Who this is
Florian Gschwandtner grew up on a farm, is based in Linz and co-founded Runtastic. The fitness app was sold in 2015 for 220 million, even though, as he puts it, the team was bootstrapped; together with his co-founders he has since reinvested around 30 million into startups in Austria and Germany. In 2012 he also co-founded Tractive, GPS tracking for dogs and cats, based in Linz. Martin Kaswurm is from Salzburg, trained as a civil engineer and founded the live marketing agency CHAKA2 in 2010. He holds a degree from Harvard Business School, is studying with FIFA on the side and has 20 investments. Together they host the BTM Podcast, a weekly roundup of business, tech and marketing news.
Episodes
Numbers from the episode
FAQ
How is Florian Gschwandtner's push-up app doing?
The app counts push-ups via the smartphone camera. Florian cites 12,839 euros in monthly recurring revenue, almost 7,000 subscribers and 40,000 monthly active users, with development costs of around 300,000 to 350,000 euros. In the episode he announces that he has sold two thirds of the company to two of his Runtastic co-founders. To the episode →
How much did Adidas pay for Runtastic?
Adidas acquired Runtastic in 2015 for 220 million euros. In the episode Florian Gschwandtner explains that negotiations stood at 210 million and the last 10 million were added in a ten-minute phone call. Another bidder would have paid more, but the founders chose Adidas because they trusted its CMO. To the episode →
How did Runtastic grow without a marketing budget?
For its first three years Runtastic had a marketing budget of zero euros. The app grew through App Store and Play Store features, for which Florian personally flew to San Francisco, translations by runners from the community, early Facebook posts after every run, leaderboards and cross-selling. On average 130,000 new downloads came in per day. To the episode →
What is Tractive?
Tractive makes GPS trackers for dogs and cats and, according to Florian Gschwandtner, is the world's largest maker in this category. Florian founded the company in September 2012 with his friend Michi, who has been CEO ever since. Tractive has almost 300 employees, adds one million in ARR every 10 days, is profitable and grew 44 percent last year. To the episode →
What does Florian Gschwandtner think about venture capital?
Florian has invested in 16 VC funds, including Speedinvest and First Minute Capital, but finds fund investing rather boring and would only back three or four today. As a founder he prefers bootstrapping because you stay independent. He and two former Runtastic co-founders plan to fund their new company themselves as well. To the episode →
What is Florian Gschwandtner starting next?
At the time of recording Florian and two of his three Runtastic co-founders are looking for a new idea. They have rented a small meeting room and given themselves six months to brainstorm. The guardrails: no hardware, ideally scalable software, B2C rather than B2B, and probably no VC. Topics he finds interesting include longevity and education for kids. To the episode →
Quotes
„… eigentlich muss ein Start-up die ersten drei Jahre steuerfrei sein …““A startup should really be tax-free for its first three years.”
„Der Reward kommt oft erst Jahre, Jahre später. Man muss einmal lange reinhauen, damit dann auch was passiert.““The reward often only comes years and years later. You have to put in the work for a long time before anything happens.”
„Also ich glaube die Kombination aus Naivität und Sturheit damals war enorm wichtig, weil für mich war jedes Nein schon eine große Motivation …““I think the combination of naivety and stubbornness back then was hugely important, because every no was a big motivation for me.”
„… als CEO muss man die ersten zwei, drei Jahre immer Customer Support selber machen.““As CEO you always have to do customer support yourself for the first two or three years.”
„Du bist nicht happy, wenn du x Millionen an einem Konto hast und aufstehst und denkst, geil, dass ich x Millionen an einem Konto habe.““You're not happy just because you have x million in your account and wake up thinking, great, I have x million in my account.”
„Wenn du einfach dran bleibst und das Ding Tag für Tag ein bisschen besser machst und Monat für Monat und auch einfach die extra Meile gehst, dann ist die Chance auf alle Fälle da, dass du da erfolgreich werden kannst.““If you just stick with it, make the thing a little better day by day and month by month, and go the extra mile, then you definitely have a chance to succeed.”