Meconomy. Markus Albers

From Gabriele Fischer, Editor-in-chief of the German business magazine brand eins, to Mark Korzillies, founder of the restaurant chain Vapiano. From Thorsten Becker, managing director of the Hamburg-based HR consulting company Management Angels, to Arndt Roller, CEO of Parship. The list also includes potential sponsors, such as Jens Müffelmann, who coordinates the investments of Germany’s Axel Springer publishing house in technology ventures, and Christian Nagel, co-founder and managing partner of the venture capital company Earlybird.

      I had the opportunity to attend the interviews – as a participant and contributor – and I was indeed impressed with the list of prominent interview partners that had been compiled by a group of no-name individuals. However, what I found even more impressive was the likeable enthusiasm with which they questioned the experienced entrepreneurs. Here, a group of young managers really wanted to know how to start your own business, how to present ideas, how to create a financing plan, and, ultimately, what might go wrong in all of this. I took extensive notes and would summarize the most important insights as follows:

      1. Usually, much more goes wrong than you would expect as an outsider. I can’t give you any details in this respect as I agreed to treat all the information confidentially. However, you wouldn’t believe how dramatic the mistakes, mishaps, and errors were that many business founders made and got through. Just because they are successful today, this doesn’t mean they have always known everything and done everything right. Sometimes they were simply unlucky. Of course, when talking to journalists, they always tell the success stories.

      2. Sometimes you have to let go of your own idea to make it work. Today, Mark Korzillius owns but a small share in Vapiano – although he is the one who came up with the idea for this globally successful restaurant chain. He says that he is satisfied to see his concept grow.

      3. Sometimes you have to stick to your idea against all odds to make it work. When you listen to Gabriele Fischer talking about the difficult beginnings of brand eins, you ask yourself: Why on earth did she do that to herself and her team? Because she knew that they would triumph in the end? This is easy to say in retrospect…

      4. You might have to challenge your business model to keep it alive. The MediaLab, a subsidiary of the German Madsack publishing group, recently invented the first newspapers that exclusively contain user-generated content – which means that all articles are written by laypersons and not by professional journalists. Please note: We are talking about a major German publishing house here that actually makes money by selling classic newspapers. Is this insane? Or a bold strategy that counters industry trends? Probably, it’s a little bit of both…

      5. After all, no one knows in advance what will work. Earlybird doesn’t know which of the start-up businesses they finance will make it. Madsack doesn’t know if their investments in the Internet radio platform www.radio.de will be profitable. Parship doesn’t know if people will spend 30 Euros a month on dating during the financial crisis. The planners of Hamburg’s large-scale architectural project HafenCity don’t know if they will create a vibrant district or a soulless concrete jungle. The trick is to stop calculating, deliberating, and forecasting at some point and to start doing things. No one knows what the future holds, but all of us can take a chance.

      This might seem more difficult during times of crisis. To many people, however, these are perfect times to get started: When the economy is down, resources and rents are cheap, manpower is available, and you have time to prepare for the take-off of your business after the crisis.

      The Time to Do What You Love Is Now

      “There is no more reason today to do stuff that you hate,” says the young American entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, who gave up managing a wine wholesale company with a revenue of millions in order to realize his dream: He recently became the world’s most successful wine blogger. He broadcasts his daily show via the Internet and rejects offers of TV stations. In this way, Vaynerchuk became one of the pioneers of the Meconomy: “Ask yourself: What do I want to do every day for the rest of my life? Do that! I promise you can monetize that shit.”

      This message catches on with the target group of young, well-trained employees who have been disappointed one time too many – by their bosses, by their investment advisors, or by politicians. We lost money in the bank crash of 2008, and some of us even lost their jobs in the economic crisis. We are flexible, motivated, and well-trained – but that doesn’t really help us during the downturn. Many of us who still have our jobs do them in a rather disenchanted way and without too much loyalty. We know that we might get the sack once management decides to change its business strategy. As we don’t trust our bosses, more and more of us prefer to become our own bosses and start our own businesses.

      On average, the number of independent professionals is increasing by five percent every year in Germany. In 1992, there were 514,000 of them; in 2007, that figure had already almost doubled to 954,000. Between 2006 and 2007 alone, the number of physicians and pharmacists increased by 7.6 percent, the number of lawyers, tax accountants, and auditors grew by 5.3 percent, the number of people working in technical and scientific professions (such as architects, engineers, and biologists) rose by 7 percent, and the number of people working in the cultural sector (such as journalists, actors, directors, and writers) increased by more than 6 percent.

      Particularly the Creative Class gains more and more importance: According to the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, the cultural and creative industries grew in 2008 – despite the general economic trend. This was largely due to the economic input of small businesses. With 2.6 percent, the cultural and creative industries contributed more to the GDP than, e.g., the chemical industry (2.1 percent).

      This trend towards more entrepreneurial spirit, courage, personal responsibility, creativity, and eagerness to experiment – i.e. towards the Meconomy – certainly isn’t very typical of Germany and has various structural, technological, psychological, and historical reasons. In the following, we will dip into the most important ones, looking at the core theses of two prominent observers of this development: Jeff Jarvis, communications expert and professor of journalism, and Seth Godin, entrepreneur, author, and marketing guru.

      Learning from Google

      Many things suggest that the world as we know it is undergoing a profound change: Time-tested business models are crumbling. Hierarchies are increasingly being replaced by collaborative, network-like structures. Communication within companies and within society isn’t entirely based on the top-down approach anymore – however, creating but a few bottom-up channels is not enough: In the long run, an irregular tangle of senders and receivers will replace the old media. People no longer want to perceive themselves as hollow consumers or marketing targets. Instead, they want to exert influence on products and innovations, as well as on the designs and functions of the things and tools that surround us.

      Jeff Jarvis is known for his particularly merciless and prophetic analyses of this change. In the past, the 55-year-old worked as a media manager and created the famous US magazine Entertainment Weekly. Later on, he developed an online resource website and became a university professor. Jarvis lectures on the changing media landscape, proclaiming that the death of the newspaper is at hand, and writes highly successful blogs and books such as the bestseller “What Would Google Do?.”

      In this book, he describes what would happen if other industries operated according to the rules of the search engine giant. To Jarvis, the above-described changes can be summarized in a short guiding principle that he gives the (rather immodest) name “Jarvis’ First Law”: “Give the people control, and we will use it. Don’t, and you will lose us.” What does this mean in the Meconomy context?

      The first thing you need is what Jarvis calls “Googlejuice”: Ensure that you are searchable via Google (or other search engines). At a minimum, you should put your curriculum vitae, a portfolio of your previous work, and information on your network of friends and colleagues online. Besides, your website shouldn’t rank fifth or tenth in the search results. If you google for “Markus Albers,” the first website you will find is mine – because I fought for it. And here is how you do it: Create links – both online and in the real world. The more things/products/contents you create and the more producers you are linked to, the more links will lead others to you, the easier