Edial Dekker on Hustling in Berlin
The original interview was recorded in October 2013, while Edial was still at GetYourGuide in Berlin. As of mid-March 2014 he’s been helping Eventbrite in San Francisco on their product team.
Edial: My name is Edial Dekker, I’m the cofounder of two companies here in Berlin. I started a design studio first, when I moved to Berlin. I’m originally from Amsterdam. I moved here with 3 friends and we had an interactive design studio for three years, very much focused on screen design. And then we started another company called Gidsy, together with my brother and Philipp, a friend of ours. We did that for 1.5 years, 2 years. And recently, 6 months ago, we got acquired by another company. The company is called GetYourGuide and I have been focusing on all their mobile efforts.
Gidsy founders: Floris, Edial & Philipp - Photo credit: wired.co.uk
Citybeat: You’re Dutch, right?
Edial: Yes, I’m originally from Amsterdam where I studied New Media and when I graduated, I immediately moved here.
Citybeat: Why did you guys decide to move to Berlin ?
Edial: So we had been traveling through Europe for a bit and we knew the SoundCloud guys pretty well. SoundCloud was like 10 people then. And we went to their office and they had this rooftop terrace with epic parties. It seemed pretty easy. It seemed like a lot of people were creating their own universe here. That was really appealing to us because we didn’t really know what we wanted to do and we didn’t have any money. And Berlin is pretty cheap. So we thought why not start from scratch and reinvent what we are doing like personally and create a new story about what we want to do. Berlin sounded like a pretty good place for that. Turned out to be a good choice I think.
Citybeat: Was there a lot of demand for designers at the time ?
Edial: Not really actually. It got a little bit better, but when we joined… There was a design culture for sure but mostly focused on typography, graphic design and print design. And we were screen designers. So it was a little tricky to be honest. We wouldn’t find many clients in Berlin so we actually had a lot of dutch clients. We also had some international ones, like a Y Combinator startup, we also did some work for Etsy, for Nokia and some bigger companies, but it’s difficult to depend on local clients. I think it’s impossible really. You have to compete with so many people. And we were really small and we wanted to stay really small. It doesn’t really work as an agency. At some point you have to scale up, because you cannot take huge clients if you don’t have the team. And we really wanted to stay small. We had a lot of freelancers working for us, and they would come in and leave. And we didn’t really like this idea because you build something for a client, you finish it up and you leave… we didn’t like that. We wanted to really own a product, optimize it. There’s a lot of stuff you want to think about.
But we also did a lot of side projects. Always. All the money we earned, we immediately spent on our own projects. We did a lot of data visualization stuff, a big mapping project, we started a book which we unfortunately never finished but we had a lot of drafts and a lot of visualizations. And then we organized a big conference here.
Citybeat: How did you transition to Gidsy? Did Berlin’s environment play a role in this?
Edial: When we moved here there were few startups. But after 2.5, 3 years, there were a lot more startups. We really like this idea of working for your own thing. And we knew some investors. And we had a lot of friends who were working in startups. We always knew we wanted to do a startup. We were just waiting for the right idea and team. And everything came together really fast. In a month, we had a team ready.
Citybeat: Was Gidsy originally a side project?
Edial: No. We immediately said “this is going to be a serious project”. We wrapped up all our clients, went on a short vacation and came back and started full-time.
Citybeat: You guys basically bootstrapped Gidsy from Berlin?
Edial: We were in a good spot there, when it comes to investment and other stuff. Airbnb was hitting off, and we were working on a similar model. There were a lot of investors and we knew all the right people already. We had a prototype and then we showed it around and things went pretty fast. At the beginning we threw in our own money and then it was a gradual flow into an investment which was really helpful.
Citybeat: How fast did Gidsy take off?
Edial: It took a while. We only had some significant traffic after 8 or 10 months. Even then, it was really challenging. We never really nailed the model. We had some kind of progress but it wasn’t really enough to be honest.
Citybeat: Did you consider quitting?
Edial: Well, no. It was a mistake I think. We should have been much more open on changing. We really believed in Gidsy. Like REALLY. It was very strong but I think we should have moved to something different earlier. And we did in the end but it took us way too long. We didn’t feel this pressure. You raise money, first half-year you think you’re invincible. You raised for 1.5 years - after 6 months you think “Are we on track? Well, we’re probably able to raise money.” Because you have investors and they all back you. After one year you start freaking out a little bit and “I should start thinking about investment. And 3 months later, “Oh my god, we’re running out of money”. I think its a cycle a lot of first-time entrepreneurs go through. We were not first-time entrepreneurs but the startup is super different from an agency.
Citybeat: Gidsy was mostly peer-to-peer. Did you guys take a cut on transactions?
Edial: Yeah it’s very similar to a lot of peer-to-peer marketplaces. We took a small cut on every successful transaction.
Citybeat: Was that business model successful?
Edial: The business model is great since the success is shared. Someone booking an activity is also a success for us. You have the same goal which is great. Our biggest thing was the chicken and egg problem. You need demand, you need supply. You need both to support each other. For us, getting the supply was difficult. Getting people to organize things… There was a very high barrier. There were a lot of semi-professionals that were doing things. And that was a big thing that we changed by getting a Sales team. And that went really well, but it was different from the peer-to-peer thing so that was a transition that we made and then we became much more similar to GetYourGuide who was not focused on individuals. So that was interesting because we switched our model towards GetYourGuide.
Citybeat: How did they [GetYourGuide] approach you?
Edial: We knew them already. We had an investor that’s really close to them. He’s not an investor in GetYourGuide actually, but he knew them very well.
Citybeat: So the fact that you were in Berlin played a big role in that acquisition?
Edial: Yes. Also in everything, in raising money, in finding talent. We had an extremely talented team. We had a really epic team.
Citybeat: So you arrive in Berlin, how do you go about connecting with people and getting to that sweet spot where you know everybody you need to know?
Edial: Events was always a big thing for us. We already did a lot of hackathons in Amsterdam. We did a Music Hack Day, Open Government Hack Day. That was a big thing so we started organizing things here. We did a Fail Conference and attended some meetups and spoke at conferences. We also did some very specific design things. We found some audience because there were not so many companies focusing on these aspects only. That really helped us.
Citybeat: Were all your people already in Berlin or did you have to pull them from other places?
Edial: Most people were already in Berlin. When at Gidsy, we hired a lot of people from outside Berlin too. That’s also great about Berlin it’s like a magnet and a lot of people are willing to move here. It’s a lot more difficult to convince someone to go to London with a family. It’s really tough there: high prices, difficult to live. In Berlin, everyone has a higher standard of living. That’s a big difference, I think, and that helps Berlin companies attract top talent. We just got a guy that joined today: super-senior guy from San Francisco. These are the guys you really want to work with because they have the experience. I see Berlin as a pyramid. At the top you have the companies that are very big. They are extremely important. The more of these you have and the higher the pyramid gets, the longer the ends become. So you have the top, better, bigger, more successful and then everything else also becomes bigger: all the knowledge, the money, the people, everything. That’s really helpful. It just takes time. I think we are in a good spot. Everything increased: the amount of shit startups, the amount of good startups. The big ones became bigger and bigger. It just takes time and getting acceleration from outside Germany and outside Europe is great.
Citybeat: You guys were one of the few Berlin startups that were acquired. It’s a lot less common in Europe that in Silicon Valley, for example. Especially within Berlin. You were a Berlin company acquired by another Berlin company. It’s pretty unique. Have you opened the path to other companies being acquired?
Edial: We were in the same batch as Amen. We were exactly like them. We had similar investors, we were super close. They had the same trajectory and they also got acquired by a Berlin company. I think its the same as raising money from the US, it’s really difficult. We tried and had some angel investors but that was it. The same thing goes through with acquisitions because we don’t have those relations and it takes a long time to build up. I heard this from many companies actually.
Citybeat: Do you see more money coming through Berlin?
Edial: Yes definitely. There are definitely more angels. A lot of guys who had an exit and now have a lot of money or maybe sold some stock. There’s definitely more money and bigger money. There is Sequoia and others. They have nothing to do here, there’s only a handful of company.
Citybeat: Do you think its easier to get spotted because there’s less companies?
Edial: I don’t know. I think there’s plenty of angels here which is okay. We were definitely at the mid of the hype and that kind of disappeared so I think the investments are happening a bit later. We for example hadn’t even launched when we raised money, and Amen was the same. I think that’s kind of changing. People are a little more hesitant.
Citybeat: Europe in general seems to be slightly more pragmatic and more real about things than some of the investors in the US who really bet on things. They want to see what’s going to happen in terms of traction. Did you guys feel that?
Edial: We were at seed stage. Our investors were always kind of US-style. They would say “We operate like US investors. We have standards.”. It depends, there are a lot of German investors too that have completely different things. They have their own standards. That’s a big thing in Europe: the standardization. It’s really missing in terms of financial frameworks, term sheets, reporting, a lot of different things.
Citybeat: Can you tell us a bit about your life in Berlin: where you live, where’s your office?
Edial: Our office used to be here (in Kreuzberg) - the Gidsy office. Now our office is in Prenzlauer Berg and I live in Neukölln. It’s really nice there, a lot of young people. I live near the airport. It’s really fun, we have a little garden there.
Tempelhof Airport - Photo credit: foursquare
Citybeat: Any places to recommend there? Bars, restaurants, your favorite places?
Edial: I can give you some addresses. There’s Herrfurthstraße, it’s a street that goes to the airport. There are a few restaurants there. There’s a good Italian place there that’s really nice, they have good fish on Monday. Weisestrasse is where all the bars are.
Citybeat: Do you still have time to go out and party in Berlin?
Edial: I never partied a lot. But there’s a big music scene which is awesome. Berghain, Kater Holzig. There are so many crazy places. There’s a great nightlife here. Incomparable.
Kater Holzig - Photo credit: berlin-enjoy.com
Citybeat: Is there anything you don’t like about Berlin?
Edial: Yeah for sure. A lot of things are very temporary: people, jobs… You ask anyone “Will you stay here forever?” and no one will answer that question with “Yes”.
Citybeat: Can you answer this question?
Edial: No, I also wouldn’t say yes. And that sucks, I think. Because everyone is here for a goal and everyone is young, everyone is white. If ask my friends in Amsterdam, they’ll answer “Yeah sure, I’ll stay here.”.
Citybeat: Prenzlauer Berg for example is very different from where you live? There’s more family stuff going on. Do you think that’s a form of commitment?
Edial: Yes, maybe. These are people who also have steady jobs. They’re not like entrepreneurs or startup people. It happens but not so much.
There’s also a huge scene of people doing nothing. That’s terrible. They fall in this cycle of parties every night and not paying for anything, living really cheap, living on savings and not having to work. Sometimes, I like that about cities like New York where you die if you’re out of money. It’s so hard! Your lifestyle is so shit if you don’t have any money. Whereas Berlin is completely affordable if you don’t have any money. You can live on 100 euros per month for food pretty easily.
Sometimes I don’t like this part about Berlin. I like that it’s cheap but it also creates this laziness and I don’t think it’s really healthy if you’re young and you’re already lazy.
Citybeat: You’ve been working on a travel startups - what drove that? Has working on something you really care about shaped your decisions?
Edial: It’s good to have goals. I don’t look down to people who have money as a goal, it’s just not my goal. I think it’s important. It has to get you somewhere. I really like this idea of companies who want to last 100 years. Who does this these days? That’s really inspiring.
Citybeat: Do you think you’ll take another chance at it?
Edial: Yes for sure! I don’t know when but I’m definitely not done yet.