Zalando Entrepreneurship: Create a 2.5 billion dollar company in 6 years

Now that Düsseldorf Robert Gentz is a famous commercial economic man, he has been a great success since the creation of Zalando, but the story of the Big Boss is about to begin. Here, let's start with a beach in Guatemala. In early 2007, Genta went on vacation in Guatemala when he read a report in the newspaper that a network social platform StudiVZ was bought by Holtzbrinck Publishers, which traded at a staggering 85 million euros. I think it's so appealing, "Gentz recalls," and he couldn't help asking himself, "How can a website be so valuable?" Gentz has long been unable to forget the deal, because he also wanted to own his own internet company, and his condition was almost impossible: at that time, Gentz was only 23 years old, had a degree from Basin Business School (WHU), and Boston Consulting Group (Boston Consulting Group) and Morgan Stanley's intern, not only that, he also loves Latin America, because there is his college time good friend David Schneider. A few months later, two of them set up their first start-up in Monterrey, Mexico, where, in fact, Gentz was studying in Monterrey, Mexico, and had a semester's class in the area. The start-up, named Unibicate, provides social networking services to local university campuses in countries such as Mexico, Argentina and Chile. As a graduate of the Basin Business School, Gentz has a good network of contacts, so they don't have much effort to find investors. But among the investors they found, one of them was different, his name was Oliver Samwer, and for Gentz's entrepreneurial ideas, the investor answered only one word, funny! " The result is that Samwer is right. The Unibicate company is looking for programmers who are right for them, but it's not going well, and the money from investors is getting smaller. In 2008, Gentz and David Schneider had to end their first entrepreneurial project. At the time, the two people lived for 8 months without pay. At that time, the two failed entrepreneurs were so out of their misery that they didn't even have the money to buy a ticket to return to Europe. So they once again found Samwer, this time they succeeded. Samwer bought them a return ticket. In return, they worked in a company Tanrifas24 for several months in Samwer, Tanrifas24 is a company offering price comparison services. However, only after aFor a short time, Gentz and Schneider have a new idea. In fact, they were not discouraged by the failure of their first venture. Instead, they learned a lot from the last failure. The fact is that it is clear that we should not try social networking services again, "Gentz explained. The business model of social networks is really hard to predict, and business expansion is difficult. After returning to Germany, they started their second entrepreneurial journey: an online shoe store. The new venture's template is America's Zappos, which has been bought by Amazon. This time, samwer the investment for Gentz, and the company's new member Alexander, who is the youngest of the three, has been involved in Gentz and Schneider start-ups from the start, and has offered € 50,000 support, He also dug up some programmers for them from the Rocket Internet company in Berlin. They have repeatedly tested their business models in an online store, with Gentz primarily responsible for online marketing and customer support. When there is a customer call, we are really very happy, "Gentz recalls, at that time, we will always ask customers, the site which did a good job, which do not good. "In the fall of 2008, they moved to the new office in Torstrasse, Berlin. The Zalando company was formally established, thus starting their road to success. Now, 5.5 hours later, Robert Gentz,david Schneider, and Rubin Ritter, who joined in 2010, are still running the company. Now, however, Zalando is completely different from that start-up in 2008. They currently have 5,000 employees, and in 2013 the company's annual revenue reached 1.8 billion euros (about 2.5 billion U.S. dollars), and business grew by more than 50%. Analysts expect the company to go public by the end of 2014 or early 2015. So is the founder of a start-up company a good corporate leader? The answer given by Robert Gentz is very certain. All of this was created by ourselves, now, we still have a clear idea of which processes can work within the company, "he believes he has an edge over the management of companies inside big companies, because he knows more about the company he founded."