 A tale about building businesses and sleeping on sofas. So the once was a little girl, she lived in California, moved to Switzerland, grew up there. Studied economics, became a chartered accountant and a manager at a big form accounting firm. After a while, a feeling sneaked in that this maybe not be it. That girl is obviously me, my name is Daniel Gerhardt, I'm founder of the AMACY Group. This today will be a really personal talk about me and my feelings during the last ten years of building up AMACY. It's going to be a chapter in nine stories. I'm not talking about Drupal, so if anybody's expecting anything technical, anything related to managing projects or something, it won't really happen. It really is my story, some chapters of AMACY and some feelings that I had along the way. It's my most personal talk I've ever had. Feel free to ask any questions. I'm just willing to share my kind of experience and hoping to inspire anyone to just go the path you think is the right one. So the first chapter is about the decision. We're speaking the end of the year 2006. Greg, at that time, my boyfriend was a banker, lawyer. I was working with KPMG as a manager doing advisory and accounting work. Greg started thinking about a web startup idea with one of his colleagues from work. They were spending evenings drinking beer, putting together a slide deck, and they had that vision of building a web platform where the world can collaborate online, put projects out, collaborate, and change the world a little bit. At that time, Facebook was really in the beginning, so Facebook groups just came out, so it sounds very familiar if you'd hear like a collaboration web platform, but at that time it actually wasn't already that flooded with all these different web platforms, so at that time it was actually quite innovative. After a while, they both asked me if I want to join in because they were somehow missing that operational admin financial person who could join into the team and help them build it, and at first it was like, no, no, not interested, I'll continue to work. I came into the busy season at work, and that busy season at work actually wore me out quite a bit, so I had a very intense December, January at work, and so after two months I thought a bit differently about it because I was just thinking, hey, maybe it is time to change something. So we went on a one-week holiday to Cabo Verde Islands in February 2007, and that was a very intensive week because in that week, from the moment of saying I'm good, my life is fine, I'm a manager at an accounting firm, this is the way to go, I changed my mind completely, and after that week I knew I'm going to quit my job and join Greg to establish a new company and go fully on that. That thought process in that week was, as you can imagine, quite intense. It was like, why and what and all these doubts, and the main question that I was asking myself all the time was, how far can I fall? What can I lose? What is if I quit my job? What is if I found this new company, at that time we didn't know it would be amazing, but it was like the work title, something else? What's going to happen? And comforting for me was knowing that I will not land under a bridge. It sounds maybe very, very basic, but I knew I'm not going to land on the streets, not have a home and not survive. And there are two reasons that led to that convincing factor for myself. One was I had a good education, I knew I would find a job again somewhere, sometime if everything should go wrong. And the second thing is I had a social environment, I had family and friends, and I knew that if I should put all my money into this company, if it fails completely, I'm not earning a cent anymore, I would still get a bed somewhere for the time until I get a job at some place. And that I kept on iterating that during that entire week, and I convinced myself with these thoughts that, yes, it's the right thing to do, it's the right thing to stop what I've been doing, what's been tiring me out, and also just go into a new challenge. So upon return from our holidays, I did quit my job. It wasn't very easy and it came very unexpected for my team, and there were also, of course, emotions involved with that, because quitting a job you're happy with is actually not something that comes very easy, but it was a very relieving step. It was the start of Amazia and I knew from that time that I could fully, fully dedicate all my energy into this project and be undistracted. And that's where the hype began. So my learning from chapter one is that one brave decision in your life can actually change it in a very unpredictable way, but in a very positive way. For me every step since that decision has been really enriching and positive. I'm not saying it's always been happy, of course I've gone through ups and downs, but it's been very enriching and I've experienced things that I think I couldn't have experienced on my previous path. And I do believe that fortune favors the brave and it has become one of my key learnings that if in doubt, make that step and move forward. So the hype begins. We're now, later in 2007, on September 3rd of 2007, Greg and I founded Amazia AG, that's the legal form we have in Switzerland. That was two days after we got married. So we got married on the 1st of September. We founded our company on the 3rd because it somehow made things a bit easier. We don't have to think about names. We don't have to think about how we're going to do all this legal and contractual stuff. We knew we were going to be in this fully together and that was just quite a fun and good thing to do. So we founded our company in September. We found an angel investor to help us to start up the whole project and finance the first development. And we decided already earlier on that we're going to build our platform on Drupal. That's the first time we came in touch with Drupal. At that time it was Drupal 5. We, of course, bank or lawyer, me, accountant, financial person, like, how are we going to develop this platform? Because we really can't. So we found a team in Romania to help us build this platform. It was our first experience, like agency-client relationship, only that we were on the client side, and I'm not sure if we were really good clients because we didn't really have a clue what we were doing at that time. And I think the agency had some sleepless nights about our demands and our kind of approach to do things. But, I mean, honestly, it was the first time we were doing something like this. We came from a completely different background and we just gave our best and we just tried and we iterated. So that was end of 2007. We started building that platform. 2008, our mission was just to get connected with this web startup space. We came from that different background and we didn't know anyone who was running web startups. We just had that vision and we wanted to be part of that. So we booked trips to Zilliqon Valley. We went to conferences. We connected everywhere. We met, like, some of the, at that time, significant tech bloggers like Robert Scoble and Omaliq. And we made sure that they blog about us and do video portraits. And the people seemed to like us and it was really, really exciting. In that mission of launching a platform, we haven't launched yet at that time. And we were just trying to get the buzz out about AMAZY, the social collaboration platform where you can put your project online. We felt like we were part of the cool guys of those cool web startups. And the Swiss media also started talking about us. That was actually before we had launched anything significant. And then during our first promotion tour in April 2008, a letter flies in from Amazon with a friendly request to stop using our name. Because they somehow thought AMAZY and Amazon people would somehow confuse that. And so we were sitting in our room, Mission District, San Francisco, like, okay, what the hell, what are we now going to do? We just started putting out this story about AMAZY and all was sounding good. And now they come and say, stop using that name. And we decided to go public with that story, like that David against Goliath story, like, we're the underdogs. Why are you taking away? We only want good for the world. And we got even more popular. People started writing more about us. It was great. And we really actually had like a 24 hour session of nonstop communication with different people and bloggers and got that story out. And the sympathies were on our side. And also the story came out as well. So they went back from their demands and they said, okay, you keep your name. It's fine. And we're so called AMAZY and actually also nobody has ever tried ordering books with us ever. And I don't really think that, yeah, there's much behind that story. But it was a very, very significant event in the last 10 years that still sticks in my heart and in my mind. And so 2008 was that year of excitement of discovering everything new. And finally in September 2008 we went live with this beta version of our platform. So finally we had something to show to confirm all that hype and all that excitement that we had at that time. And at that first day when we went live that was at like a web expo in New York I already had the feeling this is not going to be good. It was that moment when you launched the platform and I was like like a zombie behind my computer refreshing, refreshing, looking how many users have signed up all the time, nonstop, all night. And you just feel like this is not enough, this is not enough. So that first disappointment came on the day we launched our beta platform. And the learning out of this chapter is actually still on the positive side, on the hype side, is we really believed in the blind networking at that time. When we were getting new into this area and trying to connect ourselves with that web startup world, with the tech space we just started talking to everybody nonstop going everywhere, just figuring things out having conversations with random people about what we do being honest about what we do not holding back and pretending we have this exciting thing coming up in September and we can't talk about it because someone will steal our idea. We just talked about it and hoped people would share our passion and talk about it as well and they did and it helped us a lot. And so one of my learnings has been like networking like there's no tomorrow. At that time we didn't know which of these contacts is going to make the difference but they did and there were a few that made a difference but I couldn't have predicted it. So that's what we did in 2008 full steam ahead networking. So chapter three is about that fall that started on that very day of September when we launched our beta and those user numbers just didn't look as good as we hoped they would. We had users, we had heavy users we had great feedback there were people loving our platform but it just wasn't enough. Both on the user registration side we didn't have enough traction but also on the conversion side so we had a freemium model you could sign up for free use our platform for free and if you buy a little bit of extra tools you can use more of the platform or more storage or more features and both were actually just lacking behind and our money was slowly and steadily running out and we knew our business plan told us that we have to have like a venture capital round sometime in 2009 to get more money in to continue building the company and the platform and we started that investment round we tuned our pitch deck we went to the VCs and talked to them and it was actually really easy to get appointments with them it was easy to go and talk to them so I did a tour through Europe through the different financial centers and spoke to these venture capitalists and they were actually really friendly like oh yeah that's nice, that's interesting okay come back when you have half a million users or come back when this and this has been achieved and it was always like yes, thank you so they were keeping you warm and all confident but actually our money was just running out and that was actually a really big disappointment phase for me personally I was still, I had to be very active and very positive and looking forward to this vision and fulfilling it and going to investors and selling them our dream but somehow in the back of my mind I already felt that we're somehow on a wrong track we felt this would need to go better at this stage already we already felt the world actually wasn't waiting for our platform otherwise more people would be using it and so that feeling and that vision was like one day strong still surviving and the other day just like what are we doing and then as usual life something happens that changes your perception and that happened in summer 2009 in the meantime we had to lay off a few team members and we really reduced our staff to the minimum everyone had to like be willing to work for like barely anything and we really had just the key members on board who really still believed in what we're doing and wanted to make a plan with us and my learning from this chapter 3 from the fall is try to not let these blurry bad feelings pull you down figure out possible outcomes and scenarios and just work on them I'm still telling this to myself a lot and learning this because I do get emotional about things that mean a lot to me and sometimes those blurry negative feelings they just come in but they are very daunting and they're actually not productive because they don't make me head anywhere they don't make me find solutions so especially like interpersonal conflicts that can just make you feel bad and I have to remind myself of this learning a lot but I do usually manage to say don't get lost sit down make a plan write it out and just keep going and that happened in mid 2009 so we were still keeping up the hopes to the outside I was in Boston at that time with 19 other Swiss entrepreneurs in a program called Venture Leaders where future Swiss venture firms are supposed to meet the Boston people and figure out how we can improve the Swiss start-up scene so towards the outside we were still very much selling this vision of hey this is going to be cool Amaze is going to be great we're looking for money we're succeeding but actually we're already working on what are we really doing and the other story is different that's actually quite a difficult one because in that start-up scene we felt very much that you have to keep up the positivity all the time if you start talking about things not going so well your users will walk away the venture capitals will lose interest and then you're doomed so it's like having two sides of the story one which you're really working on and one is the kind of the face you're trying to keep up and I'm not really good at that and it's not something that I really like I rather speak out openly look things are not going well let's change something but in that situation I felt it's not possible so it was there representing Amaze and in that week in Boston an email letter flew in saying this company we're interested in Amaze would you actually make a white label platform of your platform for us because we have this event coming up and we believe that you would be the great partner to do that it's not that we've never thought about service, business about doing white label platforms or anything but at that moment it was just like you know someone's actually here wanting to pay us money and we could actually do it what the hell doesn't maybe fit into our general vision but it's maybe not the wrongest thing to do to move the company forward so we committed to that and we started building our first white label platform of our Amaze.com platform and it was fantastic it felt great the client was happy the team loved it they were paying us money for something we were doing the past years also but nobody was paying us money for that so it felt super excited that time was also the rise of Michael Schmidt known as Schnitzel here in the community he started in our company as a trainee and that was the time where he fully hung into it built those platforms and really had those first moments of pure leadership hanging out which he's sustained until now so we were hand in hand developing that platform with the client and then in the next six months two more of these white label platforms came in so all of a sudden we had this cash flow ability and we found a way to make some money and we noticed that our vision and our our vision was deteriorating our team was working on these client projects and they were really happily working on the client projects they loved it and we loved it as well and we felt a bit ashamed of it because actually we were still towards the outside building our venture, amazing.com and so for a while in 2010 we weren't sure how to move on we weren't sure what we really wanted to do but then we decided okay let's try and be brave we're gonna out ourselves as a service company we're gonna rebrand ourselves and on the 24th of September 2010 that's like almost exactly six years ago we came out with Amazee Labs so we branded ourselves as a service company and at that time we also communicated that we're gonna close Amazee.com so that initial venture that platform that we've built is on the dying side and we're gonna close it by the end of 2011 we were really nervous about the reactions about how our users would react because it wasn't that that platform wasn't running at all it just wasn't going well enough but we had users and we had some publicity and we were worried about how people would react but the feedback was actually quite neutral it was like people didn't really care so we were really making a big fuss about nothing we were worried what's gonna happen and nothing really happened and then the work tumbled in so after that launch in September 2010 work just came in straight away and the fourth quarter of 2010 was our first profitable ones all the ones that came after so that was the rise of the second type that we had but this time for real my learning at this time was that I became more critical about what we're good at and I think it's important to be critical about what you're good at and not what you want to be good at we wanted to be a cool web startup and have this platform and build a platform that millions of people would want to use but in fact we weren't really good at it we weren't really good in understanding what that platform needs we didn't have the experience we didn't have the right team but we were really passionate in talking to people one on one and understanding what they want so we noticed that we took great pride and happiness in winning new clients in developing platforms for them in developing websites for them but that meant we had to turn our back a little bit on the cool kids because in the perception of the outside world it's maybe not really the coolest move to shut down your web platform, your startup and become a service provider but it was the right thing to do because it's what we were better at and it was what suited our skills in a better way so my learning was don't be shy to say bye to the cool kids club and do what you're actually really better at doing and in the end making you being in a happier place so that was that 2010 phase now in between I have a chapter 5 which is called The Child in 2009 I turned 30 and around that time I all of a sudden had the feeling I have to make a decision about family until that time I've never thought about really seriously decision making should we have children, should we not have children it was kind of an open chapter until then and then we discussed it, made the strategic decision yes let's have kids and that's what we did and in June 2010 my first son Ben was born now remember that was the bad year, that 2009 year and that was the time we didn't really know what's going to happen with our company and what we're going to do next and Ben then came in the year of the pivots and launching amazing labs now family and friends questioned a lot how are you going to deal with this how are you going to give birth to a child have a baby and run this company because at that time we were much smaller we didn't have anyone else who could do administrative financial work so I was still doing each and every accounting entry into our system, I was writing each single invoice paying each single invoice I was doing most of the clients contact up to then and I was still quite an important figure for the team as well and lots of these questions came in like do you have a plan what are you going to do, what's your maternity leave and I'm like I don't have a maternity leave how can I have a maternity leave and the reactions were mixed but they were mainly like you are so naive this is not going to work out you're going to see how it really is you have that baby and I seem to push it away and say no it's going to be fine it's going to be fine and I was maybe a bit nervous of what would happen but I was very confident it would be alright and I was lucky I had an easy pregnancy I had lots of energy, I worked until the 2nd of June and 3rd of June my baby came and 5 days later I was back in the office and it was okay and the hospital even had wifi so it wasn't really a problem and then Ben came and we had our amazing baby to the office and he was part of the team and we had like an extended family and this was a super remarkable time for me because actually on the one hand I felt the first time something is draining my attention from Amazing until then Amazing was my only thing I was just working and all of a sudden you have this thing that needs you every hour maybe to change the diapers every 2 to 3 to drink something and you're like okay I have to take care of him and this works but that didn't mean that my passion for Amazing got less I was still very engaged with what's happening with the company but somehow it felt like this is how it should be work, life, mixing juggling things, trying to earn money trying to make plans trying to keep your family happy it felt like a very organic way of working and living and it suited me quite well because I don't like the work stop life stop, family I like mixing all these things and so it felt like that situation suited very much to my natural ability to work and to live in one fluid kind of mode so looking back I really loved that phase although it was tiring I must admit so my learning of this is like I assume things will go well if they don't I can still make a plan then I could have used a lot of energy to put up 5 different scenarios of what am I going to do what am I going to do if my baby screams all day long and I'm not able to work because he like needs my full attention I had no clue I didn't know what I'm going to do but I can either plan it ahead and try and put all my energy and also maybe fears into that or I can just see what happens and make a plan then because in fact I didn't have a clue what's going to happen in any case so I rather somehow just lived in that moment took every day as it came and went along that path and it worked out for me and maybe again Fortune favours the brave I'm not sure maybe it did I was lucky it worked out well and everything seemed to be alright but that's one of the mantras that I like to keep embraced for my life so then chapter 7 the move and this is really a significant one for me again so Greg my husband was the CEO of AMAZE since the beginning since 2007 when we started our venture then in early 2013 his first doubts came up if this is really the thing for him to continue he was a bit worn out he had a very difficult client relationship in 2012 which some in this room still remember very well like Sasha and it really wore him out he felt tired of being the manager of having to deal with these things and he was thinking of alternatives and thinking of maybe I could quit and do something else and I completely freaked out I panicked I'm like no you can't for me it was like Greg and me together his first thoughts of moving away were really really terrifying for me because I didn't want to see it I didn't even want to talk about it I'm like no no forget this we're just going to move on but then in 2013 later on in the year we spent two months in Brazil we took our first real not out time because we had good wifi and we really worked there as well but we went to work remotely from there had a nice summer and due to our like nearly non-existent social environment there and due to the distance we had to the team we thought a lot about our future as you usually do, again the first holidays in Cabo Verde when I made the decision to move on now again being away in Brazil just having these different impressions made us think about our future a lot and what to do next and Greg already mentioned a lot that he would like our kids to grow up in South Africa because he is half South African he spent first five years there and he loved it and he loved the lifestyle and the environment and the kind of boys and at first again I couldn't imagine at all like the year before we had moved into our nice flats in a nice residential area in Zurich I already saw our kids going to kindergarten there, my family was in Switzerland but then like over more Khyperinias and time and spending there was like maybe this is not such a bad idea and we didn't keep it just to South Africa, we had like this map that we drew out and we like listed the top five places we think we could imagine living and we just made a list and thought what could we do next but it really boiled down that it has to be caped down because part of his family was from there, it didn't feel like going as an expat somewhere to some new place, it felt like this would be an easier step, we're going somewhere new but somewhere familiar and so we decided to do that and that means Greg quitting his job us finding a new CEO for the company us making plans to have this transition and to make the team more mature to be able to take on all the challenges but then we were already about 15 or 17 people in our team so we can't just go and that's what we did so we found a new CEO we did plan to hand over and we were actually really excited about it about that new opportunity and in May 2014 our current CEO Ores Bucho started and on the 21st of October we took our one-way ticket to Cape Town and of course that sounds super exciting and all positive and most of it was because what sneaked in a lot during that time was all that letting go feeling I'm not maybe a control freak but I can't say that I'm completely good at letting go maybe, I do like to keep oversight of what's happening and so first letting go of direct client management would it be okay, don't people want to work with the founders then we actually figured out no, they actually don't same with the CEO doesn't one of the founders have to be the CEO of any company, you know that personal thing actually no, it doesn't have to be that way but that's not something someone can just tell you it's something you have to feel and experience and find out for yourself and that's not so easy if you're not a person who does that naturally and also maybe you know it's the right thing to do but you have to go into a process of also feeling it so we knew that we have to let go of some of the management and some of the control to be able to lead the life that we want to have but the pain of letting go comes in very small moments and it's maybe something people don't really talk about so much and maybe not everyone experiences it that way but I just want to share two small examples, it's like maybe a team member coming and ask you know, can't I have a single room at a conference because I'm not so good at just you know sharing and I need my space because you know like if I work 10 hours I'm tired and I'm like you know I still sleep on the sofa when I go and visit the Zurich office why can't you just pull yourself together doing that week and just you know it's going to be okay and noticing that not everyone can feel and live the kind of entrepreneurial attitude that we as founders do and that's fully okay because the company can't just live with these people, they can actually also be quite annoying maybe I'm not sure and another moment if you see like in this report of someone who charges lunch at a conference you know to business expenses and you think like yeah but you have to eat anyways you know why don't you just like that mix of personal life and company life that I had from the start because this was a baby that grew out of our ideas realizing that not everyone can feel that way that's the first thing that's the painful step but the good one is then noticing that that's okay and noticing that it works and noticing that it can even be better that way I see it that way that I say amazing can't be everybody's baby the way it is my baby but there can be really really good baby sitters and sometimes baby sitters can do even a better job than the mom because they're not so emotionally involved with everything and that's something that I learned but I really have to tell myself over over again and I see it because our company is doing well it's maybe different than it was before but it's going really well with all the very passionate baby sitters that we have in our team so my learning out of this whole phase was if you want to grow be successful but also still have a good life and follow some personal choices that you make you need to share you need to let go of some control and you can't do it all alone and that might be painful and it might be challenging but it's healthy and it's right and that's something that I've learned and I have accepted in a good way then chapter 8 is the new home so we did take that one-way ticket to Cape Town in October and we had a beautiful spring time there it felt a bit like a honeymoon being there for the first summer because I had a reduced working mode I was working remotely for the Zurich office in that time but I was maybe working like 60% I started surfing I had free time it was something I didn't really know that much until then or at least for a while we had great weather it was it was perfect our kids started going to school and of course we couldn't leave it with that that was just the first month like months of settling in we felt that we need something to operate out of we can't just be these visitors in South Africa working remotely for our Swiss company it felt not complete so we really quickly started connecting with the community in South Africa visiting Drupal camps meeting the Drupal people going to meetups visiting agencies that do similar things that we were doing in Zurich and actually being amazed by the people that we met there and the passion, the kind of community that one just led to the other so we brought some people in we decided to open up an office in Cape Town and we did that in June 2015 we opened the third office after Zurich and Austin that build up was great so June 2015 we're coming closer it's not that far ago it's a bit over a year and the build up was really stress free as nothing else so far it somehow came together we found the right people but if we're repeating a routine it somehow gets easier with time and doing things again in a kind of relaxed way dealt with the South African authorities which is not really something that is easy to do but somehow it also went through and we're not 12 people in that office in Cape Town we're profitable and we're having lots of learnings and fun doesn't mean that we're not making mistakes we are but we're standing up again and continuing and continuing our adventure and for me living in South Africa has been one of the best personal experiences and I wouldn't want to miss it for anything and that leads actually to my conclusion of chapter 8 it is okay to put a personal decision in front of a business decision I could make this story sound like you know we were thinking of outsourcing our business and we looked at locations and Cape Town just seemed to be a good place because we already know some people so we went there to open that office but that's not the truth Greg and I wanted to live there we wanted to move there for personal reasons the synergies are on the hand that it's great to go to a place like that and work out of there but that was the consequence of it and not the reason and so we move for personal reasons and sometimes that can even lead to very successful business outcome as it came now but I believe that going in such a relaxed matter helped us a lot to have this positive outcome that it had now chapter 9 is the future what's the future gonna bring so of course I wasn't able to tell you all about what happened in the 10 years and I really actually wanted to give more of a personal glimpse into things that were important for me and not maybe just list the milestones of our company because those can be read on our website we are now over 40 people in our group we're profitable, we're in 5 companies over 3 continents, we're busy in the meantime I had a second child we didn't stop making websites we opened amazing metrics, online marketing arm of ourselves we opened the office in Austin which I didn't really touch about, I also didn't talk about the great people that left us and new great people that came it just doesn't all fit so what's challenging me right now, I mean business is going really well we're really fortunate but a lot has changed with Amazie so I'm trying to find peace with the situation we are right now and combining the new with the old this year we're losing a lot of our great people who are moving on because they've spent a few years with us and are now looking for a new challenge and they're the both sides, there's always that one side, the heart that hurts it's the mom letting go of a part of our existence and then there's the other part allowing you to hire new great people and to build the company into a new direction and improve and from the capacity that we have now and the people we work with in our team we've never had a better setup than we've had now but we have to learn on the go and continue to accept the facts of people moving on and new people coming in that's something that doesn't come so naturally for me and one of our key management topics is to combine the old with the new, we have a history that's maybe different than a classical web development shop but now we're operating very much like a classical web development shop and that needs to be combined and managed and we need to have the people on board to support that and to move it forward and we do and I mean the future what will it bring and how will we make mistakes yes of course will we recover, I think so I personally don't have a goal I do very much live in the moment I can't, I don't even have a bucket list I don't know if that's something one must have but if people ask me like what do you really still want to achieve what do you really still want to do I don't know if people would have asked me four years ago are you going to move to South African two years I would have said no I don't know so for me life is just full of these constant changes and I just strive for being satisfied in this moment and my learning here is one that's still in progress and it's a quote by Alan Watts that very much is becoming my mantra this is the real secret of life it's to be completely engaged in what you are doing in the here and now and instead of calling it work realize it's play and that's something that I want to carry on for me in future and I hope someone maybe takes a little bit along of this story and that's the end of my tale and I'm happy to answer any questions that might be around or just to open up the discussion maybe you have stories you want to share and thank you very much for your attention are there any I will start thanks you're actually describing my story I wanted to ask you because you said in the beginning my name is Patti you said in the beginning that you had an angel investors in the start and then you moved over to the service business did you take in any investors from that point on or are you only the two of you it's no so we had the angel investor who bought into our social collaboration platform he was part of that initial venture very much at the start and we paid him back when we moved on to amazing labs and became successful another thing where people thought you're crazy you could just close your company and start a new one let it go down but that's something we would never have done he believed in us and we're not going to let him down and if we're able to do that we do it but we didn't take any investors on board since then we've been growing organically so we are three shareholders in the group it's to a very high majority Greg and myself and Michael Schnitzel one more question so you say that you're organically growth so how do you think this because the struggle is always when you grow it of course costs money so you're basically using your profit to grow your company and how was that balance in the last years do you have an idea of how much of your profit you actually spend on growing your company by taking in new employees and how long is it going to take 100% we have never paid ourselves out any dividends yet we put all our money back into the company as I said we're now five companies so the structures we have a holding and sub companies it goes to the holding and to the employees we share it with bony and whatever as far as we can and then there's new capital coming in from the holding to finance the new arms of the company but yeah 100% goes back in I've been traveling for a year now and I started off with my Erasmus semester and just didn't feel like going back home and since then I'm actually sleeping on sofas in my hometown I still have a apartment but I have sub rented that and every four months I call that girl hey do you want to stay I can't come home and at the moment I feel very uncomfortable sometimes going back home because there's all those people who know the old me and they have those expectations about me who I am how ideal and they have most of them have that conservative thinking about what are you doing are you crazy why are you taking that risk and I'm like I feel good like this this is what I want to do and that's why I now sometimes feel uncomfortable going back in my home area because people keep on expecting something from me that I can't give them and especially those negative comments like you are so naive how can you how can you even believe that this could work out and like it is working out what is your problem so I somehow start to like move away from some old friends that I actually like but I don't feel comfortable around them when they tell me stuff like that have you felt something like that as well and how did you deal with that I mean there were a few stages where I felt something similar not so much with the friends actually I must say because the friends I never had friends from my initial working environment so my good friends were always from earlier so they didn't really care if I was an accountant or if I was you know doing this internet stuff that's going to go away again or they just you know that was like a different story but I did have it from the working step so when I quit my job everyone was like are you completely nuts like you're quitting your job I was doing really well at that company I was on a good track you know like and they were like and what are you exactly doing like so from that point I can relate to it very much but I didn't really care because those were really my friends my family also freaks out a little bit at first and then they somehow accepted I know what I'm doing and it's my life so it was okay I actually I very I stood very firm behind that idea and just pushed it through and it was like look this is what I want to do and don't judge me or if you do then don't be upset if I might turn my back to you and the other moment where I had it didn't really mention that so much but when we did that shift from the startup kind of type company to the agency we really had made some really good contacts with the other startup entrepreneurs in Switzerland so was there was like this group of startup entrepreneurs there and we were hanging out a lot with them I don't know doing what web startups do and there it was quite a big step to turn our backs on them and say we're actually now going to become a very simple agency and we're not going to be part of your cool club anymore I did mention it but that was not so easy but it turned out that we still are upkeeping really many relationships that we had from there also possibly because it became something successful maybe if we would have failed they wouldn't have liked us so much anymore not sure to be honest but yes it happens constantly and I think I'm just a firm believer of you know best you know best what's good and if someone wants to go with it okay and if someone doesn't then you might have to just let go of that relationship even if it hurts yeah thanks good luck I'm actually having similar experiences I wanted to know that when you decided to move and leaving you guys hired another CEO did you have any internal resistance from the employees were they freaking out or anything not freaking out no of course resistance you change the character of the company a lot if you do a step like that so there were doubts there were questions there were conversations there were tensions yes so yes and I think you don't get around that because that's part of the whole change and part of the thing also what I'm saying now about what we're currently working on and merging these two worlds bringing them together you always get some resistance for change because some people come for a place where they're very much like that certain place and they don't want to see the change and even I am resistance against change in some ways and I do think oh maybe it was good at that time but you just have to deal with it if you want I mean for us it was if we want to take that personal step and have more freedom and be able to move to a place and be able to have some freedom but still be able to grow our company we have to hire other managers and of course they won't do it exactly the way you would like them to do your bimbo and just do whatever you tell them to do they have to be strong characters as well and they might do things differently but it's part it's part of that trade-off that you have to enter and in the end it's still it's okay and it's the right thing to do and there's a new outcome that can be very comfortable as well after maybe the waves I have settled down yeah any more questions no no you can just speak what makes you want to grow or open your office and so on but you are okay with what you have right now right and you are happy and in fun you have a thing enough for your family you don't need that much to be happy right so what makes you open more office and well the fun yes I mean it's I am happy with what we have now I don't need it to be bigger and better I like to change I like to have change in my life and that I love new projects I love opening up a new office it's fun digging into that legislation finding out what we need to do hiring new people I just love that so for me as I maybe said in the end the life is just full of these constant changes so it's not about being unhappy now and striving for more it's being happy with all these changes that just happen yeah so I don't mind if we stay small it doesn't have to be huge it's just fun to do new things and try out things yeah I mean my kids they know that mommy and daddy and amaze is somehow all together they see you know I always I do walk around with this a lot and all our you know team members who come also have that amaze so they recognize the amaze logo everywhere they know our team members because they sometimes come to the office they've been traveling with us when we came to Switzerland on trips so the team is our children they they're somehow integrated so they know that we work with computers because they're four and six you know it's not like that they really understand much they know that we work on computers so we can buy them Lego and that's about and they know that that our team members are friends and that we work together that's about how far that it goes and no I didn't take maternity leave either but the thing is I still had a lot of time with my children I hated them you know when I had my first kid I just took him with me to the office the fact was he was sleeping two or three hours before like the feeding cycles and I mean I might as well just sit at home or I might as well just sit in the office and let him sleep there I don't think they feel that I don't know that the business is competing with them it's just part of our lives and it's part of their lives as well Ben wants to become a spaceship captain so probably not and Henry's not sure yet so no at the moment maybe in ten years they'll think differently so no I mean I don't know and I don't mind maybe there's a little bit in me who would think like it would be really nice if that would happen but actually but it actually doesn't matter it actually doesn't matter no I would really never expect that they should just do what they want to do if they happen to like programming or running agencies then they might as well do an apprenticeship and we'll see if they're worth anything but no we'll see no expectations there not at all did you consider yourself an entrepreneur before Maisie or was it sort of a journey you grew into that role I was not an entrepreneur at all what would you say to people a very classical business person then what would you say to people who sit maybe in an agency and grow and think am I an entrepreneur could I do what she's doing just have to try and see if you like it for us it was really just trying seeing what we liked moving it again but I really wouldn't I don't think I'm so much of an entrepreneurial type of course now I maybe would think a bit differently but still it's I don't love risk taking I like calculated risk taking I like trying out new things but I want it to be safe and Greg my husband is much more of the generally entrepreneurial type he also had that more in his past and I was more in that moment following until at one time I fully grew into it and became like leading the way here when was that when did you say oh I'm an entrepreneur I don't know I don't like labels so much so I'm not sure I ever really also when you have to fill out these forms of profession I sometimes still write like economist or chartered accountant because it's that label that somehow fits I've done that education but how else should I you know label myself so difficult question I don't know I don't think it I ever at that moment when I said now I'm an entrepreneur I guess I became one the moment I signed the sheets for our first company but that's just the factual situation yeah so the pivot went from a startup to a service do you ever see the same thing in one of the arms you've got the five arms now do you ever see that a space for that happening again where I know some stuff you're doing with the Macy IO maybe is a little bit less but there's still that service component yes do you ever see something I'm not sure if the right word is like a a pivot within one of the entity not as radically as we've had it you do see changes like we have Macy metrics our online marketing arm there we've like changed the service offering along the way thinking what's going to work out what do the people really want but those are it's more a fine-tuning on a different level than really a pivot from being a startup web delivering one product that's a freemium kind of model to offering services to individual clients which is completely different so we've never had something that strong but actually I wouldn't exclude it it could happen yeah I think I'm running out of time oh no okay yeah any more last question or maybe and please otherwise before we leave I'd be glad if you rate the talk because for the Drupal Association it's important to know what kind of talks you like and this was a very personal one and I'd be interested to know if this is something people like or not for the future like what what is DrupalCon is it only technical project management Drupal all that or are these kind of stories interesting for the audience so it would be nice if you leave some feedback just for future planning so we know do we need this kind of business or personal entrepreneurial track for the future cool thank you very much and have a nice conference