Kapsch Factory1 2K19: Winner's Ceremony opening by Georg Kapsch - 360°

Good evening everybody, it's a great pleasure having you here tonight. Well, first of all I would like to clarify something because there might be a misunderstanding. There was an intro for my son and it said 'entrepreneur,' and I do not really know if it said 'entrepreneur' because he's the son of an entrepreneur or if he's an entrepreneur himself. And I want to inform you if you don't know that he's an entrepreneur himself. He founded a company just one and a half years ago and he managed to get pre-seed and seed financing in one round because, apart from that, the investors are still family friends and fools. Anyway, I keep my fingers crossed for his venture. You know, normally startup founders, and that's my experience — and of course I also founded one or the other — but primarily out of corporate, do not really like to get advice, especially if they are family members. Therefore I normally refrain from giving advice and just when he comes and says, 'Dad, could you give me a hint?' I'm gonna do that. So good luck to you, Jacob. Well, I think we were talking about covering your ass, and I think covering your ass is really the end of innovation, and that happens in lots of corporates especially due to governance and compliance issues. Normally, well, I care about them. I don't like them, but I have to care about them. But nevertheless, if you're an entrepreneur yourself, you are not necessarily forced to cover your ass, and lots of times during my professional career I had blue eyes and a blue backside because I didn't cover my ass. Anyway, and I failed lots of times, and I'm convinced that for the rest of my professional career I will also fail several times again. But that doesn't matter. In the end, it just matters whether you fail more often than you don't fail and you're successful. This equation has to fit. And as Jacob already mentioned, if you fail it hurts. I have to admit that my failures did not hurt me really, just my shareholders. But I think if you're really trying to be innovative and you are successful, your shareholders are happy on the other side. So what I was thinking about is what should I tell you tonight, because I already did an opening brief, opening speech, and I don't want to bore you. So since yesterday lots of people approached me and told me, 'Well, you were saying that the company is not a democracy at all.' And well, sometimes my brother who is in the board with me says, 'Well, you're a dictator,' and I say, 'No, I'm not,' but there has to be someone — and that applies for a startup in the same way as for a corporate — who takes in the end the responsibility and who is accountable for everything. And this is sometimes a bad feeling, but sometimes it's also a good feeling. And you know, when I really considered what I was saying yesterday and I got this feedback, I thought, do I ignore democracy? Well, I'm basically a liberal, a social liberal, and a Democrat of course. Therefore I can't get along with lots of governments today anyway. Do I behave differently in the company? There will be some people saying, 'Yes, of course you behave differently in the company,' and some will say, 'It's okay, what you're doing.' And I think the most important thing in leadership and in decision processes is not whether you decide at the end of the process, but how you go along the process: whether you include lots of people and you ask for what they are thinking about, if you integrate them, if you honor what they contribute. I think that's the important thing. It's not the important thing at the end who takes the decision. So I think that's advice I could give you. And I'm really proud of all of my team, and let me say, proud of all of you. Although your startups and you were on your own, I'm also proud of you. And I know that you were challenged over the last couple of weeks, but our mentors and ourselves were also challenged by you, and that's great. And it's an experience one should never miss. So I'm curious to get to know who will be the winner tonight. And the last thing I would like to address is that there will be no winners and no losers at all. What can happen, what certainly will happen, is that there might be... and there will be some of you who will not participate in the next round, but not because you have lost or because you are not professional or because you did not provide a good business case. Maybe it's just because there is hardly any fit, and other companies, other startups are fitting better than yours. And please keep that in mind: you are not a loser. You are already a winner, and we are winners because we have you here. And one of the values of the Kapsch company is family, and we define family as a family of our group of companies and as our employees and friends all around the world. And you became friends of ours, and that's great. So enjoy the evening and we'll see you immediately.