Starting a business is a gamble, but you can improve the odds.

Entrepreneurship runs in our family. My grandfather built roads; my father built houses for decades. It’s from him that I’ve got the entrepreneurial spirit in my blood. And it was from him that I learnt at an early age that entrepreneurship also involves difficult phases. Over the years, he faced some very critical challenges that he had to overcome. That shaped me and sparked an early interest in how best to steer a business and avoid difficult situations wherever possible.

I’ve spent my whole life searching for the answer. I studied business administration, specialising in entrepreneurship and product development, at the Technical University of Munich, and then spent eight years building up my own start-up: emmasbox, automated collection points for the retail sector. We raised over 4 million euros in venture capital, generated more than 6 million euros in turnover over time, and installed pilot stations at some of Europe’s largest retailers, including Migros here in Switzerland. Anyone who collects their shopping from a PickMup collection point today is using a service whose foundations we helped lay back then. It has long since been run by others, as I stepped down years ago. And yet there it stands out there, in use every single day.

Why am I telling you this? Because this story contains almost every mistake I’ve subsequently seen repeated by other founders. And some that I now help people to avoid.

The most common fallacy: the solution seeks the problem

Most start-ups – myself included back then – start by coming up with a brilliant solution and then look for the right problem to fit it. The correct approach is exactly the opposite. First, look at the real pain points of your target audience and work out the best solution from there. Your own idea might be the right one, but it doesn’t have to be. That’s exactly what prototypes, minimum viable products and the early seed phase are for. This way, with a manageable amount of effort, you can find out whether the solution and the problem really fit together before you invest years and capital.

The second pitfall: getting bogged down

I know this all too well. You find yourself tweaking the logo, which isn’t quite perfect yet, and doing the things you enjoy, whilst the truly business-critical issues are left by the wayside. As a generalist, this is a particular temptation for me. I’m interested in almost everything and quickly get to grips with new topics. This ensures a steep learning curve, but it also costs focus and time that a start-up lacks elsewhere.

The third question: Who covers what?

A strong founding team covers the key roles. You need someone who’s strong in sales and seeks out customers – usually the CEO, the face of the start-up. You need someone to keep an eye on the finances. No business plan ever pans out exactly as it appears on paper. But you need a robust idea of what costs will arise over the coming months, how you’ll cover them, and what price point will bring your business into profitability as quickly as possible. And you need the capacity to actually bring the product to life – that means full-stack developers for software and engineers for hardware. Take an honest look: what does your team cover, and what’s missing? I’d outsource anything that isn’t part of the core business at an early stage.

Focus on the essentials; hand the rest over to the professionals

This is precisely the lesson I’ve applied to my own situation again this year. When I moved to Switzerland in April, the old question arose anew: how and where do I set up my business? I could have spent a lot of time getting to grips with articles of association and legal matters, worked out how payroll works, and searched for a trustee and a notary one by one. But that’s exactly what I didn’t want to do. It was clear to me: I’d hand that over to the professionals. I’m glad I came across Startups.ch. They took care of the entire start-up process for me efficiently and professionally, and within two weeks my limited liability company (GmbH) was up and running and I was able to get started. That’s the point: don’t get bogged down with things that others can do faster and better. Focus on the right things and hand the rest over to the right partners.

Why I now mainly support managing directors and executives

I moved from Germany to Switzerland for family reasons, and here I now mainly support managing directors and executives with their day-to-day challenges. I don’t just advise; I actively get involved in areas where I have expertise. And where it makes sense, I bring in experts from my network. I deliberately make this same expertise available to founders too, because the mistakes made at the start are often the very ones that later cost a lot of money and cause a great deal of stress. Having someone by your side early on who has already been through several cycles saves you from having to learn the hard way.

Why a sparring partner makes all the difference

Starting a business remains a gamble on whether a product will find its place in the market. Nobody can take that uncertainty away from you. But many aspects can be better understood because they’re based on methodical and scientific principles. What helped me throughout my journey – and what I sometimes found lacking – was a sparring partner. Someone who looks at my actions with a degree of detachment and helps me set the right priorities. Not someone who gives patronising advice, but someone who asks the right questions and provides the right impetus at the right moment.

My first female founder in Switzerland came to me via Startups.ch. She is developing a holistic health coaching concept and brings a wealth of expertise to her field. The only thing missing was the business management side. That’s exactly what we’re filling in together. We’ve refined her target audience, quickly set up a landing page to generate initial visibility, and drawn up a 24-month financial plan covering all variables, so it’s clear what the right price is and when the business will become self-sustaining. What began as a single conversation has turned into an intensive, regular collaboration – a genuine founder’s sparring partner.

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt in 25 years, it’s this: A good idea is the start, not a guarantee. What makes the difference is whether you take the right steps with focus and whether you have someone by your side who’s looking at things with you. If you’re setting up a business in Switzerland, don’t make it unnecessarily difficult for yourself. It’s best to hand over the start-up process itself to professionals like Startups.ch. And for everything that comes after that, it’s best we have a chat before you take the plunge.

Your next step

Are you in the process of setting up a business or planning to do so? If you’d like a sparring partner by your side, please feel free to get in touch with me. I’m Rüdiger H. Peter, sparrinc GmbH in Lucerne. An initial meeting is free of charge: book your no-obligation initial consultation at sparrinc.ch/gruenderinnen.

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