Branding isn’t just about a name and a nice logo. At least, it shouldn’t be. Many founders believe branding is primarily about choosing a catchy name and picking out colors and fonts. But true branding runs deeper — it’s a strategic process that, when done right, creates alignment,
If you are interested in what technological developments we will see in the next ten to thirty years and what might be relevant for your own life, career, investment decisions or new start-up ideas, you can't ignore Ray Kurzweil and his books. In his latest book ‘The Singularity
There's no doubt about it - things could have been better. My co-founder Florian and I are standing in an empty office, the workstations are empty and the only thing we have left are two phones. It's sometime in the fall of 2014 and yesterday we
Scientists and engineers who found a company have a great advantage: they understand their product, the technology and the underlying research in depth. But what is initially a huge advantage can later become a challenge if founders with a research or engineering background (R&D founders) cannot escape the
Introduction Research is all about the search for knowledge and insight. Many PhD students in the natural sciences believe that they need an MBA or years of experience in industry to successfully start a company. But in my opinion, this is not true: scientists inherently bring a variety of skills
In 2010, I decided not to pursue an academic career, but to become an entrepreneur. And I hope that more academics, PhD students and postdocs will at least seriously consider this career path. However, this blog post is not intended to be a blunt call to action for prospective science
In 2018, I decided to call my blog "Try Fail Learn Repeat". Back then, the use of terms such as "F***-up Nights", "Fail fast" and similar terms was still largely limited to the startup ecosystem and was only slowly finding its way into
One thing I've missed in my 10+ years of building Labforward is having enough time to reflect. I started this blog in 2018 to condense and structure a few experiences while writing. However, there was so much to do in 2019 and 2020 that blogging took a back
Did you already make the resolution to more read in 2019, but still have no idea what to read? Here my reading list of non-fiction books for 2019. Maybe it contains some interesting reads for you as well. I usually chose pretty spontaneously what I wanted to read next. But
The best way to understand Cal Newport’s concept of “Deep Work”, is to what “shallow work” looks like. Shallow work is characterized by checking your email and social media all the time, clicking through news websites, days full of meetings, being responsive to every request. In short: It is
Finding the right co-founder for a start-up is hard enough. The functioning of a partnership depends essentially on with how much equity the co-founder is involved in it. Because after all, it is the ownership of equity that matters to a founder. When we founded labfolder, we were three co-founders.
Most people are still sceptical about Blockchain, and to them, the talk about the "Blockchain Revolution" or "the new Internet" is just a means to further hype cryptocurrencies. However, laboratories, research and development, pharma, chemistry and biotech should look into the topic, because the technology of