Drawing on his years of practical know-how, Jan Beckers told the story of how he became an entrepreneur, from party planner to video game distributor. And how he made Hitfox a corporate group that is not only successful in the video gaming market but also acts as a company builder in the fintech sector – even with several failed business ideas on the road.
Here are some insights that Jan shared with his audience:
Know What You Are Good at
Taking Hitfox as an example: They know how to build a synergetic group of companies. Their portfolio now includes 15+ companies which have raised funding worth 200 million euros.
Success Factor #1 – A Strong Team
How do you build such a team? Start networking one or two years before you even launch your company. This helps you to find out who can help you with your idea and who might be a good fit for your team.
A Strong Mentor Doubles the Speed of Your Learning Curve
You can learn almost anything by yourself. With a mentor, you can get to a point in 2-3 months where you would otherwise need 2-3 years. There are mistakes, for example, you won’t even make or opportunites where you can do things better from the get-go. You can directly learn from your mentor’s experience and take the shortest route to where you want to go instead of trying 3 different roads first before discovering the 4th road you actually take.
Always Have a Clear Strategy but …
… stay flexible enough so that you can adapt to new opportunities or react to market developments. That’s how you get a company that starts out as a gaming distributor that goes mobile first after and then transforms into a fintech company.
Find the Right Opportunity at the Right Time
Launch the kind of company that fits to who you are and in the sector you know well. Taking Jan: he knew how to organize parties. That’s where he learnt everything to build a gaming company – this includes different kind of building blocks such as experience, know-how, and resources which complement each other.
Find Co-Founders with Complementary Skillsets
… ideally, before you launch. Business studies people need tech co-founders. Techies need business and marketing. Also, a numbers guy or gal for accounting, controlling, and keeping the money together is kind of handy as well.
Work Hard and Stay Focussed
Especially in a startup hotspot such as Berlin, you can go to tons of events, meetups, and parties every single day. What you really need is the kind of tunnel vision that gets you closer to your goals and KPIs.
But still: Celebrate!
Enjoy the time with your team. Have fun and celebrate your successes. Or party together for the party’s sake, so that your team can grow together and you start to love working together.
Create an Upwards Spiral
With the right kind of mindset, you can gather momentum and combine ideas, team, execution, investors and a strong launch into a neat package.
And then?
With the next company, you can build on your previous experience and become even better and more versatile.
You don’t need to build one company after another, of course, but the upwards spiral also applies to building new teams and new products.
Become a founder!
Discover your entrepreneurial talents and develop your own business idea together with a strong team.
