Entrepreneurial Backpack Series

By: ETH Zurich founders
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  • Summary

  • This podcast series is for entrepreneurial minds! -Do you have an idea or innovative approach to tackle a current problem and would like to turn your idea into a market solution?” -Are you interested in shaping your entrepreneurial mindset? -Or are you just looking for inspiring ideas? Experience is the best teacher. You can benefit from the insights of entrepreneurs who have walked the same path as you are about to. Get inspiration from former ETH students who share their insights about how to successfully launch a startup and overcome difficult challenges. Entrepreneurship initiative UBS and ETH Zurich are proud to present jointly a significant platform for Swiss innovation and entrepreneurship. In 2022, ETH Zürich and UBS have launched a partnership to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in Switzerland.
    ETH Zurich
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Episodes
  • Episode 2: Flavio Rump: Lessons in Sales & Marketing from a DeinDeal Founder

    Episode 2: Flavio Rump: Lessons in Sales & Marketing from a DeinDeal Founder
    Jun 11 2024
    ⁠Flavio Rump⁠ is one of the co-founders of ⁠DeinDeal⁠, the famous Swiss eCommerce scaleup acquired by DeinDeal in 2011. He’s also a startup investor, board member and growth expert. He holds a BSc in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from ETH and has co-founded companies like Pigeon Apps Inc, Blue Chocolate Inc, and Bio2040.com, and the Student Biolab Zurich. He credits DeinDeal’s success and quick growth to their early realization that sales do not equal profits, and to the fact that their team possessed a large number of extremely competent “specialists”. Here is a summary of some of the sales and marketing tips that he shared with our host Silvan: The difference between sales and marketing is that marketing is a long-term endeavor to build trust and credibility, whereas sales is a shorter-term process where you understand customer needs and fit your product to them. The sales channels that worked best for DeinDeal were Google Search, Facebook and Hyperlocalized Advertising. For this last one they created individual landing pages for certain queries (e.g., hairdressers in Zurich, restaurants in Zurich), in order to reduce the number of clicks a customer has to go through to get from query to conversion. Their conversion rates increased 50%. A great way to start getting closer to customers and better understanding their needs is to create a live chat on your homepage. Customer development should start as soon as research and product development start. Talking to customers while building your product helps you know which product to build in the first place, as well as which markets to go into. Don’t be afraid to get candid with prospects during sales calls. Phrases like “Help me out here” are effective in getting people to open up and to explain how your product falls short. Don’t be afraid to ask your prospect to close the deal if your sales call is going really well. And if your sales call went well but you haven’t heard from your prospect since, don’t assume this means disinterest — often people are just quite busy. Follow up continuously unless they clearly state that they no longer intend to buy your product.
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    44 mins
  • Episode 1: Philippe Ganz & Paulina Grnarova: The Art of the Start

    Episode 1: Philippe Ganz & Paulina Grnarova: The Art of the Start
    Feb 19 2024
    About Philippe Ganz & Paulina Grnarova: ⁠Paulina Grnarova⁠ is the co-founder and CEO of ⁠DeepJudge⁠, an AI-powered Knowledge Search for legal professionals. She holds a PhD in Computer Science from ETH. ⁠Philippe Ganz⁠ is the CEO and co-founder of ⁠aiEndoscopic⁠, a medtech startup combining artificial intelligence with robotic endoscopy. He holds a MSc in Biomedical Engineering from ETH. During their chat with Silvan, Philippe and Paulina discussed some of the commons topics of starting your first company, like which values to cultivate in your founder team and how to set up a shareholders agreement that foresees all future possibilities, whether to go for grants or equity rounds as a science-heavy startup, and the guiding principles of building an MVP.
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    52 mins
Leadership Economics
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