Why I Joined GlassDollar
I left my wonderful corporate job for a startup. Good bye job security, good bye pension plan, good bye 40 hour work week. After three years in corporate venturing it was time for me to take the next step in fulfilling my life’s mission of making entrepreneurship more accessible to accelerate innovation.
“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure”
I want to live in a world where every single human takes ownership for their actions. Thus, in July 2021, I joined GlassDollar as Chief Operating Officer and Managing Director. GlassDollar enables corporations to harness the innovation power of startups at scale. But why exactly did I take this decision? It ultimately comes down to purpose, values, team and freedom.
A purpose that matches my life’s mission
The reason GlassDollar exists resonates strongly with my personal mission in life of connecting and empowering people to create products that change the world.
Changing the world for the better means having a net positive impact rather than only focusing on top-line growth or profit. While the wholistic view has to be kept in mind by every company, I believe startups are best positioned to grow into an entity which puts net positivity at the core of every decision.
I want to live in a world where every human takes responsibility for their actions. As a startup mentor, advisor and investor, I am proud to support founders to develop their product, grow their business and find the right strategic partners.
At GlassDollar I can enable entrepreneurs to have access to customer revenue by identifying the corporate challenges that need solutions and matching them with the best vendors in the world. Startups can bring their solutions and co-create with their customers to tackle the most challenging innovation problems of our time (like sustainable mobility concepts in the automotive industry). And while corporations should focus their innovation power on their core capabilities (e.g. development and manufacturing), many areas are better served by startups who have specialized therein (including auxiliary functions like HR, finance, and legal).
I want to enable people to get paid for their impact not their time and I believe that in the future many more corporate employees will start their own business or join a startup to pursue their personal goals with more focus. So I decided to walk the talk and trade corporate employment for startup ownership. I believe this way I can create more net positive impact in this world.
Values that are dear to my heart
GlassDollar embodies company values that are a direct reflection of what I personally stand for.
People at GlassDollar are self-aware. We live a conscious and purposeful life, seek growth, are able to reflect and extract learnings and are open to feedback. I experience this in my personal behavior, when I listen deeply to the pain points and suggestions of our customers as well as our employees.
We are true owners of our responsibilities, our work and our gains. For example, every person at GlassDollar holds an equity stake in the company. It encourages everybody, myself included, to actively drive their topics, make sure they are realized and stand up for mistakes.
GlassDollar is full of co-creators, team players with explicit communication, who are able to contextualize at different levels. We constantly ask why and don’t take it personally when others question us. I make it a habit to regularly use meta-communication, explaining why I said something or why I said it in a certain way.
We are in every way solutions spotters, early adopters, software power-users, explorers, hackers. We identify the best solution to a problem and if a respective tool already exists, we use that instead of re-inventing the wheel. This philosophy is deeply rooted into the tech stack of GlassDollar. Personally, for example, this philosophy lead me to discovering and falling in love with Notion.
Work at GlassDollar is impact-driven, fueled by meaningful results for our customers, both corporations and startups, as well as on others, like strategic partners, the community, the planet. As a startup mentor I give part of my time to share my expertise with founders and as a philanthropist I give part of my personal equity to support people, animals and the environment.
Everybody at GlassDollar is free, a meritocrat, self-contained, location-independent, and their roles and gains constantly evolve. I have always been a rebel in that respect, starting from the early school days, and have since been at my best whenever I had the autonomy to choose my own way of doing things.
GlassDollar is pure rock n roll. Life’s a game and we enjoy playing it. We learn from our losses, celebrate our successes and make sure to have fun along the way.
The most amazing team
The best intentions are nothing without a great team to execute them. There are many brilliant individuals around, but rarely found in a coherent ensemble within a company. In this I believe GlassDollar has struck gold by combining so many gifted people who share the same values and I am honored to be part of this amazing team.
“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”
The company would not exist without the visionary Founder & CEO Fabian, who previously founded Nestpick, where he made life-changing lessons that he incorporated into GlassDollar. Fabian brings the company vision and executive genius that enables us to support thousands of founders now and millions in the future. He has quickly become a great friend and vast source of inspiration.
Chief Product Officer Diane, who previously founded 7RP, brings clarity to the product vision and takes user experience to an unprecedented level. Without Diane there would be no product and without the product there would be no GlassDollar. Her infinite dedication and habit to consistently ask why impress me every day.
Head of Startups Niklas, who previously founded GameBuddy and pitched it to Y-Combinator, goes straight to the root of the cause and is never afraid to ask the hard questions. Niklas is responsible for the success of our startup partners, who trust us to find the best corporations for them to co-create. He constantly pushes us to learn faster.
Head of Operations Tobias, who previously founded RideBee, lays the essential foundation for business impact tracking and analytics. Tobias is responsible for managing the flow of information through our product and our company. With this we can provide the most comprehensive insights to our customers, so they can make better decisions. He leverages data and logic like none I have met before.
Head of Engineering Kamen, who previously founded Bakalin, is the user’s best advocate when it comes to building the greatest product for them. Kamen’s remarkable engineering experience is at the core of GlassDollar offering the most effective tools to our customers. He has a mental model for every situation to think better, make fewer mistakes, and obtain the best results.
And there are so many more talented people that make up the awesome GlassDollar team, who all are the reason why I look forward to Monday.
Onwards and upwards
Finally, I value the freedom I have in working at GlassDollar. Freedom to choose how I spend my time. Freedom to live and work from where I choose. Freedom to work on the things I believe make an impact.
With so many reasons to be a part of GlassDollar, I humbly embarked on a voyage to empower entrepreneurship and vow to give everything for the success of our startup partners and corporate clients.
GlassDollar provides the leading end-to-end solution to help corporations source, manage, and successfully scale startup collaborations. We offer corporations transparency over the best vendors and enable them to make better decisions, while offering startups the opportunity to grow their business and co-create with corporate clients such as Daimler, Siemens, BSH and Telefónica.
Data is at the core of GlassDollar, with unrivaled information about startup PoCs and through our network effects, we offer the broadest view on startup solutions available. With our deep understanding of both corporate and startup worlds we are excited to shape the future of work.
