is from business perspective, it works, but it's not the way I go about, like, building businesses. I don't like this approach. So, when it was clear that I had, like, my own idea and I didn't copy someone from the US, I wanted to go to the US, to be the guy from the university who, like, you know, does the the the right way. And so that was clear from the beginning.
Aaron:And, that's why we also started outreach with American hypnotists and then with Canadian ones, and that's how we built the business there. And then the traffic also came through, the the app stores over there, and and it worked out pretty quickly. I think a couple of months after launching, we already had, like, a 50 50 share of, US and and German revenues, and then US, of course, grew even more.
Arvid:Did you also go into other countries, other locations than, like, English and German?
Aaron:No. We didn't do that because we didn't saw a need for that. And with diagnosis, it's also kind of a cultural thing. I don't even know, to be honest, if if Asian, regions have something like that. And yeah.
Aaron:That's very interesting.
Arvid:I don't know either, but I'm also not an expert. I'm just, it's it's funny because I with my business, I I have a similar approach. I I allow English speaking stuff and maybe some German speaking stuff, but I don't have French podcasts or French whatever on my platform because I don't speak those languages. I couldn't do quality control. That was my reason.
Arvid:Right? I I wanna be able to listen to this, understand it, and have a sense of if it's good or not, and how could I do this in a language I don't speak. So it makes perfect sense. And then, obviously, cultural differences. Yeah.
Arvid:I wouldn't even have thought of that. That that's good a good point. Because I think you're absolutely right, hypnosis. And even meditation to me personally, always like, all this mental health stuff, I always thought was, wishy washy. I know it was it was kind of esoteric, was kind of, just if you have to believe in it, how can it be true kind of stuff.
Arvid:Right? And I know that there is quite literally from my own experience over the last couple of years that there is a benefit to embracing your own mental state and maybe the spirituality beneath it or maybe just, the ability to calm yourself and get into a state that normally would not be accessible to you. And if hypnosis can do this, that is wonderful. If guided meditation can do this, that is wonderful. If just non guided, just random meditation can do this, all of this is great.
Arvid:But I I had to jump over this hoop of esoterics or voodoo or whatever you wanna call it. I love that you made it scientific. And what I find most impressive is that you reached out to experts telling them, help us make this more scientific. I think that must be something that every single hypnotist has to struggle with. Right?
Aaron:Definitely. Definitely. And I think it's one of the biggest, issue with with, many things that are actually quite helpful, especially for the mental health topics because, I mean, I love those esoteric people for, like, using it and embracing it, but I think the way they embrace it is not suitable for the masses, for the public, because if I have to believe in something so that it works, as you said, then it's it's it's just difficult. You know, I think maybe but maybe it's a cultural thing for us, like, western people that if there's not a study, then it's probably not real or something. I don't know.
Aaron:But
Arvid:More an academics thing probably. Right? Like, the the German engineer stereotype kind of thing as well. But I think that people are anxious about embracing things about themselves that they don't know about. Right?
Arvid:Like, they are anxious to opening up the door to the inner deep psyche and allowing this to come out. So they would rather say, I don't believe in this stuff. Let's just keep suffering through our life
Aaron:for indefinitely. And it's and I think people also fear to become someone very different. You know? When you look at the the very spiritual teachers, you know, I wanted to get the benefit of, like, calming down, but I don't wanna spend my rest of my life in a rainforest sitting on a stone meditating, you know?
Arvid:Yeah. Well, I I love that you took this approach. Generally, I I think that made it very appealing to to people who just needed their problem fixed. Right? And so when did you start the business?
Arvid:Like, how long did it take you to go from, like, first idea to to to exit?
Aaron:I started it right before COVID hit. I don't know the year exactly, but it was a very I mean, for us, it was a very good thing because, of course, at at the time of COVID, more people had anxiety problems and so on. And, I mean, we could help a lot, but it also meant our business was, like, exploding overnight. So it was a good time to start. And then I sold it I mean, the beginning of the sales process was, like, in the middle of this year.
Aaron:So I think it was between 3 4 years, but it felt a lot shorter than that, honestly. When I when I started, I was like, the average startup takes 5 years to sell, and I'm like, oh, I wanna do it in 1 year. And now, like, looking back, it's like it felt like nothing. So yeah.
Arvid:1 year is ambitious. But, hey, if if you have the right growth numbers and and you have the right buyer, it might might be. Right? You never know. So I know you sold to another hypnosis company from Canada.
Arvid:That's where I live. And
Aaron:how did that go? How how did they reach out? How did you negotiate? What was that process like for you? So the most difficult part of the whole journey was taking the decision to actually sell it because I had the idea of selling it over, like, a long time.
Aaron:Yeah. I even thought about it in the beginning, but it felt like miles away. And, I also didn't like the feeling of, okay, what what comes after that? You know, if my if my baby is gone, then what what what am I gonna do next? So reaching that decision was the hardest thing.
Aaron:But once I said, okay, I'm gonna do it, then selling it was quite straightforward, even super easy. I mean, I have kind of a background in marketing and sales. So I have to say selling my own company is like exactly like every other sales process out there. And it's I mean, it's more emotional. That that should be said because I'm really attached to what I've built over the last years.
Aaron:And if the buyer starts to negotiate, then it's like a lot of money that goes, like, up and down on a daily basis based on what he's finding on the due diligence. And, I mean, not that he's finding a lot of things, but everyone is negotiating. It's an emotional roller coaster. But from the process, I think I bought an online course from they got acquired, but they had, an online course on how to sell it, on how to sell your business. And then I just did exactly what they said in the online course, and I was like, okay.
Aaron:Like, prepare your numbers, write down the document of, the things of value in your company and all of that stuff. And then I've had, like, a 2 line email, which I've sent to basically everyone who could be interested in selling the business. Oh, yeah. Before that, I made a list on, like, Apple Notes, on my note phone, like, who could be interested. And, of course, it's all of the competitors, direct or indirect, and then also the people who are on the platform already, like the hypnotists.
Aaron:And, that's how I then got in contact with the buyer later on. And I actually worked with him almost from day 1. Back then, I've never even imagined that he could be the one who who buys it later. So this is a huge learning year. Everyone can be the the buyer because a friend of mine also had an exit, and it was exactly the same story.
Arvid:Could be. I mean, it's probably one of the strongest relationships that you have with people in the industry is with early customers. Like, particularly early customers, like, that have seen you go through all the motions and build this bigger and bigger and bigger thing and still stay in contact with them, like, there's probably no stronger bond that you can possibly have than that. So I I've I've heard this a couple times that it's like the the shadow customer that turns out to be the acquirer in in the future. And that's great because, like, you weren't just honest with them every step along the way.
Arvid:Right? Like, they've built this trust based foundation over many, many years often. Man, that that sounds wonderful. And you already talked about the emotional roller coaster because I think that's something that too often happens to to people that know that it's gonna happen, yet they're not prepared for it. Did you prepare for losing your baby?
Arvid:Like, you're giving away your child. Does it still hurts? Like, how does it feel?
Aaron:I didn't prepare, although I heard a podcast about that. I don't know why I didn't prepare because in the process, this was like I I couldn't believe it that that this is actually happening right now. And when it happened, like, when we've signed a deal, oh, that day was actually that was a really I was really sad. I was almost crying that day, like, literally almost crying. And that felt very emotional.
Aaron:And I know I sat down in a cafe, bought, like, my favorite latte and all of that stuff, and then sign it in the sun, because maybe it's gonna be an important, you know, day later later on. So I wanted to celebrate it, but it was, like, really deep. And then it was like it was gone, you know? Then somehow my my mind separated this, and it's like, okay. Now it's gone.
Aaron:What next? And then I I actually fell into a hole, not on a bad way, not like that I feel depressed, but more like, okay, what now? What what next? And there was a void which, yeah, I need to fill. It was a process.
Aaron:But the worst parts, I would say, were like to the diligence part or no. It's not even the diligence, but talking the first time to the buyer. And then he asked all the questions, and I exactly knew where I, like, fucked up in, in the last years. And then, you know, the fear of him discovering that was huge. But actually then talking to him wasn't that problem.
Aaron:I mean, I've been pretty transparent, and I think you have to be because it comes out anyway. And he reacted I mean, it wasn't kind of a big deal to him. It was a way bigger deal for me.
Arvid:That's an interesting observation. I think you're right that the due diligence stage is at point in time where you really look into your business. They look into your business. You're still running it at the same time too. Right?
Arvid:You're still trying to grow it as much as you can to increase its value and all of that. You look at everything you are doing and you've ever done and you're planning to do with some extra effort. And that highlights the good stuff, obviously, but it also highlights all the the stuff that you've tried to forget over the last couple of years.
Aaron:Yeah. Exactly. And then it comes up again.
Arvid:Yeah. Comes up again because it has to, and you have to deal with it. You have to either explain it or, you know, fix it or just admit it to yourself and then to others. It's a very emotionally upheaving phase in your business. And you're lucky, like, in in that way, you actually went through with the deal.
Arvid:Imagine now doing this, doing due diligence, and then the deal falls through. And then you have to keep running your business and you do it again because you found another potential buyer, and it falls through again. Like, a lot of people go through this cycle of having your inner script out, looked at, and then back together, and then you keep running the business. Right? So that's yeah.
Arvid:It's it's important to understand that the due diligence phase is is quite stressful. Yeah.
Aaron:It's it's crazy. I mean, not by the workload, but by the psychology that's attached to it. You know? It's it's not really a lot of work. Let let's let's be honest here.
Aaron:If you I mean, if you've run the business reasonably over the last years, then it shouldn't stress you out. But
Arvid:Hey. There's always something. Right? Like, with this business, there's always a fire burning somewhere. But, I mean, for you at least, you had a hypnosis app to use at Jill.
Arvid:Right? I guess that's great. Did you ever did you use your product yourself?
Aaron:Yeah. Of course. I really believe in, like, using what you're building when you're, like, kind of at least part of the target group. So I did that, and it was always nice, to to, like, listen to what I've built and all of that stuff.
Arvid:Yeah. I like that. And it's also the nice promise that you can make to yourself to be able to spot these things along the way in your life. Like, these things you need, things you might find useful, and then turn them into something bigger. I'd like you what you did with this.
Arvid:Like, as as an entrepreneur, I think that's that's our magic power. It's our superpower is to to see a problem, see a challenge, and then turn it into a business that actually hopefully is profitable and can be sold, can be acquired by somebody. Knowing that you've been entrepreneurial from an early age, and I've been like this too. I think we we both started probably around the same time, like, very early teens. Are you gonna try to be a serial entrepreneur?
Arvid:Where do you wanna take your entrepreneurial journey from here? Because you're comparatively young to a lot of founders. Right? So you have a lot of time. So so what's what's that journey looking like for you?
Arvid:What are you planning?
Aaron:I definitely wanna continue like I worked over the past couple of years because I don't know. But I've heard this from a lot of other founders. Once you're, like, into founding companies and, you know, once it worked for the first time, even if it's only a bit, then you kind of maybe you get addicted. I don't know.
Arvid:But it's Yeah.
Aaron:It's it's so much better than everything else I've done. So but but I'm young. There might be something else that comes up where I said, okay. That's even better. Let's see.
Aaron:But right now, I I haven't found anything. So let's I'm going to continue with founding. One thing I'm doing is building a mentorship program where I wanna teach founders who have a nontechnical background to, like, start with 1st tech venture, like give them feedback because I really believe, although I can't make anyone more successful, I can help them to avoid the pitfalls. And especially with tech, like when you build your 1st tech product, there's, like, so much you can fuck up if you're if you have no clue about this. And let's be honest, most agencies will just rip you off if you have the money.
Aaron:Or techies often fail to find the easiest solution. They build great products, which is nice, but at a very early stage, easy solutions is is way more useful. And, I mean, those are just like a couple of things. And I really believe that I can help with my experience to, like, avoid some pitfalls. I'm working on on, like, having a little mentorship program here.
Aaron:And then, of course, I wanna practice what I preach. So, I wanna, like, do everything that I teach in the in the program and build another venture, like a case study venture, you know, on on top of what on top of the methodology. But I have no idea about what, so let's see what what comes.
Arvid:Hey. You you have time. And that's the thing. Like, in entrepreneurship, the what usually appears at some point. Right?
Arvid:Like, you you will see it when it's there. You don't know what it is. But if we all knew what it was gonna be, the thing that we're building, then it would be risk free, and we would be able to plan every single step along the way. That's just not how
Aaron:it is. I I love
Arvid:the mentorship approach because mentorship will also allow you to look into other people's minds. Right? You you're gonna have your mentees and their perception of reality. And maybe just even from seeing how yours slightly misaligns with theirs or does align with theirs will give you more clues as to what should be done and what can be done.
Aaron:Yeah. This this is very helpful. I mean, I already have some mentees where, and I'm talking with them, like, every week, and it's so helpful just to see. You know, 3 weeks ago, I had someone, and I, helped him to build a b to b sales funnel. And he was like, man, I'm losing so many customers.
Aaron:I don't think that works. I'm like, okay. Let's go through your numbers. And then he had, like, a closing rate. So the percentage of people that actually sign after they've been on a call, of, like, 60 to 70%.
Aaron:And he was like, oh, I'm losing 4, like, 30 to 40% of the people. I'm like, man.
Arvid:You are so lucky.
Aaron:Yeah. This is such a crazy good closing rate. Like, your focus is completely off. Keep doing whatever you're doing. And and, you know, that was so insightful to to to to see that.
Aaron:And
Arvid:Yeah. That's that's that's the knowledge that and I'm a I'm an engineer myself. Like, I don't have a background in marketing. Don't have a background in sales. So to me I mean, I probably also would feel that anything in in terms of conversion rates above 20% is great, but that's just my experience as a founder in the past.
Arvid:Right? Having done through all of this and a closing rate of 60%. Man, I would like that, please. Right? Like, how does he do it?
Arvid:But, yeah, getting the outside perspective, that that is the valuable part of a mentorship, and I've been, like, a mentor to many people on a regular basis for years now too. And sometimes just being able to speak about a thing, just have a chat, and to have me poke tiny little holes in the argument that often, either strengthens the thing that they're doing or makes them think about other things that they should or could be doing at that point. So mentorship is a wonderful way of sharing your knowledge. I love this. And say same thing I did when after I sold, I went into writing.
Arvid:I went into teaching. Like, I went to Twitter and all of that and started podcasting and and whatnot. To see you actually go and help people in their individual moments of need is a wonderful thing. I really like this. It's awesome.
Arvid:So you're mentoring people. Have you already started a new business, though? Like or is it are you still, like, waiting for that that portfolio thing?
Aaron:Yeah. I mean, next to the mentoring, I jumped into biotech. I had a chance to lead a biotech company or it's it's not a startup anymore. It's a Skateup. I mean, we have, like, around 100 people on our team.
Aaron:And we had, again, a technical founder, a a doctor who needed some some business assistant. And so I had a chance to to look at this business and help him out build structures and all of that stuff, which was quite cool and and interesting. But, one very important thing with biotech and with startups, like, in general is to speed to failure. Because I believe that I can't predict the future, and I know that one out of 10 businesses is gonna work. And, of course, every entrepreneur thinks he's like the one out of 10, and I get that.
Aaron:But, I mean, I've I've built 4 businesses. 2 of them failed. So, I I know both sides, somehow, and I can definitely say 1 out of 10. Yeah. Realistic.
Aaron:So it's a numbers game. And the only thing I can do to be successful playing that game is to fail fast because I have to fail 9 times to find one right thing, but it's not normally distributed. So maybe it's also 20 or 30 failures. And if I joined the game of biotech, which is very slow, then, failing for, like, 10 times can take up to 20, 30 years. And I like to be successful when I'm young.
Aaron:So, this is not a suitable strategy to reach my goal. So
Arvid:That's a great perspective. I I think that's a lot of founders do this by doing a lot of things in parallel, like the many small bets approach, right, where you have all these little things and you see which one is promising. You call the rest and you focus on that one, which is probably not gonna happen in biotech, particularly not as an employee. Right? Like, if you go into a company as an employee or a after the fact founder, people expect commitment for many years, and you only have so many, many years, like, segments of your life.
Arvid:So that's that's a very smart approach. I like this. I like this. You you could easily get lost for the next 10, 20 years in one industry, and the whole industry might be a wrong bet.
Aaron:Yep. Right. And then that's super risky. I mean, maybe I'm, I'm always wondering because I'm, like, so risk, averse. I don't like risk at all.
Aaron:So what what am I doing in the startup world?
Arvid:Well,
Aaron:but I I try to embrace that, risk aversiveness and, you know, try to really, apply that to the start up game. And just, for me, it's just a game of minimizing risks, and it seems, yeah, could be a good approach. But but yeah. So Biotech is super interesting. Love it, but, well, I already made up my mind.
Aaron:It's not what I'm going to do in the future. So let's let's see what comes around next year.
Arvid:Yep. I think that's that's a wonderfully optimistic perspective. Right? Because there's always something that needs to be done, and you are going in there with the open mind of somebody who has done stuff before and is now just looking for the opportunity.
Aaron:Yeah. Exactly. I mean, there are so many problems out there. And as long as there are problems, there are potential solutions, and solutions are businesses.
Arvid:Is is there any particular interest outside of biotech or any any kind of technology that you're really excited about right now?
Aaron:Well, I'm not technology focused. I'm more I'm more, like, problem focused. And to me, it just has to be like a real problem. Because when I look at, the the German version of Shark Tank, for instance, which is called, like, cave of the lions, it's so, it really it's it's annoying, and I really get angry when I see how much bullshit is presented in there. Like, it's, like, ridiculous.
Aaron:I mean, we have so many problems that are worth solving. And, you know, that's that's what I care most about. It's a problem that's actually worth solving. Society gets better. It's not like the next luxurious dog food or something.
Aaron:I mean, it's it's okay. No offense here, but it's not the right thing for me. And if it's then also software related, scalable, and I can play in my my strength of, like, marketing and sales, then even better.
Arvid:In in Germany, you also have to fight the the whole rocket Internetization of of start ups. Right? It's kinda what you mentioned earlier with with the university trying to or at university days where everything needs to be a clone of the American thing, and then it it grows in the in the local market. I think it's a great approach if you have the infrastructure for this. And if that is what you do, that's great.
Arvid:But it's by far not the only way to build a business. Right? So to not look for something to also do like somebody else, but to actually look at the the actual existing challenges in the market, in many markets, in whatever kind of market you might be looking at, that's the right approach. I I really like this. And the focus on software, also cool.
Arvid:What do you think of AI as a as a thing that is kinda impacting everything right now? Is that is that gonna impact your journey as well? What do you think?
Aaron:I mean, I'm a chattybd power user, so
Arvid:there we have it.
Aaron:But I think a lot of the stuff is, like, overhyped, of course. I mean, it's useful, but, I mean, this is just, I don't think I can add value to the conversation here because it's like, of course, it's useful, but I think it's used as a buzzword, especially when you try to get capital way too often. And having AI is not a USP, I would say. It's like not having AI is like the special thing at the moment, you know, but I'm not excited about this, as a new technology because, you know, you can be like a technology founder or a market founder. And I'm really not into the technology side.
Aaron:I just look at problems, opportunities. And if AI is a tool for that, nice. If not, then I don't care.
Arvid:That's really refreshing because I'm more on the technology side of things, which you probably could figure out by my questions that I'm asking you. But it it is nice to hear that this may not be as important as I think it is. That's really cool.
Aaron:I might I might be wrong as well.
Arvid:Yeah. We both might be. Who knows? Right? That's why
Aaron:I didn't see it in 2 years then.
Arvid:Yeah. But but I I like to I like I like to see the market, focused, the priority of the market and the the challenge, the problem focus because you can apply so many technologies to to a problem that you find out there. You could even just apply people as a technology to the problem, and then you have a service business. Right? So it's it's nice to see you focusing not on tech, which is something I like to do, but to to focus on where this goes and what it should be helping people with.
Arvid:That's really cool. Well, if people wanna follow you on this journey of exploring what comes next and what the next big business that you hopefully sell for 1,000,000 is gonna be, where should they go? Where should they follow you?
Aaron:Definitely LinkedIn. This is the platform where I'm most active at. Just add me on LinkedIn. I will post updates, website links, and all of that stuff in there. And the easiest thing is just reach out to me.
Aaron:I answer all of my messages. It may take some some time, but, I I answer every one of them.
Arvid:I mean, you're busy. Right? Like, I I have the same problem. Like, DMs on Twitter, DMs on LinkedIn. That's just sometimes it takes me a couple weeks to reply, but I'll be there at some point.
Arvid:Yeah. I'm gonna put the links in the show notes. Man, Johannes, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your journey. It's really, really cool to see what you've been doing, what you are doing, and where this is going. All of this seems very structurally sound, very, very well well planned and hopefully fruitful in the future.
Arvid:It's been really cool to to chat with you. Thanks so much for sharing your journey. Yeah.
Aaron:Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure.
Arvid:And that's it for today. Thank you for listening to the Bootstrap founder. You can find me on Twitter at abitkahl, a r v I d k a h l. You find my books and my Twitter course there too. And if you wanna support me in the show, please tell everyone you know about PodScan dot f m and leave a rating and a review for this podcast by going to ratethispodcast.com/founder.
Arvid:It makes a dotcom/founder. Makes a massive difference if you show up there, because then the podcast will show up in other people's feeds, and that will truly help the show. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful day, and bye bye.
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