Entrepreneurship: Freedom | Design | Learning – & perseverance

What I'm talking about

This is our third blog post – and an invitation. If you're interested, you can follow along as we launch our business: unfiltered, honest, fun, and full of real learning experiences.

What entrepreneurship means to me

For me, entrepreneurship – or rather, entrepreneurship – means above all freedom.

It means:

• lifelong learning
• Design & Growth
• the opportunity to build wealth and break out of the downward financial spiral of the traditional employee

Because, in many countries, debt servicing seems to be higher than productivity growth (except perhaps when AI takes over everything in five years 😉). Money is losing value, currencies are devalued – and workers are constantly losing out.

As an entrepreneur, you can change society for the better.

This suits me. I've found that one of the most important things in my life is to learn, grow, and do new good things.

Since Steve Jobs and the iPod, I have – without much exaggeration – probably listened to over 1000 business and science audiobooks and tried to put as much of it into practice as possible.

A work I really liked: “Head Beats Capital” by Prof. Günter Faltin.

I listened to the audiobook about five years ago and liked it. Around three months ago, I remembered it again – and, inspired by it, launched a new venture.

Yes, "Head Beats Capital" is the defining book for auteniQ for me (and yes: Günter Faltin is still around 😉).

Bulk packaging, direct sales & the tea campaign

I simply adopted the idea of ​​using large containers and direct sales from Prof. Günter Faltin.

He founded the Tea Campaign in 1985 – still the world's largest importer of Darjeeling tea – and thus demonstrated how a constantly improved idea and large sacks instead of small tins can shake up a market.

Through his Entrepreneurship Foundation, his Masterclass (which I am now attending for a year for 850 euros), the annual Entrepreneurship Summit and his “Entrepreneurship Campus”, I felt encouraged and inspired.

I enjoy the regular exchange with the approximately 100 other participants. This generates ideas and continuous improvements.

Here, nobody is primarily trying to make a fortune, but rather to make the world a better place.

We need entrepreneurs like these.

You don't need a lot of capital, but you absolutely need good ideas – ideas that need to be improved through work. You don't have to be a genius, a leader, or "born for it."

Perseverance beats genius.

When I founded the largest solar school in Southeast Asia, I wanted to leave my comfort zone – and build a new, significantly larger comfort zone.

I simply started, was brave, always believed, never doubted – and it actually worked. With the advice from this blog, it might have worked even better.

Yes, if only…

But it was a lot of work – done independently and constantly – which doesn't necessarily have to be the case.

All the qualities described above – being courageous, wanting to learn and grow, vision – are strong, but they are not the decisive factor.

The most important thing is to persevere.

You don't need to be a born leadership guru or a financial genius. These are all skills that can be learned, delegated, or supplemented with the help of good people.

Inspiration & Money | Entrepreneurship Summit & AI Paradise

In October I attended Prof. Faltin's Entrepreneurship Summit in Berlin. A very inspiring event.

The goal is to improve society – through good startups and pioneers who make a difference and have fun doing it.

If it's primarily about money, it's much more difficult. Avoid this false goal.

AI will make many things much easier. Günter Faltin believes we are standing on the doorstep of paradise. AI will soon produce many things for us – fulfilling humanity's age-old dream.

But: It's entirely possible that we'll mess it up. 😅

There are many possibilities – but the benefit is what counts.

It doesn't all have to be "brilliantly new". You can:

• sell something
• advise,
• improve something
• or invent something completely new.

There are many paths into entrepreneurship, but the most important thing is probably to understand the potential customers and find the value .

What do people really need? (Sometimes they don't even know themselves.)

Understand yourself – and evolve from a customer understander to a value creator .

If you want to start your project – there are so many areas – then this could be your starting point:

• Ask yourself: What do you enjoy, what really interests you?
• Find a real problem in your field.
• Improve the idea, check, test, simplify, think it through.
• Forget the business plan (for now). Talk to people – instead of just polishing presentations.
• And allow yourself to learn and grow along the way. Have fun with it – "perfect" is forbidden.

Example

Is Starbucks successful in selling expensive coffee?

No – they rent out their space and offer hours of sitting and working opportunities with drinks & snacks and light jazz.

They offer this benefit . The price of coffee essentially includes a rental fee.

Continuously improve your idea

• radically simplify
• Omit intermediate steps
• Improve through a smaller product range
• Focus on bulk packaging
• Prices with real added value
• Authenticity & Credibility

This creates a win-win situation for customers and providers.

Founding with components

Founding a company with components means: not doing everything yourself, but outsourcing everything possible to service providers.

You don't have to be able to do everything – you just need to know what's really important.

The big lever?

Bring about major change?

Following Prof. Faltin's recommendation, I asked myself:

What could be the biggest leverage point for my new auteniQ startup?

My ideas were quite nice, but they certainly weren't that one, bigger idea.

After asking myself this question, I found an answer in my own life. So I started from my own experience again.

One sentence about the idea (I won't reveal any more yet)

Harsh words: Many people have excessive sugar intake, suffer from diabetes, are sometimes deliberately fattened and made sick by industrial food – it's all about money.

I would like to develop drinks that can displace Coca-Cola & Co. – at least a little bit.

Healthy, quick, as pure as possible, without sugar, not addictive – but delicious.

I cannot reveal any more at this point.

(Otherwise, the product management of a large corporation or someone else might read it… 😉)

A company that will frequently appear in the future?

The company of the future could consist of just two people, according to the team at the Entrepreneurship Summit:

1. an idea generator
2. an IT professional who translates the ideas in such a way that the AI ​​can better understand and implement them.

By this I explicitly do not mean programming in the classical sense.

Fortunately, we may not need that for a while – at least not on the same scale as before.

You don't need a perfect business plan to get started.

You need three things above all:

1. A real benefit for others
   Don't ask yourself first: "How do I make money?"
   Instead, ask yourself: "Where is something missing? What problem can I solve better than it has been solved so far?"
2. The willingness to persevere
   It is not the most ingenious idea that wins, but the one that survives, is tested, improved, and is not abandoned at the first sign of opposition.
3. A desire to learn and develop yourself
   Entrepreneurship means being allowed to make mistakes, learn, adapt – and keep going.

Something I would like to invite you to

In this blog I would like to:

• openly show what works and what doesn't,
• to initiate an exchange and inspiration.

If you like, you can join us live – for ideas, detours, aha moments, small successes and of course the occasional well-executed belly flop.

Get involved, test our website, and of course, we'd love to test the products too, give us advice, ask us questions.

👉 Click here to go to our new auteniQ shop
👉 Want to learn more about auteniQ? Click here for the blog.

Please send your feedback directly to me: a.kaub@inutec-int.com

Sincerely
Your Alexander