Holger Seim - The importance of purpose and the fundamentals of scaling a business
Holger Seim is the Co-founder and CEO of Blinkist - One of Europe's most exciting startups that almost never existed.
Founded in Berlin in 2012, Blinkist provides a selection of non-fiction knowledge in an app that makes it easy to fit learning into your everyday life. Highlighting key insights through audio and text explainers, called Blinks, original podcasts, and author-driven content, Blinkist is on a mission to help people turn ordinary moments into learning opportunities – it takes just 15 minutes to learn something new!
Today, the app is already used by over 20 million people worldwide and at the start of this year the fast-growing company raised an additional €35 million to transform the way we learn and develop.
In today's episode we talk about:
- The importance of coaching to help preserve Founder relationships and support scaling ambitions
- How scaling companies should focus on hiring a great people person early in their journey
- How Blinkist’s purpose is helping provide a catalyst for growth by creating a competitive advantage
- The fundamentals of their scaling success including creating great cultures which encourage open communication, direct feedback in the moment
- The importance of the journey not necessarily the goal
Quote:
“You need to have trust because if there is no trust there is no psychological safety. On top of that you need to have the ability to have courageous conversations, hold each other accountable, have clarity of one goal and speak with one voice. We also need to build the muscle to have courageous conversations to be able to give critical feedback without diminishing trust. None of this comes for free as it doesn't just happen. Sometimes it happens because you get along perfectly but as your leadership team grows statistically it's very unlikely that everything will be smooth and there will be people that do not have the same preferences as you. All of us have shortcomings that we need to work on together and individually.”
Recommended Reading
Marshall B. Rosenberg - Nonviolent Communication - A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships
Buy on Amazon: mybook.to/MichaelBRosenberg
Simple Scaling Book
Check out our book, an Amazon Best-Seller: Simple Scaling: 10 Proven Principles to 10X Your Business
About the Host
Director and Founder of Simple Scaling, Brendan brings 25 years’ experience of scaling businesses. Previously, Brendan spent 16 years as a global business leader with CDE, 12 of those as Group MD, steering the company through the global financial crisis to considerable strategic growth success with offices now in 6 continents employing almost 700 people across the world (from 15) and 25X revenue growth.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendan-mcgurgan-11854a13/
https://simplescaling.com/meet-the-team
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