 Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for having us on stage today. We're going to talk about coach up I'm Chris. I'm a partner with molten and we let the series be round But since we invested a lot of us a lot of us changed So the question for me is how did you initially come up with the idea of coach up and how has coaching changed? And then we jump a bit more into the expansion piece, which is the topic of today Around the world in 80 days Yeah, thanks for the question Chris and thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. I And it feels like yesterday, but in fact, it's four years ago that it was my brother Janice and myself sitting in his living room and Dreaming out loud I would say and Both with a track record of an entrepreneur being entrepreneurs for the last 15 years. We said, you know what? Life is too short to do something that is not meaningful So what we said is the next big thing that we want to commit a significant part of our lives on that should be Building a good business and what does building a good business mean for us on one hand? Of course, it needs to be commercially good good, you know, economics good market potential good growth potential Plus at the same time doing something good doing something with a purpose and That is actually what coaching means for me and I Know some of you might have Experience with coaching for myself. It was definitely life-changing when I was a first-time manager 15 years ago And I was coming fresh if out of university and I was completely overwhelmed You learn so much great stuff at university at most in your universities You don't learn how to manage people how to manage your stakeholders and I didn't even learn how to manage myself So that's when my coach helped me to really overcome my challenges and to really become a better version of myself and as Yannis and me were discussing four years ago. We said, you know what? Coaching is so powerful and every top executive every top politician every top sports person They all have their own coach But why is it actually that only zero point zero one percent of the global workforce have access to coaching and That's when we said, okay. This is what we want to change. Let's democratize coaching Let's make it accessible for people of all career levels worldwide That makes a lot of sense today. You're considered as one of the global category leaders in that space Tell us a bit more about the experience of when you initially started how companies or corporates Talk to you what they perceived what coaching means and today, right? So I'm sure there was a very interesting journey with lots of experiences down the road But just share a little bit how it is actually evolved. Yes, happy to and I Mean when I look in this audience What do I see and maybe do this look around look left to your right to you behind you? What do we see? individuals different dreams hopes fears challenges and for hundreds of years Corporates would support their people in having one-off classroom trainings. Oh, no now you're a manager Now you have to do this. Oh, now you're being promoted now We want to have this career program now. We want to have a transition now We want to digitize now want to have a cultural change and you know what it doesn't work this way because we are individuals because we want to be addressed with our own needs and our own Opportunities to really unleash our own potential and that is actually what we are helping our clients with and Side note. Yes, all the new talent generations ask for this. It's not so much about Okay, who's driving the fastest car or who's earning the biggest paycheck nowadays? it's about person development growth and purpose at work and for the first time in history technology AI video conference saying all this Information are helping us to scale something as unique as coaching which in the old day was only exact Available to the executive throughout the entire organization and that's what we are doing really helping our clients most of them are corporates really the the who is who from Toyota Fujitsu BNP Paribas Coca-Cola Twitter you name it to scale coaching across their workforce So tell us a bit more. So initially you started off in Berlin So we're very strong focus on the German speaking market But then obviously you acquired a player in France last year which obviously put you into the European leadership And in this in this industry and so now you're going after the global category leadership What has changed not only in terms of organization But also in terms of the audience that you're talking to are you talking now to the the head of talent development in the big Corporates, or is it still more local divisions that you're talking to how has that changed? So let me take one step back When I was a little boy, I Always wanted to go into international politics. I wanted to become a diplomat I actually my grades were not good enough to to go in this direction But I studied law and did a little bit of work for the government until I realized, you know what? There's too much politics and politics for myself, but I still want to change the world I still want to work in a very very international setup, and that's when we said, you know what? If the public sector is not the right space then let's go to an environment where you can create your own future and where you can actually shape this this future and in coaching The wonderful thing Something is possible, which is not possible in politics a world without borders We're having a global network of 3500 coaches worldwide from over 18 nations coaching in any language that comes to any of your your minds and This is really so rewarding because all of them collaborating all of them sharing this vision of making people's life better Transforming careers transforming entire organizations and really building the future of people development So maybe quickly on your on your question on global category leadership And I think many startups and many founders in Europe Limit themselves Maybe that's something we've been taught at school or taught by our parents. No stick to what you can play it safe And it took us a degree of craziness I would say to really launch this business for years with a very clear Plan to build the global category leader in digital coaching and roll this out across the world And I remember the very first weeks when they started the business. We're still two people We looked at Wikipedia. What are the 20 largest economies in the world and we said, okay? Let's go there and let's help them and let's really transform those those organizations over there And that's what we did we started 2018 in Berlin where I'm born and half a year later We opened our UK operations our French operations our Scandinavian operations Ben and Luxe Eastern Europe Southern Europe One and a half years ago in the US North America where we have 130 people let in America Middle East and we have our APEC HQ in in Singapore We opened up our Shanghai office quite a while ago two or three weeks ago We opened up of our office in Tokyo and then in Melbourne Singapore. We have another 30 people So 850 people from only 50 nations I would say we have the United Nations right under our roof at at coach up and that's really It's really been in 80 days around the world What was the craziest experience on that journey which country in particular stood out I Would say every face as an entrepreneur has its challenges. I would say Maybe the most challenging moment was even getting the business started at a period of time where My wife was pregnant I was in a stable job and really to making this move as an entrepreneur to this uncertainty No paycheck. You don't know if your business is going to fly or not That was probably the biggest challenge to get started and then the ride over the last four years. That was just Just incredible and I think you know very good because we are collaborating since you let our series be but in four years we did seven funding rounds and to really bring this business global and Asking about what was maybe one of the tipping points and the game changer for us that was in fact when we acquired the leading Player for digital coaching in France, which was the second largest a digital coaching platform in Europe called move one end of last year and you significantly helped with this transaction and a hundred wonderful people in Paris and Bringing about 80% of all French corporates as clients that was really game changer because all of sudden We grew into this position where we were the unrivaled number one here in Europe and it sparked this idea of No, why is it always the big US tech startups changing the world and coming here to Europe? Why is it always Amazon? Google Facebook and the like we here in Europe can do so much more So we really said okay even more now than ever. Let's build a global player with the European DNA Yeah Look, I think you mentioned it already to to go international and to expand to quickly You obviously need to have a lot of capital on hand and you you raised 330 million to date and just a couple of months ago. You closed one of the largest rounds in Europe of 200 million How has the market changed compared to last year and how how was that fundraise? I mean, it's it's a it's a huge number and how did you sort of convince the parties who joined the journey? So in a nutshell I Can honestly say I'm very glad I have a very good coach who supported me on the way because it was it was very unexpected and We're leaving end of last year on a back of very strong three four results You know what it's gonna be a walk in the park January we go out six weeks later. We're done So instead of this expected six weeks walk in the park it turned into six months of walk through constant fire And I think it was a quite intense face for all of us But the results were really strong really worth all the efforts And I'm very grateful for for my wife and family and my coach and the entire team and our Incredible investors to really support this journey. Yeah, no, I think I can echo that Looking a little bit into the future. So obviously now you're sitting a lot of capital. How do you deploy it? What's the deployment plan and what are the next goals that you have set for the organization? Also the current market environment obviously which is different. Yeah, obviously if you look at today's market It's not the time of blitz scaling. It's not the time of coming up with crazy ideas We want to roll out across the world next year at the same time. I Am a firm believer if you have a dream then follow your dream and don't switch your plans Every now and then I remember when COVID hit two years ago So we're having intense discussion in the board and many many investors out there said, you know what? You need to completely change your plans. You need to cost cut you need to reduce your headcount and we were having this discussions and It was actually my brother Janice my co-founder who mentioned, you know what? Let's keep calm. Let's stick to the plan Clients will come and eventually turns out covered. We saw actually very strong tailwind many many organizations realized You know what? You're doing coaching 100% digital in the old world I thought that wouldn't be possible, but now I've run my entire organization remotely during COVID so I understand that this is the future and I Know today's situation is not a health crisis. It's a financial Crisis that's different at the same time. I still say let's stick to the plan. Let's be reasonable Let's make sure the business is fully funded in any case. That's a priority number one I've learned my lessons the early days with other startups and at the same time. Yeah, also Keep planting the seeds. So we keep growing in developing markets We keep growing in in Asia pack We keep investing and we heavily invest on one end in the sales side as well as in the product side of things because a challenging Market situation also always is an opportunity Yeah No, I think that makes a lot of sense and the other question I have is so I know that you internally always look at 600 largest companies in the world. So tell us a bit more about this Matrix, which is probably new to a lot of the audience here And why is that so important and how did you decide or how did you make the decision initially to move away from? SME and really focus on those large enterprise clients only which is basically what you do today And then the second question is how did it help with expansion, right? So landing those clients is obviously a bit harder, but then how do you expand them over time? Yeah, so I mean I can tell you when you're two founders in a living room and you're calling the sea level of Daimler It's a hard sell and it took a while At the same time, why did we take the different approach instead of like the typical startup approach you work with? SMB then you go to mid-market and then you go to the enterprise level We did it completely the other way around the reason being is because we identified this Incredible market opportunity and if you look at trend agencies if you look at the Gardner hype cycle on human capital technology They are predicting a hundred X growth in the space and they're predicting any major Organization to implement a digital coaching solution at scale by the end of the decade So that's a massive opportunity and even though I'm sometimes joking and say my brother Yannis is the guy with the golden nose because he can smell nice business opportunities I doubt that he's the only one who was smelling this opportunity So we said okay. We need to be fast and corporate clients are yes They are the most toughest to crack, but they are also highly rewarding. They're very loyal in Uncertain times like these where many companies are cutting their budgets. We don't see this with our corporate clients They are long-term planning. We're supporting our large corporates with topics like the digital IT transformation or their culture transformation and these are things and projects that are set up for 10 years and What we are seeing is that our satisfaction score. We're measuring NPS for all our personas It's at 70 which I believe is pretty nice It's actually higher than the than the Apple NPS Which means that our clients employees love the coach up coach more than Apple fans love their iPhone Which also results in quite nice stickiness and retention rates But this shows that the full focus on the top clients is so critical because this phase is a land grabbing phase and No matter what's going on in public markets in 10 years from now the market shares are being split Now is the time to actually gain those and that's obviously explains why you so aggressively internationalized and Today you're in Japan. You're in China. You're in India. You're also in the US Tell us a bit more about us us obviously is the largest market with I think 225 out of just 600 Largest companies in the world. What's the strategy for the US? How do you actually approach this this huge gigantic market? For us in general our internal is Internationalization strategy is basically we're following our clients when we started the business We started from day one working with the large clients those large clients are typical multinational then we're falling in Land and expand approach that means we're working maybe with one local entity in Central Europe then we're rolling out use cases We're rolling out across geographies. I know this leading E-commerce Companies now they do a lot more stuff as well They started in Central Europe rolled out across the UK rolled out then across North America China India Australia and the alike so that led us to also build our coach base Globally and then we said you know what we're having People being coached in all those geographies. We have coaches in all those geographies. There's a huge market Okay, maybe we should also build a sales force in all those geographies and that was for us the the starting point And if you look at markets, of course Europe is a quite developed market when it comes to coaching the US is still the most mature Market and then Asia pack. It's a giant a green field Yeah, I mean you already mentioned on the on the demand side obviously a lot of the younger generation Potential high potentials. They're asking for coaching right so this there's very strong tailwinds Tell us a bit more about the supply side of things, right? So obviously there's coaches out there But you need to make sure that the quality is right that they live up to the standards that you want to represent on the platform How do you ensure that and also? Once you expand in a country like India are there enough coaches who actually have the same quality Compared to the US where this might be a bit more advanced so When you talk about coaching I'm pretty sure anyone here in the audience would agree It is a big thing and probably everyone has considered coaching at the same time It would be very hard to find a common definition. What actually coaching is what does it mean? It's a non-regulated industry. So that's where we come in. We say, okay, let's really create this principle So it's really create these standards Let's really make sure that we are focusing on quality because many of our clients would go to Google and they can promise you The first hits on Google's they're probably great at marketing not so good and coaching most likely so and That's why we're building this this this global pool this global community And Actually our acceptance rate to become a coach with coach up is 5% which I understood It's harder to become a coach with us than to get into MIT. So I Take this with pride and the majority of the coaches is exclusive with us But it's really it is it is an effort to really heavily invest to build a value at not only for your clients But also for for your partners and and you were asking about geographical differences. It is very different if you go to France generally The organization set up is much more hierarchical So this needs to be catered into in the product if you look at Asia Pacific Japan for example, there is not a word for coaching The word training also covers coaching in these regions So there's a lot of educational work to be done as well I know that you have a very scientific Approach to this as well So there's lots of science with Jonathan Passmore. You're one of the leading Coaching experts in the world tell us a bit more about this lab that you actually built and what are sort of the the learnings that you derive from it What we realized early on When we really want to grow big with our clients and really want to support them at scale we need to prove The impact on what we are doing an impact can look different for any client if it's if it's a Diversity equity and inclusion use case is probably different measures that you would look at then when it's a a change project or a digital transformation project or Anything alike so we are working closely with our clients and that's where our lab and our behavior scientists come in We pull them in with our our key deals and work together with our client to define How does success look for me for you? How can we measure success and then to deliver on it? We're not signing up a client unless we jointly identified how success looks like because then we can come back In a reach role and say look these are the metrics you wanted to measure We're having some scientists and some researchers in our in our own ranks And then we can show you this data do you want to roll this out because if you're talking about multi-million budgets? typically an Executive level is involved and typically organization want to see some kind of impact or some kind of our eye make it measurable and That brings us to the last point that I wanted to discuss with you So obviously the current product offerings is already serving a lot of people But how do you actually expand that and what are sort of the next things the big things on your roadmap? And are they also driven by some markets like India or Japan where you might have different requests? How do you look at this and how is that actually shaping the roadmap? So last part of the question first, how does the product offering different differ by market and best example for example is France Where we were having a tough time to enter the market and I believe it wouldn't have been possible without the merge with the Category leader in France one key learning is because the market is more hierarchical We've developed a feature to involve your line manager So our coaches in France in the first session can loop in the line manager where they join jointly aligned on the target of the coaching and Then the two individuals can have their coaching session and this kind of features We're then taking and rolling out for example in Asia Pacific. We're seeing some similarities and companies can benefit from the same Same features that we're developing here and this is I believe one of the advantage of coming from a European nation because actually there is no one European market Europe is a combination of many many Different nations they have different languages as we as we all know different cultures different philosophies different approaches different regulations and This early need to adapt also makes you quite flexible as an organization And that's probably what gave us this competitive edge over some US players that grew up in a very consistent Very big market. They have no need to adapt and once you have a huge business running in the US Would you really implement this small feature because in Finland you have a specific requirement probably not? So what it really means is that the international markets have an impact on how the product will look like in the future and Tell us a bit more about the executive coaching piece because that's something that you're working on How big is that opportunity or is that actually going back to how it has been in the past? Executive coaching is an interesting one because it's actually one one step back to the roots of coaching So as we know in an old world coaching would be accessible to the 0.01% of the workforce just the executives what we're doing with our core offering is really making this available for a larger audience At the same time I have to admit until we've reached our vision to democratize it Meaning for everyone in the workforce. It's a long way to go We still have to work on your features. There is something coming up I can't say anything yet, but maybe maybe a next year's time And to really address the whole workforce and while we're working towards a solution to address the bottom of the pyramid We've also developed this little feature to develop to address the small executive level as well because oftentimes They are the sponsors and if you get the buy-in from the executives if they feel the power of coaching They are very likely to also roll it out across their business line Famous last words. We're coming to the end. Thank you so much Mati for sharing some of your learnings That you gathered in 80 days around the world. So thank you very much Thanks a lot. Thanks for listening