#16 Robert Wetzker, Founder & CEO of Aklamio | Making It Real Podcast with Jan Brinckmann

Robert Wetzker is the Founder & CEO of Aklamio. Founded in 2011, Aklamio has become Europe’s most successful referral marketing solution, trusted by companies such as Virgin Media, Vodafone, PayPal, Endesa, o2, and over 300 international brands. Aklamio believes that a company’s best assets are its customers, their networks, and the power of incentive marketing. Their mission is to empower brands to succeed in a customer-centric world by building the world’s #1 platform for customer incentivization. Their 80+ employees work in our HQ in Berlin and London, with teams in Madrid and Paris. Aklamio was ranked 2nd fastest growing technology startup in Germany (Financial Times, Europe’s 1000 Fastest Growing Companies, 2019) and continues to expand internationally. Robert has a background in engineering. Prior to founding Aklamio, he led the research team at TU Berlin’s Competence Center for Information Retrieval and Machine Learning.  Robert Wetzker, Founder & CEO of Aklamio | Making It Real Podcast with Jan Brinckmann | Episode #16 00:00 What's your personal journey into the entrepreneurship space? 01:32 From a researcher to starting a company - how did it come about? 03:49 How did you take the first steps to build your product? 06:30 How did you get in touch with your first customers? 08:49 Doing sales as a founder 11:12 When is the right time to start contacting your target customers? 12:35 What's the best way to reach out to people when you have nothing to show for yet? 14:52 How many customers do you need to determine a common base for a scalable product? 17:23 How can technically strong people be a sales-driven CEO and find a specialized sales person? 20:01 What are your core lessons learned in the process from doing the first sales to building Aklamio as an impactful company? 24:08 How to approach internationalization 26:14 Should you start with one country manager first or build a small team early on? 30:46 For people looking into referral marketing, what are the core lessons learned that you can share? 33:48 Besides the size of incentives, what are other components of a successful referral campaign? 36:39 What's next for Aklamio? 38:54 What is your core advice for people who want to make it real?