#22 David Nothacker, CEO & Co-Founder of sennder | Making It Real Podcast with Jan Brinckmann

David Nothacker is co-founder of Europe’s leading digital freight-forwarder platform, Sennder. The Berlin-based unicorn has recently raised an additional $80 million in funding at over $1 billion in valuation and will use this funding to expand into new regions. David started Sennder 1.0 as an MBA graduate but failed, as his co-founder left him five minutes after signing the investors term sheet. After overcoming this difficulty and setting a clear vision with new co-founders, he managed to turn the company into a unicorn with a team of 800 employees. If you want to find out more about how to excel in #winnertakesitall markets, whether it is a good idea to exit a built-up venture and how to build effective teams, then listen to the full episode! https://www.linkedin.com/in/janbrinckmann https://www.linkedin.com/in/janbrinckmann https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-nothacker https://www.sennder.com 0:00 Introduction 1:12 What is sennder? 2:44 All about the numbers: employees, revenue expectations, valuation of sennder 4:06 How David started sennder 7:40 What is harder to get as a platform business - demand or supply? 11:02 How to find co-founders and how working together works best 16:04 What David thinks about having luck as an entrepreneur and his exit strategy 20:19 Lessons learned on how to grow faster than the competition 23:20 How to onboard talent in a fast growing company (from 200 to 800 employees in one year!) 26:14 Organizing digital teams and sharing the culture 28:31 Quick-fire round: favorite activity | method to stay productive | personal hero 32:14 Outro