connex.io startet mit der Gastblog-Serie «connex.io in talk with» und trifft in der ersten Folge Microsoft CEO Schweiz Petra Jenner zum Roundtable. 

Im Gespräch mit Brancheninsidern Nicolas Berg und Reto Hartinger werden nicht nur naheliegende Fragen, wie etwa der Unterschied zwischen Kontaktdaten und Kontakt diskutiert, Petra Jenner erzählt im Interview auch, inwiefern Ihre langjährige Erfahrung als einstige Startup CEO ihre heutige Rolle als Top Managerin prägt. Und was beim Rollout D-A-CH zu beachten ist.

Das Interview mit Microsoft Schweiz CEO Petra Jenner eröffnet die Blogpost Serie «connex.io in talk with», in der Exponenten der ICT-Szene aktuelle Themen auf den Punkt bringen.

connex.io: Frau Jenner, wie verwalten Sie Ihre Adressen? Machen Sie einen Unterschied zwischen privatem und beruflichem Kontaktmanagement?

Petra Jenner: Ich verwalte alle Kontakte in einem Outlook Adressbuch, das mit dem CRM des Unternehmens vernüpft ist, und ich verfüge auch noch über zusätzliche private Kontakte, mit denen ich über Social Networks vernetzt bin. Die klassischen Kontaktdaten habe ich alle in Outlook, die ich dann kategorisieren kann. Das ist also ganz basic, nichts Besonderes.

connex.io: Gehören die geschäftlichen Kontakte der Firma? Oder ist die Verwaltung dieser Daten Privatsache eines jeden Managers?

Jenner: Die Daten kann das Unternehmen ja ruhig haben. Aber was nutzt dem Unternehmen der blosse Kontakt? Jeder weiss ja, wer der CEO eines Unternehmens ist. Schön, wenn Sie dann zusätzlich noch die Durchwahl haben. Wenn der Sie aber nicht kennt, wird er Sie trotzdem nicht durchlassen. Das ist für mich der Unterschied zwischen Adresse und – echtem – Kontakt. 

Nicolas Berg: Hier geht es also um Kontaktdaten und persönliche Beziehungen. Erstere hat man ja nicht immer automatisch komplett und griffbereit.

Jenner: Deswegen würde ich auch sagen, dass selbst, wenn man die Daten nicht hat, die Beziehung jederzeit aufgebaut werden kann. Die Daten, die Sie haben, haben Sie. Die sind Ihr gutes Recht. Wenn man schlau ist, dann vernetzt man sich früher oder später über Social Networks und besitzt diese dann auch über Outlook des alten Arbeitgebers hinaus. Der Glaube, dass Kontakte nicht transferierbar sind, ist antiquiert.

Berg: In vielen Unternehmen hält die Diskussion an, ob Mitarbeiter am Arbeitsplatz Facebook, XING oder LinkedIn verwenden dürfen, um so etwa den Recruiting- oder Salesprozess zu optimieren. Aber, wenn der Mitarbeiter geht, hat er keinen Zugriff mehr auf den Account, wenn dieser auf die berufliche Email lautet und vom Arbeitgeber bezahlt war. Was halten Sie davon?

Jenner: Also wir haben diese Policy nicht, bei uns ist das offen. Bei uns kann jeder Social Networks nutzen - wir ermutigen unsere Mitarbeiter sogar dazu, ihre Netzwerke zu pflegen – die Trennung der Kontakte nach privat und beruflich macht keinen Sinn.

connex.io: Könnten Sie sich vorstellen für eine Startup Company zu arbeiten?

Jenner: Ja, das kann ich. Falls ich Microsoft einmal verlassen sollte, kann ich mir sehr gut vorstellen, wieder CEO eines Startups zu sein. Das ist wirklich so, ich meine das ernst. Ich bin in meinem tiefsten Herzen eine Unternehmerin und keine Managerin.

connex.io: Das führt zur nächsten Frage: Wie könnte eine Startup Company von Ihrer langjährigen Führungserfahrung profitieren?

Jenner: Wenn ich jetzt zu viel sage, dann hört sich das so an, als würde ich jetzt bei einem Bewerbungsgespräch sitzen (Gelächter). Es ist natürlich wichtig, welchen professionellen Werdegang jemand gehabt hat. Meiner beispielsweise ist sehr bunt, ich habe in vielen Unternehmen gearbeitet und ich kenne die unterschiedlichen Facetten sowohl aus der IT- als auch aus der New Media Branche. Und: ich habe selbst einmal ein Startup aufgebaut, allerdings nicht mein eigenes. Ich glaube, wenn Sie sämtliche Stufen des Erfolgs und Scheiterns durchlebt haben, dann bringen Sie einen Erfahrungsschatz mit, der für ein Startup sehr wertvoll ist. Es geht um die Erfahrung, die man gemacht hat. Diese Zeit hat mich bis heute geprägt, sodass ich sagen kann: ich liebe den Aufbau mehr als die Maintenance. Das ist meine Passion. Deshalb kann ich mir sehr gut vorstellen, eines Tages wieder für ein Startup zu arbeiten. 

connex.io: Welches Mindset muss ein Manager oder Startup CEO heute auf jeden Fall mitbringen?

Jenner: Ganz klar: Durchhaltefähigkeit. Wenn Sie ein Unternehmen aufbauen, sind Sie voller Enthusiasmus, voller Freude über das, was Sie machen. Aber Sie werden mit Sicherheit irgendwann auf jemanden stossen, der Ihre Arbeit ganz furchtbar findet (Gelächter). Und in dem Moment dürfen Sie nicht frustriert sein. Dann müssen Sie weiter machen, durchhalten. Und überprüfen, ob man einen anderen Weg gehen kann. Das ist etwas, was sehr, sehr wichtig ist. 

Ich glaube nicht, dass man das in der Corporation lernt.  Ich kenne kaum Leute eines Grossunternehmens, die wirklich das Durchhaltevermögen hätten, in einer Startup Company, die etwa in einer schwierigen Phase ist, durchzuhalten. Das sage ich Ihnen ganz offen. Ich habe auch Karrieren gesehen, die beim Übergang von einer Grossfirma zum Startup gescheitert sind.

connex.io: Woran ist das meist gelegen?

Jenner: Manager sind es gewohnt, eine gewisse Infrastruktur zu haben. Und sie sind es gewohnt, dass andere für sie mitdenken und im Rahmen einer gewissen Struktur operieren. Wenn man weiss, wie es ist, nicht auf grüner Wiese anzufangen und alleine dort steht - ohne eine grosse Marke im Hintergrund - dann ist das schon eine andere Liga. Ich weiss, was das heisst, weil ich diesen Weg gegangen bin. Da können Sie noch so gute Kontakte haben, aber Sie müssen eine sehr gute Story haben, um ihr Produkt verkaufen zu können. Also, das wichtigste sind Widerstandsfähigkeit und Executive Maturity, so nennen wir das bei Microsoft. Die Fähigkeit zu entwickeln, sich auf das Gegenüber einstellen zu können – unabhängig von der Hierarchiestufe. 

connex.io: Was macht gute Führung aus?

Jenner: Darüber schreibe ich gerade ein Buch. Es geht immer nur um den Menschen, ich kann das einfach nur wiederholen. Es geht am Ende des Tages darum, wie Sie mit Menschen arbeiten, ob es ein Geschäftspartner, Journalist oder Mitarbeiter ist spielt keine Rolle. Und wenn Sie es schaffen, zu einem Menschen eine gute Basis aufzubauen und dann vor allen Dingen auch etwas von ihm fordern können, dann ist das der wichtigste Grundstein für gute Führung. Sie müssen natürlich Ziele definieren, aus der Führungssicht im klassischen Sinne, aber wenn sich die Menschen bei Ihnen verstanden fühlen und gerne mit Ihnen zusammen arbeiten, sind die meisten Menschen intrinsisch motiviert.

Reto Hartinger: Ich hätte da noch eine Frage, wenn wir schon einmal eine Frau fragen dürfen: Macht eine Frau denn etwas anders in einer Führungsposition als ein Mann?

Jenner: Ich glaube, dass es eine Fähigkeit gibt, die Frauen vielleicht ausgeprägter besitzen: Das ist Empathiefähigkeit. Wobei ich mich hier vorsichtig ausdrücken möchte: ich kenne durchaus den einen oder anderen hochgradig empathischen Mann. Frauen stehen sicherlich eher für Softskills als Männer. Wobei es schwierig ist zu definieren, was Softskills überhaupt sind. Ich würde sagen, es ist die Fähigkeit auch Gefühle zuzulassen und mit Gefühlen zu arbeiten. Das ist für Männer meistens etwas herausfordender als für Frauen und vielleicht der einzige Unterschied. Ich ermutige einfach jeden Manager dazu, den Gefühlen, mit denen man täglich konfrontiert wird, mehr Platz zu geben. Dadurch entstehen Verbindungen. Und Verbindungen sind immer gut, um dann auch später Geschäfte miteinander zu machen.

Berg: Grosse Unternehmen haben fixe Abläufe, viele Kunden, Reichweite und Kapital. Also vieles, was Startups auch gerne hätten. Aber grosse Unternehmen haben aus bekannten Gründen auch Schwierigkeiten innovativ zu bleiben. Wie bleibt ein grosses Unternehmen innovativ?

Jenner: Ich kann diese Frage nicht pauschal beantworten. Zumal auch zwischen Microsft Schweiz und Microsoft als weltweites Unternehmen unterschieden werden muss. Wir machen hier in der Schweiz ja keine Produktentwicklung. Aber Innovation ist ohnehin nicht gleich Produktentwicklung, sondern sie beinhaltet auch vor allem die Frage, wie ich den jeweiligen Markt erschliesse. Das funktioniert aus meiner Sicht, indem Sie sich sehr diszlipliniert - trotz der in amerikanischen Grossunternehmen vorherrschenden Regelwerken - regelmässigen Brainstromingsessions unterziehen. Und das auf verschiedenen Ebenen tun, quer durch die Hierarchieebenen, um mehr Kreativität zusammen zu bringen. 

connex.io: Wie halten Sie sich über aktuelle IT-Trends und über neue Influencer der Branche up-to-date? 

Jenner: IT-Trends interessieren mich eigentlich nur sekundär. Da bin ich ganz offen. Mich interessieren mehr gesellschaftliche Veränderungsprozesse, insbesondere IT-bedingte gesellschaftliche Veränderungen. IT Trends ergeben sich aus dem Veränderungsprozess. Die IT unterstützt den Trend lediglich, normalerweise. 

Berg: Die Schwierigkeiten, die Startups haben, habt ihr sicher auch: Unternehmen haben ein Produkt, das vermarktet werden soll. Nehmen wir z.B. Foursquare, wo es darum geht, wer an welchem Ort wie oft eingecheckt hat und dafür bekommt man dann einen Orden. Das gefällt einem Amerikaner, aber für einen Schweizer oder Deutschen ist das kindisch und nicht ganz nachvollziehbar. Gibt es da Unterschiede zwischen Deutschland, Schweiz und Österreich, zu denen ihr sagt, das können wir so nicht machen, sondern anders?

Jenner: Klar. Es gibt schon Unterschiede. In der Schweiz funktioniert die englische Sprache gut, in Österreich gar nicht und in Deutschland halbe halbe. In Österreich sind Kommunikation und Beziehungen äusserst wichtig. In der Schweiz ist das etwas dezenter der Fall – hier kann sich sein Netzwerk mit guter Fachexpertise und guten Lösungen rascher aufbauen. In Deutschland ist die Kommunikation schon noch etwas klarer, geradliniger. In diesem Punkt ähneln sich die Schweiz und Deutschland. Aber in Deutschland ist es so, dass Sie nicht so einfach auf hähere Ebenen kommen - in Österreich und in der Schweiz ist das einfacher. Diese beiden Länder sind zugänglicher für Newcomer.

Hartinger: Was müsste man machen, um in Deustchland dasselbe zu erreichen?

Jenner: In Deutschland brauchen Sie ein mächtiges Zugpferd, damit Sie Geschäfte machen können. Sie müssen zumindest ein oder zwei gute Kontakte zu wichtigen Influencern haben. Als Startup war es in meinem Fall ganz wichtig einer der Top Brands im Online Business zu gewinnen. Die erste Referenz in Deutschland zu bekommen, das ist die grosse Herausforderung. Obwohl ich Deutsche bin, habe ich nie wieder so hart verhandeln müssen wie damals.

Die Deutschen und Österreicher sagen eher,„probieren wir`s einmal“, die sind ein wenig pragmatischer. In Deutschland muss man extrem viel Beharrlichkeit haben. Das ist der Unterschied. 

Zu den Roundtableteilnehmern

Petra Jenner: Petra Jenner leitet seit Oktober 2011 Microsoft Schweiz; zuvor hatte sie zweieinhalb Jahre lang die Microsoft-Niederlassung in Österreich geführt. Jenner bringt über 20 Jahre an Erfahrung in der IT-Branche mit: Sie war unter anderem in leitender Funktion für international agierende Software-Unternehmen in Zentral- und Nordeuropa tätig, etwa Check Point Software, Informix Software, Sybase und Pivotal Corporation.

Nicolas Berg: Partner beim Venturefonds Redalpine, zuvor mehrfacher Gründer und Journalist.

Reto Hartinger: Gründer der Eventreihe internet-briefing.ch, zuvor Partner von search.ch und Journalist.

Ausschnitte aus dem Gastpost «connex.io in talk with» Microsoft Schweiz CEO Petra Jenner sind auch auf Clack, dem Schweizer Online-Magazin für Frauen erschienen.

It has taken a while until Xing decided to open up its platform by providing an API but it finally happened and we are proud to announce the first seamless integration of Xing into your address book.

After connecting your Xing Account with connex.io we will automatically enrich your existing, connected address books with the data from Xing. We also continuously update your address book if someone changes a detail in their profile on Xing.

connex.io now supports ten different address book types:

• Gmail / Google Apps
• Yahoo! Mail
• Facebook
• Linkedin
• Twitter
• iOS (iPhone, iPad)
• Android
• Mac OS X
• Thunderbird
• and since today Xing

Start optimizing your address book now.

How do you measure how much your users like your product? This is one of the essential question that every founder needs to answer to make the right decisions - to move the product ahead.

In some lean startup related discussion I stumbled accross the idea of asking your users if they were sad if the used product would vanish. As the lean startup is all about validating assumptions based on data and turning them into "validated learnings" this simple way of measuring a user's attachment was an idea that spoke to me. I wanted this for connex.io but our designer Thierry convinced me that we had to adapt the idea for it to work in our context. And we did.

Based on the simple idea outlined we created a small form on which we simply ask our users if they are happy or not. We adapted the question because we feared the original phrasing would scare away users looking for a reliable, thrustworthy system. In our case we felt it was a necessity because people see their address book as very valuable and want to know that it is stored safe and secure.

Based on the reformulated question we started gathering feedback. Around 10% of our active users have provided feedback this way. The ratio of YES and NOs has been within what we expected but the box has allowed users to give feedback that is much more valuable than just a YES or NO. It gives people an easy way to vent their frustration if something went wrong. People seem to click on NO almost instinctively providing us with an opportunity to help them and turn them around.

We mainly use Uservoice to provide our users with help and gather feedback but this box has proven to do better in helping us to reach out to unhappy users.

We were wondering why users click on the button when they do not contact us through a service such as Uservoice? We believe that it is almost effortless to click one of the buttons and that some users probably already feel better simply by clicking.

How does our box work?

The box is simple. A question and two buttons. Although simple almost every user we talk to has noticed it. Once a user clicks YES or NO the click is registered and the user is given the opportunity to expand upon their click.

If expanded or not we are sent an email notifying us about the happy or unhappy user (including the comment if there was one) which allows us to react in near real time if a problem occurs. We can thank the user for their feedback and if a user is unhappy we can ask him what went wrong, what he expected to go differently and how we can help.

Over 50% of these emails to unhappy users get a reply by the user and often they already are halfway back to being happy.

It is a seamless way to get in touch with our users without them having to do more than expressing an emotion and allowing us to provide our users with surprisingly good customer service.

Summing up: This feedback mechanism has allowed us to realize in near real time when something goes wrong for one of our users and we can offer them help and solutions. I can only recommend to every startup to start using a similar mechanism. It is the best way we have found so far to let users initiate contact giving you a reason to reach out to them and build a relationship - wheter the first reaction was positive or negative.

Written by Marcus Kuhn

Startups are en vogue and a lot of people describe themselves as entrepreneurs. But in my book not every young company is a startup... In my mind startups have a scalable and repeatable business model (that isn't proportionally related to how many hours are worked).

Investors put money into startups in the hope of getting back more than 10x their investment. They need that multiple because startups - as described above - are associated with a lot of risk. Commonly it is thought that only 1 or 2 out of 10 startups are a runaway success, 2 to 3 will survive and approximately make back what investors have spent and the rest will die and lose most or all of the money that got invested in them.

With this trend of everything being a startup Zurich has started to position itself as a startup cluster. The eZurich initiative even wants to be Europe's Silicon Valley (Link to a PDF). But is this even realistic?

Clusters are important for startups

Startups seem to thrive in clusters and Silicon Valley is the most well known example for that. By now in and around San Francisco a (web-)entreprenuer can find whatever he needs to create a successful startup:

• Talents
• Money
• First Clients

Nicolas Berg splits these requirements up into 9 preconditions for a startup cluster to be successful:

1. Previously successful founders and startups
2. Internationally acclaimed universities
3. Lively ecosystem
4. Highly qualified immigrants
5. Early stage investors
6. Unbeaurocratic innovation subsidies
7. Regulations and Infrastructure
8. Established companies in the same sector
9. Attractive home market

These are clearly mostly a given in Silicon Valley, but how does it look in Zurich?

Zurich (by MadGeographer)

Zurich is an attractive place for companies. The excellent Universities provide talents, the infrastructure is well maintained and works, public authorities are service oriented and quite quick, laws in Switzerland are stable and politics are rather predictable. On top of that Zurich is a very nice place to live which helps attracting foreign and retaining local talent.

There is a first generation of internet entrepreneurs that had successful exits that is now investing and mentoring. Organizations like the IfJ not only raise awarenes but are literally trainig thousands of students (and others) how to take the plunge and start their own company. The Commision for Technology and Innovation has been supporting innovation for decades. The Technopark in Zurich has spawned a lively ecosystem around it that contains many, many startups (over 284 in Zurich) and many other things entrepreneurs need.

Regulation in Switzerland is reasonable and geared towards common sense in many cases (e.g. Value Added Tax has only to be paid if your company crosses a certain revenue threshold). All these are reasons why Switzerland ranks very high in competitiveness rankings.

So Zurich is doing quite well and that shows in various rankings. But it is not all good:

But all these things literally come with a cost. Living costs in Zurich are extremly high and as a result salaries are very high as well - often too high for a startup to be feasible and competitive in the global competitive landscape.

But we did not want this to stop us and Zurich has treated us well. We have found funding, we found amazing employees here, the Technopark has been an excellent starting point... We would have loved to completely build our company here. But Swiss immigration made that impossible. The main reason why my co-founder and the other programmers in our company are not working from Zurich, why we had to go the way of a virtual team, is the barriers put in place to get a work permit for Non-EU citizens.

Last week a Blog post by Moritz Zumbühl stired up a controversy (that even got picked up by the Swiss Daily Newspaper Tages Anzeiger). In the Blog post he outlines how he tried to found a startup with a "foreign national" that had been pursuing a doctorate at ETH. The odessey to get Emre Sarigol a work permit had lasted 15 months cost thousands of Swiss Francs and yielded nothing but frustration.

He has now written a letter to the mayor of Zurich. We wholeheartedly agree with this letter and everything it states and call upon every startup in Zurich to sign it.

Our experience in getting a Swiss work visa for Ata has been different. We gave up much earlier. From what I had heard from other founders and what experts told me it was neither within our budget nor within our schedule to get a work permit. We had to work around this problem and did so by becoming a virtual team that is working in various places. We are now building our tech team in the Ukraine. As a result of these difficulties we are now employing people outside of Switzerland so we can have our tech team in one place.

So what?

I do not think that Zurich is an important startup cluster yet - but it certainly has potential. A lot of things have been done right and an attractive environment for companies - young and old - has been created. It is now up to entrepreneurs, investors and unfortunatley also regulators to get the last hurdles out of the way.

If we can find the means to get these stopgaps out of the way there is nothing that will stop Zurich from becoming a great place to start a company with a scalable and repeatable business model. That it will be able to compete with Silicon Valley I doubt though. Just Zurich is a bit small for that.

Yesterday Tyler Nichols published an article on his experiences with offering a Freemium product and why he is not going to use the Freemium business model anymore. This stirred up quite a discussion on Hacker News in which Paul Graham stated that Tyler's conclusion is wrong and that it only matters how many paying customers you end up with. And I agree with that.

Freemium

Freemium is a business model in which a substantial part of the product is given away for free to attract users. The free product it often either restricted in functionality or limits on usage are imposed. The free product is a marketing strategy with the goal to attract a large number of users and in the end more paying users than could be attracted without the free version.

The caveat is that in most cases only a very small percentage of users converts to paying "Premium" users. This means a relatively small portion of the userbase needs to cover development, operating expenses and profits.

Freemium and connex.io

At connex.io we are not using the freemium business model. Some of our reasons overlap with Tyler's (i.e. support costs) but in essence we are not using Freemium because we do not believe it will work for our product.

To offer connex.io as a freemium product we would need to limit our free product's functionality (for-pay connectors, sync-back will be charged, no automatic deduplication etc.) or impose limits on the usage (only a few connectors, number of contacts, number of syncs etc.).

We believe that both kinds of limitations will lead to a sub-par user experience and therefore lead to lower conversions and an overall lower number of paying users.

Free trial

But we do see the attraction a free product has and therefore offer a free, unrestricted 60 day trial of our product. At the end of the trial a user either needs to start paying or their account is getting suspended. We have 60 days to convince them that they cannot live without our service.

Last year we started a tradition with a series (Part 1, Part 2 & Part 3) of posts that reviewed our first year as a company. The second year just ended and it is time to continue the tradition.

2011 was a good year for connex.io - we made quite a bit of progress. But as every entrepreneurial endevaour there were ups and downs.

The year started with a shakeup as our head of marketing left our team only days after having joined it. We were not able to make the team work and that threw us back quite a bi t. But we had Michael, our first intern, who was there to pick up the pieces and made it work. While growing the team was one of the most difficult tasks of the last year - especially because we were on a very tight budget - we had great people join our team and help us out. One of those being Nina who joined our team this December and is leading our marketing efforts.

In February we also started talking about what we had done so far and introduced the Syncing Protocol that Ata developed and released a little bit of software as open source.

Even though our first design had been working okay it definitely was neither the pretiest nor the most functional. That is why we decided to redesign our solution and we are very happy with the result.

Also in March we got accepted into KTI, a Swiss certification for startups, and Marcus got selected as a venture leader in Switzerland - which came with a trip to Boston in June. But before going to Boston we struggled "a little" to get our App into the Appstore.

Finally, after 15 months, Ata and Marcus saw each other again in Dubai in July. It was a productive three days and two features got finished those three days and released shortly thereafter. People could now also see their contacts within our webapp. And we removed useless contacts from their address book automatically keeping it clean and tidy.

Techrunch Disrupt in San Francisco

Over the three month period of July, August and September we hunkered down and whipped our product in shape first for Techrunch Disrupt in San Francisco where we presented it to individuals off stage and later for our Launchparty.

Our Launchparty (by Jan Rothenberger)

We organized a big event together with 5 other startups and opened up our registration on September 30th.

After the launch we recovered a little but went back to listening to our customers and learned things that we did not understand before. And those learnings will be a big part of what we will be working on in 2012. 

Finally we got recognized as a Top100 Startup in Switzerland towards the end of the year and finally introduced payments and started monetizing our product.

I want to give all those that helped us make things happen in 2011 a shout out: Thanks Michael, Jillian, Sophie, Anton, Christopher, Zubin & Nina.

We also had a few external contributers that did exceptional work:

Thierry - our designer - just did fabulous work and helped a lot in making our service into something better. His help goes way further than simply design.

Robin - our iOS dev - helped in getting us of the ground with iOS quickly. We could not have done it without him.

The report card

We set audacious goals when writing this post a year ago and now is the time to get our report card.

1. We want to start asking money for our service and get 1,000 paying users until the end of the year.

We started asking for money and we have a handful of paying customers. Unexpected difficulties slowed down our development and caused payments to only get introduced in December 2011.

2. We want to broaden the service we offer and support at least 15 devices or services by the end of the year so we are able to fulfill the needs of most users.

We did broaden our service and support 8 different devices and services today. Those are: iOS, Mac OS X, Android, Gmail, Facebook, LinkedIn, Thunderbird & vCards. Support for Yahoo! Mail, Windows Live Mail and Outlook is in the pipeline.

While we did not get to the 15 devices and services we aimed for we did get very close to a state where we can fulfill the needs of most users and should take that final leap with the devices & services that currently are in the pipeline.

3. We want to get noticed. Articles in major tech blogs and newspapers are what we aim for.

This is the goal where we failed most. While we got a mention here and there - especially in startup focused media - we haven't gotten to the amount of coverage we envisioned a year ago. The importance of coverage hasn't reduced though and that is why we are working hard on making it happen. With the addition of Nina to our team we have someone dedicated to this and we are confident to make big strides in this area soon.

Although we did quite well in 2011 but we did not reach our own goals. We will have to do better in 2012 and we intend to do so by applying our learnings and focusing even more on the things that matter.

Our goals for 2012

Keeping in sync with last year we have some big ambitions for this year.

1. We want 12'000 paying users by the end of the year.
2. We want to grow our team to 6 or 7 people. Slightly heavy on the development end.
3. We want to increase our public profile and get recognized for our service.

In a year we will see how far we got.

It took some time to close the «deal» but in the end it went quickly. connex.io hired me as the new CMO and I started a few days ago.

Before agreeing to start Marcus and I discussed for a few weeks how to approach this position and if I am the right person for the job. For good cause: Working at a start-up not only demands an «entrepreneurial mindset» but as the team is often very small and working together closely personal chemistry and a cultural fit is even more important than it normally is. Furthermore in the early-stage phase that connex.io still is in everybody must be flexible and willing to carry more than just their tasks because there will be more tasks and functions than people.

Even during that application process Marcus already started to challenge me with several tasks and after quite a few meetings and Skype calls about expectations, responsibilities, compensation and participation we closed the deal and I happily agreed to join the (ad)venture and to move from Vienna to Zurich.

So we had a meeting of the minds. But a startup still needs a good product and an attractive market to succeed (even if a perfect team with a mediocre product has better chances to survive than a poor team with a great business idea). After my «due diligence» of connex.io I was happy to find both: a highly skilled, smart and humorous founder team - Marcus and Ata - and a product that is solving the «address book challenge» better than some big names that have been struggling for a while.

But those are not the only reasons why I am excited to join connex.io, there are more: Over the last few years I worked as a journalist and co-founded multiple classic media, online media and Internet startups. I started in online journalism when it was still seen as a «copy & paste» job that was not adding value. How times change! Today online media is standing at least on equal footing with classical media and the trend is clear. Those early days in online journalism are one of the things that will help me with the tasks ahead - tasks that are as diverse as:

• Knowing how to tell stories that make the various channels work and that journalists actually want to write about.
• Optimizing conversions so we turn more of our visitors into happy users.
• Optimizing our website so it can be found (SEO).
• Social Media Marketing and community building.

In the end I look forward to joining a start-up that is located in an attractive environment (Zurich) and aims for a global market. I also look forward to the talks with existing and future users as well as media and partners and want to listen to their feedback and  exchange ideas so we can improve connex.io together..

Please do not hesitate to contact me, I want to hear from you. You can reach me by sending an email to nina@connex.io or just leave a comment here.

Almost one year after adding our first user (thanks Andi!) to our Beta version and after a year of continuous improvements we are finally flipping the switch: connex.io is becoming a business.

We are introducing payment plans.

Free for 60 days

A full version of connex.io will remain free for 60 days for everyone. This way people can give connex.io a spin and kick the tires without having to pay upfront.

After the 60 day trial there are two plans to choose from:

• A monthly plan at USD 5 or
• A yearly plan at USD 50

With both these plans (and the trial) there are no usage restrictions. User's can:

• Upload an unlimited number of contacts
• Connect an unlimited number of address books

Existing users

connex.io was free to use up until today.

Existing users:

• That signed up before September 30th 2011 will get a free account for life. We were very happy and thankful to see all those early adopters using our solution - they provided us with crucial feedback. As a thank you we will provide all of them with a free account for life.
• That signed up on or after September 30th 2011 will enter the 60 day trial period today (those using a promotional code when they signed up will get their bonus added from today).

New users signing up will enter the 60 day trial as soon as they create their account.

At this time we want to thank everybody who has supported us over the last year with feedback, moral support or anything else. It has been an exciting year for us and we are eager to keep pushing forward. Thanks!

We are looking for two developers to help us improve and scale connex.io:

1. Core developer - To continue the development of our Sync Server and related components as well as help in improving the data quality of the contacts stored in our user's address books. Get more details.
2. Frontend Developer - To reinvent our Web Frontend, improve the overall User Experience and help with the development of our plugins. Get more details.

We are looking for the most talented hackers that want to make a difference because we need help to:

• Implement new features such as:
  • A dynamic map of a user's contacts.
  • The ability to edit contacts.
  • Support for new devices & services.
  • Real-time sync
• Improve our User Experience
• Improve our Syncing
• Improve our Deduplication
• Improve the quality of our user's contact data

We believe that our product is the base on which we build our company. We have created a good base and are now ready - maybe together with you - to move ahead quickly. We are in a fast paced market and our competition is not asleep.

A few things about working at connex.io

• You will be challenged to work on hard problems such as syncing contacts among many different platforms or deduplicating contacts that describe the same person only based on fuzzy information. To read a little about how we approached these problems so far take a look at this blog post from earlier this year.
• You work with a dedicated, talented and inspiring team that is relentlessly pursuing the vision behind connex.io. You will be an integral part of that team. It is much more fun to work in an environment where one is understood but also challenged. We strive to create such an environment.
• Have an impact immediately. You will be working on code that affects our users from Day One. To read a little about how it is to work for connex.io take a look at this blog post (written by one of our interns).
• You will be responsible for your own work. You will be able to take over parts of the system and be responsible for them. Together with Ata or Marcus you will help decide where we go and what we do.
• You will be working with cutting edge technology. Our stack consists of Tornado, Redis and Cassandra among others. And we are continuously evaluating new things to see if they can move us ahead. One thing we did in this regard was improving the Python implementation of Google's Protocolbuffers which we open sourced.
• You will be deciding what you work with. Linux or Mac OS X, Laptop or Desktop, none, one or two external screens? It is up to you. Together we will assemble the setup that you want. On top of that you work in excellent offices that have everything you need.

Core Developer

Our solution requires a time critical, accurately coordinated dance of multiple distributed services that run in parallel. To import and export the contact data from external devices and services efficiently we use asynchronous I/O to handle many concurrent connections. The stateless design of our own connex.io Contact Sync Protocol as well as the statelessness of other internal services enables us to not lose data in the case of failure and to recover quickly from it. To store the data reliably we use a a distributed Cassandra database which is replicated automatically.

You are a passionate hacker who's interest in programming goes beyond just a job. You want to solve hard problems and see how your solution is used by many. You:

• Are a python hacker with multiple years of experience in Python development
• Have a good understanding of web applications and network security
• Have a working knowledge of algorithms and data structures
• Have experience in working with REST APIs and actually designing them

It is a bonus if:

• You have worked with Cassandra

Frontend Developer

We strongyl believe that rendering templates on the server side is a thing of the past. In the future web apps will have their UI written entirely in Javascript and talk with REST services to exchange data between the client and the server. But you know that because you have already implemented an app using a Javascript MVC framework.

You are at the forefront of development in web technologies? You:

• Have extensive Javascript experience
• Are well versed in Web technologies (caching, cookies etc.)
• Know how to protect against web security issues such as XSS, XSRF etc.
• You know Python

It is a bonus if:

• You have experience in developing Smartphone Applications

Get in Touch

If you feel you are the right person for one of these jobs lets talk. Contact us at marcus@connex.io.