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hi there, and welcome to another episode of swisspreneur. today we are going to meet myke naef at the technopark in zurich. myke founded doodle in 2006. doodle is probably one of the best known start-ups in switzerland. therefore we would like to know how you can make a start-up become that successful. and why he sold his baby to tamedia at the peak of its success. hi myke hi chrigu great to have you here

and thank you for taking your time for us and for entrepreneurship. we are in the technopark in zurich, a rather important place for you. can you tell us what connects you to this place? this is the place where we started doodle and therefore it was my daily workplace for several years. how did you develop here? did you always have the same office? we climbed the ranks really as we started far away in the wing of the building, down some stairs and past the toilets and there we had a little office for two people. very often people would not even find us and they would call

"hey i am standing in a corridor and i cannot find you". but then we managed to grow in the techno park as the team grew too. how many people were in the last office you had here-do you remember that number? i cannot really remember but i would say something like eight people. so from two to eight people and then you moved somewhere else? exactely, then we moved on to tamedia. now if we may talk about your early days, i read of you that you grew up in a small village. how does a boy from a small rural village end up going to the eth and becoming an internet entrepreneur? can you tell us more about where you grew up?

i grew up in the 'cheese valley', now this may sound bernese however it is not, it is in the canton of aargau. there were just four or five farmhouses and the house of my family. i spent the first seven years of my life there. so you were out in the nature a lot? indeed i was out in the nature often and spent a lot of time with the animals that we had. had a lot to do with the local farmers and i would often help them do their work, or stand around in their way. so 'yes', a lot of nature. and you never wanted to become a farmer? no, not that i can remember.

i spent a lot of time with friends, sometimes out in the woods during my childhood, untill the computer enter my life. then my life started to change a little. when was that? i must have been about eleven or twelve. how did that computer enter your life? how did it get to you? it was under the christmas tree. really? what did you use the computer for? did you use it for gaming like so many other youths? or did you start programming it and taking it apart?

all of that. of course there was a lot of gaming no doubt. i also shared software with others it was always a challenge who can get the latest software first but also a lot of exploring was involved. learning to understand how that thing worked. it was a very versatile toy so to speak. or a research object one could say. how did you access software at that time? did you buy it? i can imagine that downloading it was not really an option at that time. internet did not exist in swiss households yet at that time. how did you access software?

you really just swapped it with other people who also had software. i also remember a very annoying activity. there were these computer magazines and you would type the machine codes off the magazine using a ruler in order not to miss the digits. and at the end it often still did not work. so you frankly just copied your own programm? yes we copied them. so when did the moment come when you thought to yourself now i need to earn money to be able to buy my own software? or to buy a stereo? did you have a job as a teenager?

yes that started as a teenager when the pocket money was not sufficient anymore. when the pocket money did not cover your own 'footprint' anymore. my first purchase was indeed a stereo. what work did you have to do for earning it? a lot of work - i had to do a lot of work. bascially i had two jobs: the first one was in a private bank so i would have to alphabetically sort out transaction receipts and file them

so you always would see the very interesting pseudonyms of the customers which was rather funny the second job was in gardening so there i would pull this barrel filled with rain water over the fields in order to prepare them for farming i did that over weeks so you worked really hard for your stereo? indeed it was rather challenging and i would say also mentally challenging when you do the same activity the whole day long continuing with your background you later went to gymnasium

and then you got into the eth? exactly. did you know right from the start that you want to go to the eth? yes i knew that very early. in my memory i can recollect that very shortly after getting my first computer and started to develop this fascination for computing very shortly after that i clearly realized that this was my way to go so meaning going to the gymnasium and then studying informatics. did you ever have a feeling of insecurity or fear of maybe failing?

how did you get that conviction? today i sometimes wonder where from i even knew that one could study informatics but somehow it was just clear to me i remember doing some research and i had a friend who studied informatics at the eth at the time so i asked him what that was like and to be honest the things he told me sounded rather unattractive to me but i decided to do it anyway but i honestly never gave failure a thought, i never had a doubt that it would not work for me how did your studies go?

were you an excellent student with all the good grades? it got better towards the end of the studies at the end i was one of the very good students but definitely not from the start and without doubt not over all the years i would call myself an 'optimizer' there are some fields that interested me and with the rest i just made sure that i got through what fields were of interest to you? during my studies the technical side of informatics was interesting to me so operating systems, networks, building compilers, programming that was highly interesting to me

so did you choose your courses based on your preferences? or did you spend entire nights programming and doing the things that interested you? both really - i did indeed select my courses according to my interests also my thesis was focussed on these fields and at home i would often experiment in these areas too and where was 'home'? where did you live at that time? i lived in a shared apartment in seefeld in zurich in a 3-room apartment we were three people living there and at that time it only cost 450 swiss francs rent per month

because shortly after leaving the building was in fact demolished but that did not bother you as you closed the door and focussed on your interests? exactly so the only thing one would see was the light shining from your window? the building did have windows right? yes it had windows you then developed at the eth and you once told me there were role models in your life did you find a role model to look up to at the eth? yes there were many role models in my life and very often these role models were supervisors of mine

and at the eth there was indeed one person who greatly influenced me and even today this person is still connected to me i studied didactics as a minor and also later did some professional work in this area as an instructor in adult education and also as co-author in books and the head of the didactics course is a person with whom i worked a lot and i definitely learnt a lot from him for my personal life at that time were you aware of the fact that that person was a role model to you? did you observe him? how can you describe your connection to a role model? a role model to me is someone from my daily life and not someone who i do not know personally and these people have certain aspects in their personalities which i regard as desirable to develop these myself

we probably do not have to say too much to doodle doodle was a success story but i am interested to know how it was at the beginning you did not know that it would become such a success so what were the reactions like from your entourage when you came up with the business idea? well coming up and formulating the business idea is a bit far fetched, it all happened pretty organic but when i thought about founding a company with the objective of earning money and having success i talked to numerous people of course and i received many different reactions the good reactions in my opinion were the one's who reinfoced my idea and said 'go and try it, if you fail, you will grow in experience' but a lot of people also very strongly advised me to not even try it

why? what were their concerns? one argument which many people had was that doodle was a feature and not a product so that is a valid concern which one can discuss about what i realized though is that there are many people who simply have a strong risk aversion with the attitude of 'it will not work' and 'stay at your present job' don't take the risk and those are the sort of things that can hinder or break the feeling of optimism and you need to be able to put that aside how did you react to this situation? how did it influence you? it did not really bother me.

it actually helped me to verify my conviction that i had because i knew i was going to try it and look what happens and when people reinforced my decision it was great and when they doubted or even criticized me it strengthened my conviction the more this happened, the more i became certain that 'yes i want to try it' have you got a tip how to handle such situations? when someone doubted you did you mentally say to yourself 'now i am going to show him'? yes i think it is connected to my character meaning that if someone says i cannot do it i want to prove the opposite all the more

the other thing was that i never considered the risk to be that big the only risks are the opportunity costs because you are not earning a good salary as you would have done in your old job instead you are a little or even nothing for a year or two therefore you need to be able to deal with that loss of salary the opportunity costs which you mentioned - do you believe this is something that one can take into account? that is why you did it? yes in the situation that i was and in the situation that paul, my co-founder, was for sure you can take that into account

because you have good qualifications we both had savings so even if we would have failed we would have without doubt easily found a new job so the opportunity costs that we are talking about are non-existential opportunity costs that is the position in which many young swiss people are. we are in a very lucky position or would you say that this was specifically the case for you? no i agree that it is a similar situation for many young people but not for all

however in an industry such as informatics, internet, the digital industry where skilled people are asked for this is certainly the case do you sometimes feel frustrated when you see how many people struggle with this though? no it doesn't frustrate me but i just try to contribute whenever i feel or realize that someone just needs that little nudge in the right direction and i enjoy to see people trying it and taking that risk so how do you give them that 'little nudge'? i encourage them. and try to show them that the risk is not that big?

yes exactely try to show them that even the 'worst case' is bearable and that in this 'worst case' where you do not have a success meaning you can sell the company or the business will be highly successful that even in this case you still make a profit in the sense of that you gain personal experience that means that even if doodle would not have been a success you would still do it, because of the personal experience? yes.

and you would also recommend it to others? yes for sure. great. maybe you can tell us something about doodle in relation to when you were growing. from my own experience i can imagine that it must be a challenge building a business, hiring people, organizing people and so on? how did you handle this challenge? yes indeed it was a significant challenge for me. how did i handle all these aspects required when founding and building a business? i did what everyone else in that position does, i took care of the most urgent issues. how did you start organizing yourself?

did you introduce guidelines concerning communication? how did this develop? of course because at the beginning it was just the two founders. and that is a completely different dynamic because it is a 'founder-relationship'. that means that both give it their all, both work very hard and you trust each other one hundred percent. everything functions without too much communication necessary. this is a completely different dynamic to the situation when the first employees join the business. there are first movements and the team continues to grow. the dynamics change continuously. therefore you need to observe these changes in order to guarantee that the team still keeps the high level of performance.

you will know the model of 'forming', 'storming', 'norming', 'performing' - it was only then that i learnt that in every team process there is that 'storming' phase. that you need to accept that phase? yes you need to go through that phase, there is no way around it. do you have an example from your experience, when there was some conflict within a team but at then end, everything was resolved and it became a success? we once had a phase during which i realized that the culture was not that positive. even though we were only around eight or ten people, it was a culture of 'thinking inside the box'. there was a barrier between the sales team and the engineers. something was, in my opinion, not functioning the way it should within communication. so i tried to find out what the problem was.

i then realized that the entire communication was strongly characterized by irony and sarcasm. which had the consequence that both positive as well as negative news was not taken all that seriously. so i thought to myself what do i change? i realized that i too have a lot of sarcasm in my own language and therefore decided to reduce this, at least in the office environment. how did you manage to do that? and that worked? surprisingly it had a very sudden effect on the team, which also reduced this behaviour. of course i implemented one or two other actions too, however the atmosphere and culture changed completely. because you went up to an employee and you said 'hey, that was good work', without adding any joke or anything similar.

it takes a lot to do this, both for me and the team, however it worked, also with criticism. would you say this is a management principle you try to implement - leading by example? yes i would say so. doodle then grew significantly. you added staff, the number of users grew. how do you handle such growth? and are there specific things which you would say you did particularly well? or are there other key areas which you would say they are particularly difficult to manage? concerning the number of staff we did not grow that significantly. we scaled up pretty well so that we could handle it with a rather small number of employees. the challenge was the growth in users and consequently the scaling up of the technical abilities of the platform.

to serve that number of users. that certainly was one of the bigger challenges. that remains the challenge up to today. the continuous challenge was to identify bottlenecks and resolving them. that remains a challenge up to today. that was one of the reasons why doodle was so attractive to informaticians. the possibility to identify and resolve such challenges. because there are not that many companies in switzerland which face such challenges. this is due to the large number of users and transactions.

consequently we were able to 'offer problems' which others could not, and therefore this attracted informaticians. and that was very interesting, when we founded doodle at the beginning. my informatician friends from university would smile at doodle and say how easy it is and that they could probably also do it. this attitude all of a sudden then changed when people realized how challenging this business actually was. how did you recruit these informaticians? this must have been quite challenging as you probably did not do it over a classic job advertisement or posting? the question has to be where do you do it. we had the advantage that we had very strong connections to the eth, to the students at the university. many of them close to graduating.

we recruited a lot of people from the eth and as soon as you have eth people in the business. they too know other good people and have their own contacts, also to the younger generations. so we got a lot of people from zurich as well as from lausanne. what also benefited us was that doodle is a famous brand. consequently many people want to work for such a brand, where their friends then ask them 'you work for doodle, tell me about it'. that was rather enriching. especially when creating a product for so many users. just very briefly, you say so many users, just how many users exactely are there? when i left there were just over twenty-five million users per month.

can you compare this to another website? are there other websites in switzerland that have a similar number of users? and if so, who are they? no similar business comes to mind. i believe that indeed doodle does belong to the big swiss platforms with such a large international footprint. is this due to international traffic? what percentage of these twenty-five million was from abroad? depending on who counts, in switzerland there were around one-and-a-half to two million users. the rest is from abroad. amazing. how did doodle become so famous internationally?

first and foremost, this is due to virality which is inherently embedded in doodle. if you want to find an appointment in a group using doodle, you send the link. therefore the link is sent to people who consequently are potential new doodle users. they then also regularly use doodle and re-send the link to other people. therefore that virality, which so many others would envy to have, is embedded directly in the product with doodle. would you say that was one of the keys to its success? absolutely. did you never implement user targeted advertising? that is the positive side of doodle.

the acquisition of users was 'for free'. the negative side of doodle however was that we never managed to systematically support this acquisition. and to be able to steer this, so that if we invest this and that, we consequently acquire one million new users. we never managed to develop that, or at least not up until i left the business. even today there are still experiments on going in order to identify possibilities to implement such mechanisms. we did implement some well-directed public relations activities in order to generate new doodle. i can imagine that with the growing number of users the demand for functionality and new requirements increases too. how did you handle the vast number of ideas what could additionally be implemented with doodle?

firstly, when a consumer good reaches such a size, the support also becomes a challenge. therefore you try to keep the product simple in order to be able to keep the level of support simple too. and you are absolutely right, every day we received dozens if not hundreds inquiries and proposals on what we could potentially add to doodle. the most fanciful as well as some very rational or normal ideas. there the challenge is to just simply be able to say 'no'. the bigger doodle became, the larger its size, the more important my ability became to be able to say 'no'. to say 'no' to many things. in order not to become an inflated and overly complex object.

which maybe would have much more functions however ninety percent of our users who use doodle simply because it does what it does would disappear because it became too difficult. what i considered very attractive with doodle was the advertising based on schedules and locations. how did you develop this idea? i think this was developed through discussions with our advertiser clients. what are their interests and on the other hand, we also had clients who wanted to advertise and our challenge was to identify on the one hand, what could our usp in this advertising market be.

this market is very competitive because there is opportunities to advertise outnumber the investment into advertising on these platforms. therefore we thought about how we can position ourselves differently from the competition. one idea we developed was to implement this location-based advertising, which many others also offer and the schedule or appointment-based, something that also has a connection we were searching for a product which would be useful for our advertiser clients as well as for our users resulting in that we could tell our user there is this particular event taking place

therefore instead of scheduling this appointment, go and buy this ticket, or something similar. that is the reason for why we experimented a lot in this direction. do you think this is a mistake that many start-up's make at the beginning that they spend too much time 'testing and experimenting in the lab' instead of coming out and offering the product or service? it is wrong to call it a mistake however i do think that it would be benefitial for many start-up's to go to market earlier with a prototype and actively look for the communication and exchange with customers in order to also receive first feedback

earlier you said 'us at doodle' i find that rather nice are you still in any way actively working for the company? no, neither in operations nor as a stakeholder. can you very briefly describe your exit from doodle? was this exit something you explicitly wanted or was this exit due to something new appearing on the horizon? how do you exit something like that, especially when you have built something so successful? the foundation for leaving was set at the beginning

because we clearly said we want to create and build something good however we do not want to follow this for the next thirty years. paul and i both knew that the day would come where we would want time and resources for something different. we then started looking for investors and it was also obvious that they too would want to achieve a return on their investment and transfer some of this return to their investors respectively. therefore at an early stage already it was obvious that this exit was going to come one day.

furthermore, at some point, i also realized that my time is coming to an end here. on the one hand, because i felt as if i had implemented everything one can, in this doodle world. i had, for example, implemented numerous 're-designs' of doodle and i realized that my energy was coming to an end i had given the project everything that i could have possibly given it. and on the other hand, the company was in a very good condition. consequently i was ready and prepared to gradually exit. how did you implement this exit process? well it is a very long process. and when you finally do it everyone asks you 'what you left the company'?

and everyone is surprised and asks you if you are doing ok. but for one's self, this process starts a lot earlier for us it started around two years before. you start planning and deciding who will take up which position after you have left, this is followed by a lot of communication and planning of this communication. all this consequently means that you have a long time to prepare yourself for that moment when you exit. so that concretely means that you first exited the operative side of the business and remained on the board, before also exiting the board? yes, i gave up the operative side first, and remained on the board and as a shareholder,

this was then followed by exiting from the board and as a shareholder at the same time. was that a difficult step for you to take? when did you feel that you left doodle? was it when you left your office or when you sold the shares? for me it was indeed the moment when i sold the final shares. everything else that happened beforehand, i was prepared for. and each step is a part of that process of passing on this project. none of that was particularly difficult for me. and also that last step was not difficult, but it is the final formal step, also concerning all the legal details and so on,

and i remember the moment when i had to put my signature under that contract that was a strange feeling. because i knew that when i sign this, nothing of this project belongs to me anymore. and i also cannot take any influence anymore. did you shed a tear? no, i did not. was there ever a day at doodle when you thought 'oh boy, today the world is coming to an end'?

indeed there were a couple. but at the end of the day, for me personally, one of the nicest experiences was a tuesday it was a sort of 'black tuesday' to me at that time we already had an excellent it-infrastructure available however despite that fact on that day, two or three systems collapsed on the same morning, at around 8am. consequently doodle just came to a stand-still. so we started examining the problem and we quickly realized that this was going to be a long story.

we could not just re-boot a server and it would all be working again. so we started resolving the issue and another half an hour later, radio 'lake zurich' phoned us and asked to speak to me. they told me that they had realized that doodle was not functioning anymore and they wanted to find out what was going on. and i exactly remember the adrenaline shooting through my veins, and on the one the excitement, and on the other hand i started panicking. because of course i was excited because that meant that we had become so big

that the radio was calling when we were not functioning, how great is that?! however now i am already being held publicly accountable if our service does not work. and that was a day during which we had crisis meetings in an half hour rhythm, of solving problems and being able to deal with such issues. a very intense day, but finally also a very good valuable experience, how long did it take you to get back online on that day? it took a long time, it took us till about 4pm until we were back online. that resulted in the one or the other report,

but at the end of the day, we also survived that. it was not the end of the world. if we take the opportunity to talk about entrepreneurship and switzerland is there any wish or recommendation you have for switzerland, on how to become more entrepreneurial? i myself as well as many of my entrepreneurial friends get asked very often what needs to be done in order for switzerland to become the next silicon valley i think the demand is too big to have the imagination of being able to develop and seriously challenge

the economic efficiency of a silicon valley and it's digital economy, in such a short period of time. i am very pragmatic and believe that the first requirement is patience, because this takes time. if you think about it, switzerland only has two or three generations of experience of entrepreneurship in the digital area while silicon valley has five, six or even seven generations of experience. what do you mean by the term 'generation'? you are not talking of human generations, correct? no, i am not talking of a human life, that would be too long. i am talking of an entrepreneurial cycle, between seven to ten years,

which is much more existant in silicon valley. there are more role models who have already achieved something similar, founded companies, founded several companies, built companies and then sold them again, they are available to the younger generations as mentors, investors, advisors, there is a much larger dynamic over there than here in switzerland. but i also observe numerous 'positives' in switzerland, if i compare it to when we first started, a lot has developed. there are far more people actively trying,

who have experience and who can invest this experience, or their money, into new businesses and support their foundation and growth. would you say that role models and sufficient patience are the secret ingredients to be successful? yes exactly. you are very active in this area, is this something that gives you a lot of satisfaction, or why are you so active? do you do it primarily for yourself or is it mainly for the benefit of the eco-system? indeed i am pretty active, on the one hand as investor who invests into the one or the other start-up, when i think it makes sense,

on the other hand, i am active as a mentor or coach, in many different contexts. primarily i simply do this for myself, because i have fun working with good people, and entrepreneurial people are very motivated, very engaged, intelligent, curious, and i consider this highly enriching to be able to work with these people. in fact i probably learn more from these people than they do from me. that without doubt is selection criteria, i look at the team and what sort of effect they have on me, just as much as considering how much i can learn if i work with these people and if this collaboration can actually function or not.

all this is important. but of course there is also that aspect that i feel that i do want to 'give something back' i was lucky and was able to build this project and be successful with it, and indeed i would like to 'give something back' to whatever extent possible. i heard that you completed education to become a coach just a short time ago, is this also connected to your 'giving back'? or is there another reason for you to do this further education? it is also connected to that indeed, however the main reason was my own personal interest,

as well as the feeling that i had, that i could use it in many areas, but the impetus for doing it actually also arised from doodle. at doodle i realized the importance of working on the team and with the people, and trying to stimulate or enable them to perform to their maximum, as a team. and i really wanted to dig deeper in this area and learn new mechanisms and instruments, on how to facilitate and promote such a process. are there any other skills you have developed during the past few years, which have helped you to become more productive in your daily life? the time at doodle triggered a couple of fundamental changes within myself,

something that i did change was that the more pressure i had at doodle due to more customers, a bigger team and so on, the more sport i started doing. and it became more important to me as well. moreover, as the pressure at work increased, the more i ensured that i really would exercise. meaning that whenever i had the impuls to not do sport because there was so much work, i learnt that it is these moments that are most important to actually to sport.

that was one aspect. i think i also developed my own work technique throughout the last years, as i realized that the workload just became too big in order to be able to continue to work in the same way, so i changed a couple of things in that specific area too. can you give us an example of how you changed in this area? i was greatly influenced by a classic book called 'getting things done' by david allen, a lot of people have read that book, and i selected specific points which i thought would benefit me. one aspect for example is to collect all 'to do's' in one common place and

structure them in a system which you can rely on for certain. another aspect, one which i considered very important, was to try to keep the inbox empty, meaning that your emails are worked off as quickly as possible, or sorting them out into different folders, or even just simply answering 'hey, i have not got time at the moment', 'sorting them out' does not mean 'delete', does it? not necessarily. however deleting emails is also an important principle, asking yourself if you really need to answer this particular mail very often you will find that it is not really necessary to answer certain emails.

for example if there is a conversation among other people, instead of getting involved and also commenting, i would just let them get on with it. it is important to me that i am a reliable communication partner and that i react to mail as quickly as possible but reacting also, in some cases, means 'sorry i cannot do this, i have not got time'. or 'i will only be able to do this in three months' it is important that the person at the other end knows what is going on at my end. again we are talking about that ability to be able to say 'no'. is this something that is not that difficult for you as it used to be?

no, it is much easier today than it was used to be. however i still do not to it enough. what kind of things or issues usually lead to you saying 'no'? what kind of 'filter' do you use for saying 'no'? lately, this is also a new personal development, i use a digital memo on which i write down all topics or projects that are 'top of mind' to me, usually this is a matter of between three to five projects which i am working and then i try to evaluate every new issue, be this a meeting with someone or the discussion of a business case or something similar, if this new issue is beneficial to me

if this is not the case, i also ask myself if it would give me pleasure to tackle this particular issue if this is not the case either, then i will decline it. so to recap: you have three to five projects, if any new issue does not pay off in comparison, you still consider whether it would be fun or give you pleasure to tackle it, if not, you will not do it? is this a process you developed yourself? i developed it as a consequence of studying my agenda,

and realizing that it is full of appointments, so i asked myself 'why is this the case'? consequently i went through an entire month of my agenda and questioned every appointment, why am i making this appointment? why am i making that appointment? and with many of these appointments i noticed that, even if it may be interesting, that necessity is in fact missing, and that leads to me neglecting specific issues that are of high importance to me, because i cannot invest the time and energy that i would like to. so the objective is to focus my time more strictly on the things that matter.

thank you very much. we are coming to an end. we discussed everything. indeed i think we discussed everything there is to discuss about me. i think we could still continue a lot longer. thank you for taking your time for us. it was a pleasure.