With their Founders League show, the entrepreneurs want to promote young founders.
Dusseldorf The start-up show “The Lion’s Den” has competition. The entrepreneurs Johannes Kliesch and Marcus Diekmann also want to create a platform for young founders with their new format “Founders League”. However, the concept differs significantly from the popular program of the TV channel Vox.
This is how Founders League should be broadcast live. However, not on television, but in streaming via the LinkedIn career platform, as the initiators announced in an interview with the Handelsblatt. The first broadcast is scheduled for June 1st.
“We want to offer talented start-ups a stage on which they can present themselves to potential investors, customers, but also employees,” explains Kliesch, founder and CEO of the e-commerce company Snocks. “We want to support the young entrepreneurs in their growth, I see great potential there,” says Kliesch.
Around 100 guests will be present in the studio. The initiators also expect more than 100,000 viewers via LinkedIn. They can use the platform to give the start-up founders real-time feedback on their ideas and business plans.
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That is also the biggest difference to the “Lion’s Den”: The spectators should be actively involved. In Founders League, not only the jurors can invest in the start-ups. The spectators and external investors can also get involved in a kind of crowdfunding the young companies to participate in. In this way, the organizers want to significantly increase the potential for fresh capital.
The entrepreneurs moderate the show themselves
Kliesch and Diekmann moderate the program themselves. They are supplemented by a changing female juror. Five to six episodes per year are planned, which will be available on YouTube after the live broadcast.
Start-ups can now apply to participate via the Founders League website. Six different start-up ideas are to be presented and evaluated in each episode.
“We want to make the topic of founding a company in Germany even more visible and encourage young people to realize their dream and start a company,” says Marcus Diekmann, who himself has founded several companies and has companies such as Rose Bikes and Peek & Cloppenburg at the digitization advises. Most recently, he set up a job exchange for refugees from Ukraine with partners.
Johannes Kliesch founded the company Snocks, an online shop for socks and underwear, together with his business partner Felix Bauer in 2016. Last year, the company made sales of over 30 million euros – without investors. Finally, a few weeks ago, the private equity company Cathay Capital got involved with an amount in the double-digit millions for the international expansion.
>> Read here: Become a millionaire with socks – This is how the Snocks founders want to expand worldwide
Kliesch and Diekmann not only want to be a unique platform for the founders presented, they also see themselves as mentors. Experience has shown that 90 percent of all start-ups fail. “So many young founders contact me and ask for support,” reports Kliesch. “With the Founders League we can give them business know-how and valuable feedback.”
“With us, founders do not appear as petitioners”
In order to raise the Founders League project professionally, Kliesch and Diekmann founded their own production company. Julian Rauch, an expert in content marketing and film production who works for the backpack manufacturer Got Bag, will be the managing director. Benjamin Diedering, founder and CEO of BDX Media, is responsible for producing the individual episodes. All four have a financial stake in the company.
It is important to the initiators that the young founders feel that they are being taken seriously on the show. “I see so often that founders are treated downright by potential investors at start-up castings,” says Diekmann. “They don’t come across as petitioners with us,” he promises, “we want to talk to them as equals.”
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