#15 Michael Brehm, Founder & MD of i2x | Making It Real Podcast with Jan Brinckmann

Michael Brehm is the Founder & Managing Director of i2x who helps sales and customer support agents to excel at their job by providing the most intuitive, productive and personally tailored learning to improve each individual’s skill-set. Prior to i2x, Michael has run and founded multiple internationally successful companies in the last 15 years. His last company, Rebate Networks, was an e-commerce and daily deals network. He also was Executive Director & Investor at VZnet Netzwerke Ltd. (schülerVZ, studiVZ, meinVZ). Apart from building companies himself, Michael also enjoys supporting founders as a Partner of Redstone, a Berlin-based VC firm managing multiple corporate venture funds through their unique VC-as-a-Service approach.  More about i2x: https://i2x.ai More about Redstone: https://www.redstone.vc Michael Brehm, Founder & MD of i2x | Making It Real Podcast with Jan Brinckmann | Episode #15 00:00 What's your personal story into the entrepreneurship domain? 03:46 The studiVZ success story: Why did you decide to take on the challenge to battle Facebook? 07:59 How did you meet your co-founders? 10:01 What was the game plan of studiVZ having huge competition like Facebook? 13:36 Do you have to put in an incredible amount of hours to get your venture going in the beginning? 18:15 Painting schools pink as a marketing hack for schülerVZ 19:29 Getting users for a consumer app 23:01 Core mistakes you see in other ventures 28:33 After having launched Rebate Networks and a VC, how did you determine the opportunity for i2x? 31:59 Development of i2x 34:25 How can you finance a technology venture before revenues? 38:39 Convincing potential customers to sign a letter of intent 41:13 Passion, resilience and timing 43:44 How can you judge if it's the right timing for your product? 46:17 What do you personally enjoy the most in entrepreneurship?