Week 39: Art & Science, Rooftop Drinks, Lecture, Traveling
Lots of input, little time to compute, good days
I had two weeks full of traveling and lots of mostly super friendly meetings and encounters. Now I am looking forward to a weekend free of meetings and full of family and friends.
Art & Science
We have been working with Judy and the Eigen+Art Lab for years combining Startups and art. Those of you, who have been to our old office know, how intense some of the pieces that surrounded us everywhere were. With our move(s), we have a strong desire to reinvent our approach to art, and we are figuring out how technology and art can interact with each other. As a starting point, we want to do what we do in our startup world: bring people together and see what happens. Judy and we invited our friends Alissa Wilms and Carsten Nikolai and we talked about quantum physics and quantum computing. Alissa and Carsten spoke, and we listened and sometimes ignited new topics. I am super excited to see what will come out of this.
Founder +1 Rooftop Drinks
We did our second drinks on the roof of our “new” new office. Although the weather was a bit weird, we were more than 50 people, and it was great to meet a lot of the founders in person again. We are still thinking about how we might scale this up a bit more so we can meet more people in real life. I hope there will be some excellent opportunities to meet and connect in the future as well.
Guest Lecture: Principles & Patterns
Every year I give a guest session at my friend Gunnar’s ESCP entrepreneurship class. Usually, I talk about success patterns in early startup founding. This year I did something different. Together with my twin sons (who turned 17 last summer), I am having an ongoing and fun discussion on the topic of “I wish someone had told me this before.” We are collecting issues, experiences, and learnings in a lot of areas.
Happy to share more of this here in case you are interested.
The first (and last?) larger event at our old new office?
We had planned this event for more than two years together with Bankhaus Julius Bär. Last week we finally were able to host them and some of their clients for two sessions at APX: The first was about how investing in Startups can work and what we at APX are doing. And the second was a nice dinner at Journalistenclub with a great panel discussion of my colleague Anastasia, Fabian, and Timo. Fabian talked about his experiences as co-founder of Sharpist about performance, worries, challenges, flow, getting things done. The challenges of hiring friends and Timo shared some experiences from winning Le Mans and doing the fastest lap around Nürburgring and why it is sometimes better to scream for 10 seconds than to spend a few minutes angry. Anastasia moderated in a way that brought out a lot of new knowledge for everyone in the short time of a panel discussion. For me, it was amazing to finally be at a dinner with great people at Journalistenclub again.
A trip to Kaiserstuhl and the Black Forest
Last weekend I was traveling with my colleagues Teddy and Anastasia. We met with potential APX partners in the deep southwest of Germany and brainstormed over the weekend. We also had some of the great local wines and took long walks. This brainstorming trip prevented me from sending you an email last week as I spent my non-working time with my family. I hope something comes out of these meetings.
Offsite with Henric in Brandenburg
I am with Henric in Brandenburg right now. We have spent yesterday and the early morning brainstorming strategy and tactics for APX and our next few months.
Taking these moments in different contexts always helps me to look at things a little bit differently. Right now, we are at Gut Boltenhof. Next to all the working sessions on our future, we also consider if we need a place like this as a work location for the team. This might be something we will try: a place not too far away from Berlin where groups and individuals can work for some time.
I rarely read and watched anything as I had so many first-hand experiences over the past few weeks. I will share things with you again next week. Also, you might have noticed that I did not have the time to reflect on everything I experienced. I will have some time for this the coming weekend.
Thank you for reading, and I hope you found something meaningful.
Have a great week!
Joerg