Holger Seim, Blinkist CEO on 21M Users and the 4-Day Workweek

Michael Koenig: Hello and welcome to Between Two COOs, where phenomenal Chief Operating Officers come to share their knowledge, advice, and crazy stories. I'm your host, Michael Koenig, and I'm excited to welcome our guest, Holger Sajin, the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Blinkist, a company that's on a mission to create, as the New York Times aptly put it, a tool for acquiring and absorbing as much information as possible in as brief brief a time as a human brain will allow. Holger and his team have gone about doing that by creating a catalog of over 5,000 nonfiction books that they've turned into 15-minute summaries of the most important parts. And they started doing it with podcasts as well. So that 40 hours of backlog podcasts that you have, that could just be a handful of hours instead. 10 years ago in Berlin, Holger and his co-founders started Blinkist and are now in the pockets of more than 21 million users, mine included. Which is one of the reasons I'm so excited to have Holger on. Blinkist has raised nearly $40 million in venture capital firms like Insight Partners and Greycroft, but with 21 million users, I'm guessing they don't need VC dollars to keep breathing and are probably operating well into the black. Holger, welcome. I'm excited to have you on.

Holger Seim: Thanks for having me, Michael. Excited to be here.

Michael Koenig: So there's so much to cover, but before we get into it, tell us a bit about your path. Why start a company? Why Blinkist? And how did you find yourself in the CEO chair?

Holger Seim: So my passion for entrepreneurship goes back into school. I think when I was 12, I started to trade CDs or stuff like that. So I had my first small businesses, if you will, in school. I was organizing proms at school. I was always, you know, doing extracurricular activities with business plan competitions and stuff like that. So I always had a I had a passion for business and organizing stuff and doing stuff and also earning money. And when I, when I was in college, I found friends that shared this passion and we started a student consultancy together. So we formed a group, we got more students on board, and then we offered our services to companies as a consulting firm basically, but cheaper and with students. That worked quite well and from, you know, 4 guys who had this idea to 50 students who were excited about this and acquired a lot of projects and earned money with that was just 12 months in between. And that's when I realized this passion, it's not only a passion but it's also a skill that I have. To start something from scratch on a green field and get people behind me to follow me and build something with me and This consultancy still exists, so it's handed over from basically cohort to cohort in that university. And with a couple of those friends that I started this consultancy with, we realized, well, you know, we should do that on a bigger scale after university. We're still conservative enough to say after university, so we weren't the guys who say let's drop university and start something right away. So we finished university, and actually after university we didn't have the right idea, so we all joined different jobs. I worked for T-Mobile here in Germany and also in Seattle in the US because I really liked their, their vision and mission then and thought the CEO they had on back then was great. And but throughout these early months of being employed, we continued to frequently meet, think about ideas, and eventually we had the idea for Blinkist. And the core idea behind Blinkist, the initial The initial working title was WaitMate. We thought, you know, everyone— back then it was 2011— people started to, like smartphones started to boom. More and more people had smartphones and would engage with them on a daily basis, and more and more consumption patterns shifted from print books, MacBooks, laptops, you name it, to mobile screens. And we thought, well, there is a huge opportunity because usage patterns, consumption patterns change. And at the same time, we had a personal problem. We came from university where our job was to learn, to basically gather new knowledge and feed our curiosity. And eventually we started a job and then our job was to work. And then learning kind of happened off the job and we had less and less time for that. So we thought, well, you know, we wanted to read more books back then, broaden our horizons, continue on our lifelong learning track. And at the same time, that got harder. And then we realized, well, we spend all that time on smartphones. Why don't we build a service that helps you to build a lifelong learning habit, basically to consume something meaningful that helps you grow personally, professionally, broaden your horizons, dip your toes into different topics while you're on the go to fill those little times when you check your smartphone anyway. So that was the initial idea, working title Waitmate, a mate that helps you to fill your waiting times for something. Meaningful, and eventually we explored that idea further. We got a lot of confirming, you know, information of others liking the idea, etc., etc. So eventually we decided to quit our jobs, move to Berlin, and start a company. We were all based in Germany, and Berlin was already the hub for startups in Germany, so that's why we decided to move to Berlin. And yeah, as they say, the rest is history.

Michael Koenig: Now, the term consumption patterns shifting, that's actually quite fascinating, and we're definitely going to talk about that more. So I'm going to flag it right here. But also, I think there is maybe another correlation, which is the move into offering Blinkist to companies, where it's not necessarily consumption patterns shifting, but consumption mediums and methods. You talked about how there's this changing of the tide where you need to learn when you're not working, and there seems to be a changing of the tide right now with companies really starting to invest in continuing to learn. Is that something that is— and I'm jumping way far ahead here, but in terms of Blinkist for companies, is that one of the things that is those secular tailwinds that are perhaps you know, driving the company towards that?

Holger Seim: Definitely. I mean, we haven't had a conversation before, so— but I, uh, you have a crystal ball there. It's definitely a trend that is very meaningful for us. We initially, when we started Blinkist, and also in the first years, we focused on consumer because we, we believe that the big opportunity is consumer. Ultimately, we will only build a huge company if we build something that consumers, that people want to use and use habitually in their daily lives. And The more we grew, the more inbound requests we became from companies, because managers of companies would be a customer of ours and then think like, I want to have that for my team or for the whole company. So we got these inbound requests, and in the early years we responded to them, you know, just informally. We had one person who dealt with that on, you know, 10-20% of her time. But actually last year we decided to double down on that because that's when we realized there's, you know, so much budget in companies, such a big need, and we have such a unique solution to contribute to that. I mean, it's a very fragmented space. There's so many corporate learning solutions out there, but we have a really unique solution to add. So we decided to double down on that, hired a more experienced enterprise salesperson to, to build a team to lead that, and that's one of the fastest-growing parts of Blinkist right now. It's still early days, so compared to our consumer business, it's still quite small, but if you look at growth rates, I'm very, very confident that this will be a meaningful part of our business in no time.

Michael Koenig: And it's a much lower barrier to entry in terms of employees actually sticking with something, right? Whereas, okay, say we give you a stipend, we being the company, give you a stipend to go take a Coursera course. Okay, that's many weeks, you have to stay motivated, disciplined. If you miss that week, then you got to go back, then you become totally demotivated and you stop doing it. Company's wasted money, you've wasted time. Whereas with Blinkist, I mean, plug and play. You download a book you're interested in and then on your way to work, 15 minutes, you're done. So I love that about, about Blinkist there.

Holger Seim: I'm, I'm glad to hear that. I couldn't sell it better.

Michael Koenig: Ah, I'm sure you can. You're the CEO. Okay, so sometimes some of those ideas seem really simple on the surface, but when you dig in, there's a lot more complexity than you imagined, right? So let's set aside the tech, for instance. On the surface, the concept of Blinkist seems quite simple. You read the books, create a 15-minute summary, and then record the summaries. But I'm, you know, but I'm guessing there's a lot more to it. I mean, you're bumping up against Amazon with Kindle and Audible, and probably Google and Apple in some capacity. And then you have the publishing industry and all of their IP protections. I mean, how are you competing in the face of Amazon and Google And how is the publishing industry reacting to Blinkist?

Holger Seim: Yeah, so, so where do I start? I mean, obviously, we had a lot, a lot of challenges and still have a lot of challenges. It's hard to build a consumer business. And it gets harder every year because you mentioned it's not just the big companies. There's so much noise out there. So many, so many companies trying to compete for attention, so many podcasts trying to compete for people's attention. And it's challenging and it costs a lot of money to stand out in that noise, a lot of marketing bucks. The marketing doesn't get easier in these days with all the VC money being in the market. There's a lot of competition, so our CPMs increased year over year, got harder to track with Apple's recent ATT introduction, etc. So I think one core challenge is getting people's attention at a price that is low enough to make for an affordable business model. And that's a challenge we don't just share with the big companies, we share with every other company as well. I think the way we respond to that, we have a quite unique solution. We entered market when we started Belang because it was rather a blue ocean. Audio wasn't a thing. And to be fair, we started text only and we added audio versions end of 2014, and it was also the time when podcasts started to— started their journey or their trajectory that they're on right now. So, but it was a fairly blue ocean back then. Bite-sized learning, bite-sized edutainment wasn't a big category. And then even these days, we still have a good differentiated offer. There's not a lot of other companies that do what we do. Obviously, there Some copycats popped up, but we are clearly leading the market in terms of all indicators. So I think it's fair to say we've been early, maybe even a little too early, because the first 2 or 3 years weren't easy, took some time. And then we used being the first mover and learned our lessons in marketing, learned how to sell Blinkist, which channels, which messages, etc., how to bring people on board and how to keep them engaged. And I think we've mastered that quite well. What we're still, you know, not struggling with, but what's an ongoing challenge is keeping people engaged. Because even though we lower the barrier for people to engage with learning content, and even though we see that usage with Blinkist is much higher than longer-form content, it's still an eat-your-vegetables product. It's not a lean-back product, right? It's easier to listen to something entertaining. It's easier to watch a series on Netflix. It's easier, or you get a quicker dopamine hit if you scroll through your social media feed. So, Blink is still a lean-forward experience and that requires some extra tweaks to get people motivated and that's an ongoing challenge. So, to keep people engaged and to really deliver on that promise to help you build a habit of learning and I think that's the biggest challenge and we— this challenge is regardless of competition, that's a challenge that we just have with human psychology, if you will. And other than that, you asked, you asked about publishers. There was an uphill battle in the early days. It gets easier as we grow. I think initially publishers were concerned that what we're doing is cannibalizing their book sales. People will start to listen to the blinks and then don't buy the full books anymore. We have lots of data that this is not true, and there was also never our intention. We are avid readers, we're book lovers, and But there is a— everyone is aware there is a discoverability problem. People don't know what to read. And we also know that there is a time problem. Even though we're interested in so many things, we can't dig into everything in depth. And then it's better to say, well, you know, there's some topics where you can dig deeper, but then other topics you're interested in, it's better to offer, you know, a lower barrier format for people to at least dip their toes into it. So And we see that's how people use it these days. They use it complementary to reading books. They use us to discover broadly and to dip their toes into different topics and then to discover or to find the titles that are really relevant where they say, "I want to spend 8 hours with this title to dig deeper," and then they go on, read or listen to the full book. And more and more publishers get that now and are willing to work with us. Still not all. It's still a constant conversation and negotiation with publishers, but We've come a long way since we started.

Michael Koenig: By the way, I'm another data point there. I've purchased several books after listening to Blinks. So, you know, happy to talk with publishers for you.

Holger Seim: Okay. Glad to hear it.

Michael Koenig: Firsthand knowledge. So you talked about some of the usage challenges within, you know, the fight for attention. And there's plenty of print about the attention economy and who is gathering it. And you talked about the dopamine release. I mean, I think everyone is starting to become more familiar with this now. How have you all faced those challenges? And what are some tips or lessons that you, you learned along the way?

Holger Seim: Yeah, so I mean, we're facing this, we, we don't have a problem top of funnel. It is, it's not easy, but we've mastered how to attract people who are interested in what we're doing. And also, we get a lot of them to subscribe. And to give us their money and say like, look, I want to use this, I'm excited. And then we see a lot of people being really engaged in the first month, listening to all those titles they always want to listen to. But then some of them, or too many for my ambition, drop off after month 1. So too many don't build a continuous habit because Ultimately, they get distracted. Life happens, a new service pops up, and they forget to use AboutBlink. When we ask users, we can't— they can't name something. They didn't have a particularly bad experience, but something, you know, somehow it didn't stick with them, and there was some something, yeah, distracting them to keep going. And that is obviously— it doesn't happen to the majority of our customers, otherwise we wouldn't be in a place where we are today. But my ambition is to to serve everyone who gives us money and find much more and build a really big business that makes a dent. So, that's our challenge. And what we've learned is, I mean, content is at the core. Ultimately, the content needs to deliver. Ultimately, the content needs to engage you and get you out of passive listening mode, get you into like, you need an aha moment, something that wows you, something that where you think like, that's really interesting, I can use that to improve this and that, or I can share it with my spouse because it's relevant for her, or I can just— this moment when you read something interesting and then you meet a friend at dinner and then you can share some interesting trivia. All these things, all these real-life applications of things you've learned through Blinkist, these these create the value, and this is what we have to bring out even more, get people out of passive listening mode into actively reflecting on what they just heard and making use of that in real life. And that doesn't always have to be to change that habit or to do something self-improvement-wise. It can also be to just empower people to have meaningful conversations with others, be more interesting people. And we all want to, want to be more interesting. We all want to have meaningful connections, and meaningful connections are formed through communication. And we can contribute a lot of, a lot of interesting stuff. Initially, interesting anecdote here, initially, or some, some customers would tell us, well, you know, also some negative feedback that we got from, from, from people who've seen our ads, well, this is just a tool for people who want to brag that they've listen to all these books and just want to have the highlights so they can appear smarter. But why is that negative? I mean, why, if we give people something that, you know, that is interesting for them, something that makes them better conversation partners, what is bad about that? I mean, obviously we all know we don't like people who brag, but it's not about bragging, it's just about being a more informed person, and then through that being a more liked person or more respected person. That's something good. That's such an inherent, like, core desire for all of us to be liked and to have meaningful connections, and we can contribute to that. And there, there's nothing bad about that. Yeah, so, so yeah, I mean, sorry, it was a quite long answer. We came from publishers, but to bring it back, publishers realize that more and more. Also authors realize that authors realize that we can spread their ideas even wider, we can spread their names even wider. And that's what they want ultimately, they want a broad audience and that's what we can deliver.

Michael Koenig: No, but I'm glad that your answer kind of evolved that way because, you know, throughout it I couldn't help think, okay, this is kind of like an aspirational product and then my mind started going towards exercise equipment being sold like hotcakes after the New Year. But then as you, as you talked about it more, and by the way, be more interesting should absolutely be a marketing slogan, but I'm not a good marketer, so don't listen to me. But with each book that you read, it opens a different perspective in your mind, gives you a different lens to think about, you know, whatever that subject may be. And while sure. You might not be reading the entire book, you're still getting that almost prompt, right, for, for you to develop and change your perspectives over time. So there's still value from it. And, you know, hopefully at dinner parties people are just dropping that they listen to the blank instead of reading the whole thing.

Holger Seim: Yeah, and that's what we see happen. Like, no one— only a few people say probably they've read the full book, but they said like, you know, read the blinks or listen to the blinks. And yeah, we can set, we can nudge, you know, we can give thought starters, we can nudge people to think about something, we can set a learning path in motion. And sometimes that learning path means you go on, read the full book. Sometimes it means you go on, listen to a TED Talk of that author or to a podcast of that author. And sometimes a learning path means you bring it up in a conversation and then your friend shares her perspective And then you talk about it and that creates learning and deeper reflection. So it, uh, we can be the starting point for deeper learning. Blinkist in itself is not deep learning. I talk about Blinkist as an informal learning tool. We can't teach you how to code and we can't replace a Coursera or full book if you really want to go deep into something, but we can create relevance. We can help you discover why certain titles are relevant for you. And then be that starting point for you to go on a journey and go deeper. And that's— and there's a need for that, that doesn't exist, or it exists in very fragmented solutions. You know, some people use YouTube for that. I think TED is a good example. Some people use TED for that, but there is no— and also all podcasts, some, you know, I think podcasts serve a similar job to be done. So I'm not saying Blinkist is the only solution to that job to be done out there, But we, we are one solution that is very relevant for a lot of people.

Michael Koenig: So let's switch gears. Let's talk about the venture funding that you raised. VC evaluate opportunities and risks all day long. During those early days, did you hear the word no a lot from investors because of the potential threats posed by the likes of Amazon and these other monstrous behemoths?

Holger Seim: I mean, we heard a lot of nos from VCs. I think you hear 95% nos and only 5% yes, but also you only need that one yes per round and that keeps you going. The reasons for the nos changed over the years. I think initially nos were people did not believe that we can create, we can monetize digital content because it's hard to imagine now, but if we go back 2012, 2013, digital subscription models weren't a thing. People were used to free content through all the news that posted that kind of paywalls weren't a thing. So a lot of people, a lot of VCs doubted that we, we can monetize that, that we can find enough people who are willing to pay for that versus expecting that this is free. Some thought the unit economics don't add up, it's not easy enough to acquire people at a low enough CAC. Others questioned the the size of the opportunity, the addressable market, because obviously we— what we're building is not a category yet, you know. Say like, for example, language learning. Language learning always existed. You have a market for language learning. That is, people take schools, people buy books, da da da, and then a solution like Babbel or Duolingo can say like, we take this market and bring it online, bring it on mobile phones. So you have a market size and people— it's easier for investors to understand, well, that's a big addressable market. For us, short-form content, bite-sized content was not a category, was not a market. And obviously we always argued with, you know, look at all these avid readers out there and we believe we can help them. So that should be our market in terms of people that we can address. And ultimately some investors bought it, but that was always a quite challenging point to drive home in the early days. Some investors also said like, look, you know, what if Amazon builds this tomorrow? So this competition question came up. But to be honest, the honest answer for every seed stage company to that question, what if Amazon or Google build it tomorrow, should be, well, then we're fucked. That's part of the risk. Sorry for, pardon my French. If that happens, then we have a problem. But usually those big companies, they don't start with seed opportunities. You know, they have other problems, they have other— there are so many big opportunities to follow, and they wait until some seed opportunities are actually— have grown into mainstream opportunities, and then they are potential acquirers instead of just copycats. So, um, yeah, so I, I think this question is stupid from, from investors in seed stage companies, but we, we also got it. And then we— I like to be direct and, and transparent, and then my answer was, well, If they do it, then we have a problem. And if you invest in us, you have a problem as well. That's part of the, that's why it's called venture capital.

Michael Koenig: Well, not, not just that. It's a novel idea. If they go ahead and do it, chances are it's because you're starting to eat their lunch. At that point, do we build it or do we buy it?

Holger Seim: Yeah. Right.

Michael Koenig: Sure. So that's, it's a good problem to have at that point. It means you've arrived, but I agree. Stupid question. VCs, if you're listening to this, stop asking us that. All right, same goes for like a 5-year financial projection. A seed stage company doesn't—

Holger Seim: I think, I mean, I think Paul Graham recently, uh, put that like he doesn't look at, at these business plans. I mean, because it's really just— I think, well, it shows at least that a founder can work with Excel and can plan and do financial protection. So it shows that there are some skills, but the actual numbers that are in, in a in a 5-year plan, even in a, in a projection that is 12 months in

Michael Koenig: And now you have over 21 million users. I mean, that's remarkable. I'm sure there were a lot of bumps and bruises along the way. You spoke about some of the usage patterns and, and, uh, competing for attention, but I'm sure there were a lot of learnings. What did you all do right? 21 million That is a massive number.

Holger Seim: Yeah. I think the biggest game changer for us has been going from text to audio. We started text only and eventually— I can still remember summer 2014, we were visiting TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco. So we were at this conference and talked to a lot of VCs, business angels, influential people from the valley. Pitched our idea to get feedback, and 9 out of 10 people said something along the lines of, "This is a great idea, is it available in audio as well?" And that was before the podcast boom, so that started later in that year. So we thought, well, if, you know, Silicon Valley always is a little ahead of the game compared to the rest of the world, so if 9 out of 10 people in the Valley ask us about audio, we should probably do audio. And so we started to build the capability, started to record our blinks, and that was a big game changer because that got us into an even bluer ocean. You know, when your eyes are not busy, you can also watch a video, so the competition is just much higher. But when your eyes are busy, when you can only listen, the competition was much lower. I mean, you compete with podcasts, maybe Audible, Spotify, Apple Music, these kind of brands, but that's it. So that was a big game changer. It increased our relevancy. So being able to talk about audio in marketing made us more relevant. For new users, it increased conversions, more people then actually decided to stick to it after trial and it increased engagement. Apart from that, in the early years we had to learn our lessons, how to do digital marketing, how to track it the right way, how to set up a good stack that helps us to learn, to build, measure, learn quickly. So, all these things that you can read in books about how a startup should be run. And that's quite ironic, even though we, we have a service that delivers the key insights from books and we read those books, we still made the same mistakes. So at least some things you can read them even 10 times, you still have to make some mistakes on your own to feel them, to make it right. So we also didn't follow proper Lean Startup methodology in the early, early years. And that all required some time. These were the first 2, 2.5 years where we were finding ourselves, learning how to build a real business, figuring out all these, all this stuff that I mentioned. And then, yeah, by end of 2014, we had audio, we had a good tech stack, a good tracking stack, we had understood how digital marketing works. We had found the right business model, right pricing, etc. And then that created the perfect storm for us. And since then, we were able to grow quite nicely.

Michael Koenig: So you and your co-founders started and operate Blinkist out of Germany in Berlin, as you mentioned, but you've achieved pretty decent market penetration here in the United States. How did that happen? Was it by design or happy accident?

Holger Seim: It was by design. Actually, one of the early mistakes we made was to launch in German only. We thought, let's launch in a smaller market so we can learn in a, you know, we don't burn ourselves in a bigger market. We somehow thought, like, you know, if we learn— and they say, you know, the first product, if you launch a product that you're not ashamed of, you launch too late. And so we thought, well, we'll probably launch something that we are ashamed of, and let's not launch it to to the world yet, thinking that if it— if people don't like it, we will burn our brand. And that was so stupid thinking in hindsight. I mean, because no one cares. And you can launch a product, and even if you have 100,000 users using it, this is still such a fraction of the world, nothing happens. So it's— in hindsight, at least, that's my take from it, my experience. Everyone has to make their own experience, but I think it was stupid to to launch just in Germany for that reason, because it would have not been expensive to simply launch in two languages and then translate the content in both English and German, because we were doing only text in the early days. So it wouldn't have— would have not meant to also narrate in another language. So we were really only talking about translating texts and maybe selecting titles that are relevant also for a US market. So that was a mistake we've made, but also learned our lesson there and mid-late 2013 and then started with English content. And since then it was by design. Since then we said, well, the US is our biggest market and with English content in general we can tap into the world because people who are interested in reading nonfiction, making learning a habit, tend to be educated people who speak and read English anyway. So we thought like we can not only with the focus on English not only conquer the US but also tap into a lot of other English-native markets or markets with a lot of English affinity. And since then we switched to US or English first and German second. And then, yeah, since our engine of growth has been performance marketing, paid acquisition, we built a good team in Berlin. Berlin, you have a lot of big international talent markets, so we have a lot of Americans, a lot of English-native speakers, in the team and we were able to grow that out of Berlin. I do see now, you know, at the scale we are right now, it becomes more and more important to be on the ground to figure out these little tweaks to get from this really big early niche into mainstream. So we also have some people on the ground in the US by now, but in the early years up until 2 years ago So it worked quite well doing that out of Berlin.

Michael Koenig: Yeah, that's very interesting, especially with paid acquisition, right? Cultural differences with paid acquisition can really shift the needle one way or the other. And so having those Americans on staff who are going to help with that copy, right? Those ads is so key. And what I think is really fascinating here is that when I think about international expansion, I'm thinking about it from a US company going into other regions, whereas hearing you talk about some of the challenges or the strategy that you used going from Germany into the US market is actually quite fascinating. And I could see how the success would come from having some US folks on your staff to, to help kind of point you in the right cultural direction. So let's switch into operations of the organization because this is between two chief operating officers, albeit I like to have operators from different titles as well, from different perspectives. So before Blinkist, as you mentioned, you spent some time in the division of the CEO at Deutsche Telekom. And but it wasn't all that long, right? For all intents, you started this out of university with your co-founders, and you've now grown to nearly 300 team members. What's behind the success of you and your co-founders as operators and leaders? I mean, how'd you learn how to do it aside from, you know, Blinking, uh, I don't know, Good to Great or The Innovator's Dilemma?

Holger Seim: Yeah, so, so first of all, we're, um, we're at 170 employees, not 300. I don't know where that information came from, but it's— I think they're actually— it's the same challenge. It's— and I'm a pretty practical person, so I learn by doing. So, and I usually— I'm a good mix of optimistic and naive to just get into things and say, oh well, I'll figure it out along the way. So that's how I learned a lot. And but also along the years, build a support network because it is challenging. And I'm— every year again, I'm stretched and I feel stretched. It's not always rainbows and butterflies. It also sometimes wears on me, and I feel like, damn, am I still the right person for this position? Because these challenges— they say small companies, small problems, big companies, big problems, and I think that's true. It is, it is a challenging job. So I've built a support network. I do executive coaching. My board supports a lot. We have an independent board member, the founder and CEO of Bubble, a company that is already that always has been 3 steps ahead of us. They are a little older and they've always been bigger in terms of revenue, company, etc. So he went through all the challenges that we also went through a couple of years before. So, so, his name is Marcus. He was really helpful. Our board, the rest of the board is helpful. One of our independent, one of our board members from, from Insight Venture Partners has been an operator himself. He was the CEO of Weight Watchers and CEO of Shutterstock. And then other board members that are pure investors. Basically, they have a big network of other operators, so they connect me to folks. I'm a member of an organization called Entrepreneurs Organization. That's— I don't know whether you heard it— it's— you meet with other entrepreneurs in a monthly forum. You have strict confidentiality. Everyone shares their challenges in business, in life, family, friends, and personal, both the highs and the lows, and then we come, you know, we basically share experiences and support each other. That's a big support network. And yeah, so I think a mix of this learning by doing and surrounding myself with these people, and then most importantly, obviously, I mean, I lean a lot on my team, on the people on our team, and we bring— over the years we learn to bring in more experienced people and listen to them rather than just, you know, doing everything on our own., and that's a big support network as well.

Michael Koenig: So how have you designed your management team? I, I know that you have co-chief technology officers, which I actually haven't seen before. Can you tell us a bit about that? And then also on the operation side, how have you structured things and what areas of responsibility have you carved out for yourself versus the operators that you have on, on that ops side?

Holger Seim: So, I mean, the leadership team has evolved over the last 10 years, and every other year it was different. For a long time, I mean, I was always CEO, but for a long time I still had functions reporting directly to me. So I built up our marketing organization, and in the early days did the first campaigns myself, designed the banners, launched the stuff on Facebook, tracked it, etc. Since we needed a good, as I said earlier, since we needed a good BI stack to track the right things, to do good digital marketing, also built that up. So functionally, I was leading business intelligence and marketing for a long time, but eventually as we grew, I realized this is not sustainable. I can't, both from a capacity point of view, I can't fill a CEO role and also functional lead role, and also from a role conflict view, then I need to hold myself accountable for that. And then I both need to be the CEO for other functions and the peer, and that got me into trouble here and there. So eventually I stepped out of being the functional lead for something. These days my responsibility is to lead the leadership team, to make sure they, you know, all work to build a high-performing team, make sure there's trust, there's clear direction, there's ambition, to fill gaps if there are gaps, if people leave, to refill them and fill gaps on interim basis to set the longer-term vision, make sure the company is well-funded. So these kind of things, these classical CEO things. But as I said, I'm a practical person. I need also a little bit of just doing these CEO tasks doesn't make me happy. So my challenge is always also how can I get involved here and there? Where can I dive deep sometimes to feel like I'm doing something tangible? And so there's still a journey for me. To really grow into this new CEO role and really get— start working purely on the business instead of in the business because I enjoy it so much working in the business. To your question, how do I structure my leadership team? We have VPs for all functions. I have a VP Marketing, a VP Product, a VP Content, VP Engineering, CTO, VP for Partnerships, for Finance Operations, for people and culture. And to your question around the co-CTOs, actually our initial CTO Tobi is my co-founder and he built the, yeah, the engineering organization, has been our CTO for a long time. Eventually he jumped on the B2B opportunity when we said let's double down. He said that's right up my alley, I want a new challenge. So he promoted his one person that was in his team that has been working with us very long into this CTO role, and he's taking care of B2B now. He still has— then we said like, let's, we decided let's make it co-CTOs for now. Technically, he's now leading the B2B efforts and eventually will also reflect that in the titles. Yeah, it was kind of an easier step, so he could still support, he could help Sebastian, or now the acting CTO, helping transition into that role. And for some time he filled both roles a little bit to support Sebastian and to start B2B. But now since B2B has taken off so nicely, he's fully focused on B2B.

Michael Koenig: That's fantastic. And the challenge that you find yourself in right now of taking that step back, but also really wanting to to roll up your sleeves and, and get your hands dirty. I mean, that can actually be quite challenging when you've built up a management team who have their areas of responsibility, and you need to somehow still scratch that itch of yours without stepping on toes or upsetting them. So a huge challenge there.

Holger Seim: Definitely.

Michael Koenig: Yeah. Now, every now and then I take questions from the audience, and for this one I actually went to the person that introduced me to Blinkist. Elliott Darvik, a former Lyft exec now at Workrise. And so Elliott asks, what techniques do you employ to ensure that your vision remains intact no matter who you speak with across the company?

Holger Seim: That's an interesting question. I think, um, I still have a lot to learn there. I mean, what, um, one thing I try is just to have a clear vision first and to write it down, to codify it, and to make it accessible for everyone. We use Confluence as an internal kind of a knowledge management tool. So there we have it clear and codified. I do a monthly all-hands where I share, you know, some updates of the business, give context to the situation we're in, what we've done, what we've learned, etc. There always also lead with the vision to make sure that— just I repeat it— I think in a book from Patrick Lencioni I read that, you know, as a CEO you're basically a chief reminding officer. You always need to constantly remind people of the vision. So I try to do that through certain routines like the all-hands, and, and then in one-on-one conversations, or when I try to lead with context. So when I take a decision or when I challenge a decision, I try to connect it to a broader context that usually always ties into the strategy or the longer-term vision. So I'm saying all of these things now because they sound so smart. In reality, I probably should do much more of all of that. So that's— intellectually, I'm there, and here and there I'm also doing that. But I will also say that, as, you know, as we grew as an organization, it was much easier to align 30 people onto one vision than it is to align 170 people on one vision. And, and that's still something we're working on. We're also considering, you know, we do not For example, how do we set goals and how do we make sure everything cascades into that one strategy and vision? And, you know, I know intellectually, again, there's OKRs and their systems that work, but since I'm such a pragmatic person, I also am, I'm a little hesitant to introduce too much formality, too much process. And I've heard, and I can imagine that, you know, going all in OKRs is a monster in terms of bureaucracy. So there's still work to do on my end, but also on our end as a company to find the right system for us that cascades goals into one overarching strategy without being too bureaucratic, because I don't want to spend too much time in alignment and filling out these docs. I want us to build and yeah.

Michael Koenig: That's so interesting. One of our previous guests, Nathaniel Manning, the COO of, of Kettle, actually uses the term process without bureaucracy. And so it is a fine line, it's a fine balance. And it sounds like, I mean, Holger, you need a, a chief operating officer.

Holger Seim: I, I have a strong VP finance operations, a strong VP people culture. They, they are working on it. So it's not like, that's not my challenge, it's their challenge. Uh, and, um, So I decided, you know, as I run you through my leadership team, it's a rather big leadership team at VP level instead of having few C-level people. I think that's what, when I build it that way, I basically build it consciously. I think that's what the organization needs. We want to have flat hierarchies. We don't want to be too hierarchical, and building that C-level that is high up there comes with other challenges. Them again. But ultimately, yeah, we need— I mean, regardless of title, we need capable people at the top who figure out the challenges. And I, I'm confident we have them. And but as always, the, the world is turning so fast, the company is changing so fast, so there are always challenges. And but yeah, nothing where I feel like, okay, well, we will not tackle that. I'm confident.

Michael Koenig: Well, we'll have to link to The Blinks for Patrick Lencioni's book.

Holger Seim: Yeah, I love it.

Michael Koenig: He's He should be required reading for any operator, let alone chief executive officer. So it's time for my absolute favorite question, right? We've all had those moments where that new problem pops up and you've thought, I never thought I'd see that. Do you have one that comes to mind that you can share with us?

Holger Seim: When I think about it, and maybe, well, yeah, no, I think I can share that. You know, now when I say it, I can smile, but back then it was really awkward and weird. Like, I mean, sometimes as we grow, as everyone can appreciate, we need to go separate ways with people, and sometimes that's mutual and sometimes it's not so mutual. And we had a situation where it was not so mutual with a colleague, and he didn't, didn't see it like us and wanted to negotiate. He he asked me for a meeting. And I, you know, I'm very people-focused, and I want to get it right for people, even in the moment, even if we go separate ways. I want to make sure that people transition out and there's no burnt bridges. And so I said, let's— of course, let's have a walk, let's sort this out. And he brought a friend, a friend who said that he's a lawyer. And in that walk, eventually He said something like he has an audio transcript of one of my AMAs and I said stuff there that they can use against me in court, so I better say yes to their high settlement proposal. And that moment I felt like in a TV series, like in Suits, I felt like Harley Specter or something. I felt like, is this really happening? Am I being blackmailed now with an audio transcript of something? And I mean, gladly I was quite sure that I never said anything anything really bad that can be held against me. So I thought they were just bluffing. I thought they are just, yeah, they don't get this whole situation and think they have a case when they don't have a case. And ultimately, but what I, you know, usually I'm really focused on setting things, settling things amicably, but there I really switched gears and said, like, if you want to play hardball, then we'll play hardball. And ultimately, we cut our settlement offer by 50% that we initially gave him.— and he ultimately accepted it because he was advised the wrong way by a friend who pretended to be a lawyer that turned out to not be a lawyer. So that was awkward and it was, I mean, in hindsight interesting and maybe a funny story to share. Obviously it's never funny if someone leaves and if that doesn't go amicably, but I still felt like now this is material for for suits on other lawyer series.

Michael Koenig: Absolutely. And the calculation there was really off. You can either be unemployed or you can be in prison for extortion. And his lawyer, I use quotes, which of course all of our listeners can see, his lawyer advised him to go the extortion route, which is, you know, a little A little different than this guy.

Holger Seim: No one who leaves Blinkist is unemployed for long term, and no one is really— we don't throw anyone under the bus. We always— I mean, in Germany there's also a law that is in favor for employees, so it's also a different culture. But also Blinkist is a culture where we want to build a big business, and sometimes we have to take these decisions. We have to make sure the team is the right team to play that game. At the same time, we want to be proud of how we got there and want to build a great place where people feel respected and love to work for. Just today we announced we're piloting summer OSDs this year, so in June, July, August there will be a 4-hour, 4-day work week. So we do progressive stuff like that, and we're definitely people-focused, but everything has its limits. And yeah, and as I said, people who leave, usually they they have a job much faster than their severance package runs out, basically.

Michael Koenig: That's fantastic. Okay, well, I know I said that was the last question, but let's talk about the 4-day workweek. Tell us about it. How'd you come to the decision? And, you know, yeah, it's pretty big.

Holger Seim: We all— I mean, the Great Resignation is affecting all of us, um, um, from competition for good talent is getting more fierce as small companies consider remote workers. We now don't only compete with companies in Berlin or Germany, we compete with companies all over the world. And we are— I think we have a strong consumer brand, we have a strong employer brand, so our talent gets chased, and some get chased with pretty big checks. And we don't want to— we cannot and we do not want to compete on salary alone. If people ultimately want to optimize for salary, they're better off somewhere else. They better join some of these highly funded e-commerce startups or whatever, but then they have to expect also accept a not so nice culture. So we thought, but what can we still do to bump up the package? And we already have a good package. We pay well, every employee gets shares, we do have free lunch, we do a lot of company events, we give coaching budget, learning budget, a lot of holidays already, 35 holidays, like vacation days per year, and 30 is the norm in Germany. So I also have to put that into context. So we do a lot, but we thought still, well, you know, the market is tough, what can we do? And then we thought, well, time is the new currency. People, you know, a lot of people value time with their family, with their friends, for themselves much more than salary. So we thought— now, always, you know, I always thought about this 4-day work week as a concept and thought like, look, if we have the right people, if we just cut off one day, they will just deprioritize the stuff that is not impactful. They will say no to meetings that are not necessary. They will maybe say no to one or two coffee breaks and be a little more focused and get the same stuff done in 4 days. That's not true for everyone. You need to be organized, you need to be good at time management, but it's probably if we did this, we would probably also attract more of these people and maybe churn some people out that find it too stressful, that don't get their work done. Because obviously we will, like, just by saying yes to a 4-day work week, we will not lower our ambitions when it comes to business outcomes. And so, but we didn't feel like, you know, let's do this for real forever. But then we thought, let's just trial summer hours. Let's do it for 3 months. Let's flag it as an experiment. Let's say if it works, we may do it again next summer, maybe even in winter, whatever. But let's just do it for 3 months. What can possibly go wrong? Worst thing that happens is people feel more stressed or will underperform versus our goals for 3 months, but then we can course correct and take it from there. But I really believe that it will just— people will sort things out and get the same and work less but have the same impact in 4 days. And I'm bullish and confident that this will be— will not stay an experiment. And I also think that over the next years, more companies will do it and it will become more of the norm, not in every company, but in more companies. But I'm proud that we are one of the progressive companies there, that one of the first movers here in Germany. I don't know how the situation is in the US, but Here in Berlin, I think we're among the first movers, and I take pride that we have such a great culture.

Michael Koenig: That's phenomenal. And so has there been any thought or discussion around changing those goals, those milestones that you need to reach with regards to taking the workweek down to 4 days? Because it's— you're essentially removing 12 days which can be quite costly. And is the goal then to work less but achieve the same amount?

Holger Seim: Yes. So there has been a quick discussion, what does it mean to our ambitions? And I said what everyone agreed, I didn't need to make a case there, that this will only work if we keep our ambition high. Because this is, you know, we are in a competitive environment. There are always people who are more hungry, who work harder, So we can't just say, look, we'll take it easy, we'll lower our ambition. The hypothesis is, and there's also a lot of, you know, research on it, it's not just— we're not making that up, but there is evidence that, I mean, I think everyone who listens to this podcast can, will agree, we waste a lot of time in unnecessary meetings, in unnecessary alignment loops, sometimes in just procrastinating. And if there's pressure, if you just cut a day, everyone individually is forced to, to reflect more on that. And then, you know, that is the best behavior change. You know, I can make speeches about, you know, I can force everyone to read Lencioni's Death by Meeting, or can make speeches about working smarter, not harder, blah blah blah, but that usually does not change behavior. But what changes behavior is kind cutting a day of everyone's week and still saying what the ambition is the same. And I believe then people will really start to reflect, is that meeting necessary? Do we need to meet for 45 minutes or are 20 minutes enough, etc., etc. And that's again the hypothesis and the bet, and happy to share more in October when we're at the other side.

Michael Koenig: Yeah, I can't wait to hear it. That's fantastic. Well, very exciting. Where can people go to keep up with you and keep up with Blinkist?

Holger Seim: I mean, Blinkist, we are on Twitter, Instagram, we have an app which you can download on the App Store and Google Play Store, and I'm on LinkedIn. I also have a Twitter account. I just use it for consumption. I don't tweet actively. So yeah, but people can connect on LinkedIn. I'm always Um, yeah, love to, to extend my network there.