Dusseldorf Today at Handelsblatt Mindshift we’re talking to Verena Hubertz: In 2014, she founded the well-known and award-winning cooking app Kitchen Stories in Berlin. An online platform with foolproof step-by-step recipes and video instructions for cooking at home.
When Hubertz and her co-founder Mengting Gao had to pitch the idea to potential investors, nobody took it seriously. “When asked, ‘How do you do this better than Dr. Oetker or Gruner + Jahr or Pro Sieben? ‘, And it doesn’t speak for you at first, I don’t know how the pitch could have been better. “
When she thinks back today, Hubertz says quite openly: “I wouldn’t have invested in us at the time either.” The idea lived more from soft factors such as usability and design and less from the Excel sheet with a predicted super margin or fast scaling. “We were 25, just came from university and just wanted to be the most beautiful cooking app.”
But the two tech founders were not discouraged. They financed their idea out of their own pocket and hit a nerve. Today the food app is available in 150 countries and has been downloaded more than 21 million times. Even Apple boss Tim Cook is a fan and visited the start-up four years ago to bake pancakes with the women.
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At the end of 2017, the Bosch subsidiary BSH, which sells household appliances from Bosch, Siemens and Neff, bought 65 percent of the shares. The purchase price is not known. The company value was estimated at 20 to 25 million euros. Today, Verena Hubertz and her co-founder still hold 25.1 percent of the company and Kitchen Stories is one of the most successful German start-ups.
I also said that if it doesn’t work out, I’m not back at Kitchen Stories. Because I think it is very, very important that you think about yourself in life in a self-determined way: Am I in the right place at the right time with the right skills? Verena Hubertz
With the money, the 33-year-old young entrepreneur could also have a good time – instead, Hubertz will quit her job as CEO at the end of 2020 and move back home with her parents. “So I was able to take the good lunch with me, which was freshly cooked every day,” says Hubertz in the new issue of Handelsblatt Mindshift and laughs.
Member of the Bundestag instead of the start-up CEO
In September she wants to join the Bundestag for the SPD in the Trier constituency. “That was an extremely difficult decision, because there are two hearts that beat in my chest,” says Hubertz. “But I was very worried about the party.” She has been a member of the SPD for eleven years.
She does not think that it is a bad signal for female founders when a role model like Verena Hubertz turns her back on business: “I definitely want a lot more female leaders and founders in business. But I believe that I can create the framework for this in politics. “
In addition, the Bundestag could definitely use more diversity. “Unfortunately we are not a reflection of society. We are too academic, we have too many lawyers, we are too male, and the average age is 49.6 years. “
“I definitely want to be true to myself. But I am well aware that you cannot vote in a parliamentary group every time you like it. ” Verena Hubertz
The first thing the former acolyte wants to tackle if it works with her entry into the Berlin parliament: “On the one hand, the issue of Future Fund 2.0, because it is important that we do something for both the pension and the start-up ecosystem.
And specifically for my constituency, that we get an ICE again. We all want that we no longer fly and switch to the train. But when I drive from Trier to Berlin, it’s a good seven and a half hours, and it just has to get better. “
What helped Verena Hubertz, after many sleepless nights, to make this decision, why she does it to herself to start all over again, and how she arm herself so as not to bite her teeth against deadlocked party structures (“I do believe that that are quite thick boards to be drilled ”), she reveals to us in this new podcast episode. Have fun while listening!
We also wanted to know from Verena Hubertz:
- What were the biggest doubts you had when you quit?
- What makes a good pitch?
- How do you bring more diversity to the Bundestag?
- What is Verena Hubertz’s USP?
- What is your plan B when it comes to the 26.09. does not work?
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