Meet the German Entrepreneur of the Year — Co-Founder of Flix, which now owns Greyhound #GSA22

Jörn Menninger
Dec 15, 2022
42 min read

Updated: Apr 30

Jochen Engert, co-founder of Flix, shares how he built a $3B unicorn, dominating 90% of Germany's bus market in under a decade.

What Is This About?

Jochen Engert, co-founder of Flix, shares how he built a $3 billion unicorn that dominates 90% of Germany's bus market. This interview covers his journey to becoming German Entrepreneur of the Year, Flix's acquisition of Greyhound, and lessons from scaling a mobility startup into a global transportation platform.

Introduction

Jochen Engert, co-founder of Flix, shares the story of building a $3 billion unicorn that dominates 90% of Germany's intercity bus market. Recognized as German Entrepreneur of the Year, Engert discusses the strategic decisions, competitive battles, and scaling challenges behind one of Europe's most remarkable mobility startup success stories.

Jochen Engert, co-founder of Flix, shares how he built a $3B unicorn, dominating 90% of Germany's bus market in under a decade. Startuprad.io brings you independent coverage of the key developments shaping the startup and venture capital landscape across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

This founder interview is part of our ongoing coverage of Scaleup Founder Interviews from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

Jochen Engert won the German Startup Award 2022 as German Entrepreneur of the Year. He is the co-founder of Munich-based Flix a unicorn recently valued at 3 bn US$ and the owner of Greyhound Lines. He shares in this interview his entrepreneurial journey, and his experience in winning 90% of the local long-distance bus market in less than a decade, without owning even one bus. We talk about the rough times during COVID when the service was shut down for 8 weeks, their expansion into different countries, acquisitions, and investments. He also shares some experience from his business angel investments.

“We are getting to profitability pretty soon”Jochen Engert Co-Founder Flix

German Startup Awards 2022

This interview is in media partnership with the German startup association (Bundesverband Deutscher Startups https://deutschestartups.org/). Their German Startup Awards #GSA22 honor each year outstanding female and male founders and investors in special categories. You can learn more about the winners in our interviews and on this website: https://germanstartupawards.de/rueckblick/rueckblick-2022

You can also have a look at our history, we also interviewed many winners of the German Startup Awards 2021 already.

“Our initial hypothesis was that you need one central player to orchestrate in order to put up a national network.”Jochen Engert Co-Founder Flix

The Video Interview is set to go live on Thursday, December 15th 2022

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mE_uyfS6Bgk

“During corona, we shut down almost all our operations for 7–8 weeks completely, during March and April 2020. … That was absolutely dramatic … we saw demand collapsing by up to 70%”Jochen Engert Co-Founder Flix

The Audio Interview

You can subscribe to our podcasts here.

“If you want to be a founder, you are always on sales, to clients, investors, and also people you want to hire”Jochen Engert Co-Founder Flix

The Founder

Our guest today is Jochen Engert (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jochen-engert-61a4a31/), the Supervisory Board Director (formerly CEO) and Co-Founder of Munich-based mobility unicorn startup Flix (formerly Flixbus). Jochen studied at the University of Ottawa, Canada, as well as at Stuttgart University and in Koblenz at WHU. He has also been a consultant at Boston Consulting Group for 5 years, prior to starting Flix.

The trigger of Flix was the 2009 coalition government contract, where the ruling parties stated they wanted to de-regulate the bus service in Germany, for the first time permitting long-distance buses. Before the de-regulation there was a law in force forbidding long-distance bus connections, competing with train service. So they founded GoBus, later re-branded to FlixBus, then to Flix.

“ … for all operational complex businesses: Operational excellence, passion for detail and laser focus on customer centricity and ultimately customer technology … that is something that compounds, …. Building ultimately a competitive advantage, that is very hard to impossible to replicate ”Jochen Engert Co-Founder Flix

The Startup

Flix started as GoBus, later FlixBus (https://global.flixbus.com/). Today they operate FlixBus, FlixTrain, FlixCar, Kâmil Koç in Turkey, and Greyhound Lines in the US. They were valued at 3 bn US$, when they raised their last VC round (Series G published in June 2021). They raised in total more than 1,2 bn US$ from 17 investors, including General Atlantic, TCV, Silver Lake HV Capital, Permira, BlackRock, European Investment Bank, UVC Partners, Mercedes Benz Group, LMU Entrepreneurship Center, and Cherry Ventures (you can find an interview with Filip, the founding partner of Cherry Ventures here).

Flixbus operates buses or, in many cases, just handles marketing, pricing, and customer service for a commission on their software platform, on behalf of bus operators.

In 2018 — just 6 years after its founding — the company had a 90% market share of intercity bus travel in Germany. This was a result of mergers and acquisitions in the country. At the time and to this day, they don’t own a bus in Germany. They have a long success story of acquisitions:

2014: Meinfernbus
2016: Megabus in Central Europe
2016: Postbus of German mail operator “Deutschen Post”
2017: Hellö from Austrian Railway Operator “Österreichischen Bundesbahnen”
2018: Swebus in Sweden
2018: Polskibus.com in Poland
2019: Eurolines with European routes
2019: Kâmil Koç, in Turkiye
2021: Greyhound Lines in the USA

Their clientele is also interesting, as of February 2018, 60% of the company’s customers were female and 33% were between the ages of 18 and 25.

“ We now operate more than 5.000 destinations. That would be impossible with the right scalable software.”Jochen Engert Co-Founder Flix

Venture Capital Funding

Their last published funding was published in June 2021, raising 650 m US$ at a 3 bn US$ valuation.

Feedback

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The Interviewer

This interview was conducted by Jörn “Joe” Menninger, startup scout, founder, and host of Startuprad.io. Reach out to him:

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Relationship Map

Jörn "Joe" Menninger → Host of → Startuprad.io
Jochen Engert → CEO of → Flixbus
Jochen Engert → Co-Founder of → Flixbus
Jochen Engert → Winner Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 by the German Startup Association
Jochen Engert → Business Angel
Flixbus → Parent Company of → Greyhound Bus (USA)
Flixbus → 2021 Acquistion of → Greyhound Bus (USA)
Flixbus → 2014 Acquistion of → Meinfernbus (Germany)
Flixbus → 2016 Acquistion of → Megabus (Central Europe)
Flixbus → 2016 Acquistion of → Postbus (Germany, from German mail operator “Deutschen Post”)
Flixbus → 2017 Acquistion of → Hellö (Austria, from Austrian Railway Operator “Österreichischen Bundesbahnen”)
Flixbus → 2018 Acquistion of → Swebus (Sweden)
Flixbus → 2018 Acquistion of → Polskibus.com (Poland)
Flixbus → 2019 Acquistion of → Eurolines (European routes)
Flixbus → 2019 Acquistion of → Kâmil Koç (Turkiye)
UnternehmerTUM investor in → Flixbus
Daimler Benz AG Investor in → Flixbus
HV Capital investor in → Flixbus
Silver Lake Technology Management investor in → Flixbus
Flixbus → Becomes Unicorn 2016 → Valuation > 1 bn US$
Permira investor in → Flixbus
TCV investor in → Flixbus
General Atlantic investor in → Flixbus
Blackrock investor in → Flixbus
Canyon Partners investor in → Flixbus
Flixbus → Investment round → Valuation > 3 bn US$
Kühne Holding AG investor in → Flixbus
EQT Future investor in → Flixbus
Porsche SE investor in → Flixbus (see also https://www.startuprad.io/post/porsche-se-s-surprising-investment-in-flixbus-a-strategic-move-into-the-future-of-sustainable-mobil)

What is this article about: Meet the German Entrepreneur of the Year?

Jochen Engert, co-founder of Flix, shares how he built a $3B unicorn, dominating 90% of Germany's bus market in under a decade.

What are the main takeaways from this discussion?

How does this topic connect to the broader startup ecosystem?

About the Host

Joern "Joe" Menninger is the host of the Startuprad.io podcast and covers founders, investors, and policy developments across the DACH startup ecosystem. Through more than 1,300 interviews and nearly a decade of reporting, he documents the evolution of the European startup landscape. Follow Joern on LinkedIn.

Support Startuprad.io

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Automated Transcript

Narrator [00:00:47]:

Welcome to Startuprad IO, your podcast and YouTube blog covering the German startup scene with news, interviews and live events.

Jörn "Joe" Menninnger | Founder, Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:01:02]:

Hello and welcome everybody. This is Joe from StartupRate IO, your startup podcast and YouTube blog from the German speaking area, Germany, Austrian, Switzerland, as well as the founder of Startup Radio, the world's number one tech entrepreneurship radio. Today I have a guest here, Jochen. Hey, how you doing?

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:01:22]:

Hey. Hey. Thanks for having me.

Jörn "Joe" Menninnger | Founder, Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:01:24]:

Oddly. My pleasure. You are here because we do a recording in our series with the German Startup association and you have been awarded the German Startup Awards Founder of the year 2022. And not surprisingly you founded a company many people may know in Europe as Flix. The green buses driving around they not necessarily owned by you. But we'll get later get into that. As well as you just bought last year Greyhound in the usa, you also own some stuff in Turkey, Poland, Central Europe and so on and so forth. But we'll get into that pretty soon.

Jörn "Joe" Menninnger | Founder, Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:02:07]:

First, congratulations to the award. Very well deserved.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:02:12]:

Thanks a lot. And it's. It's certainly been a big honor as this award has also been given out by fellow entrepreneurs and I think something that I just took in representation of our team and for everything that I think the team has achieved over the years.

Jörn "Joe" Menninnger | Founder, Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:02:28]:

I understand, I understand right now. I usually start out with going through the life at least what they tell on LinkedIn of the entrepreneurs and I found you studied in Ottawa in Canada. Why Ottawa? And I assume you had to wear some warm socks there.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:02:51]:

That's absolutely right. No, I was. I was I guess overall fascinated by North America, the US and Canada in particular. I'm a big skier myself, so very passionate about skiing. That doesn't really explain why I chose Ottawa because it's not specifically known for skiing. I mean there's still some skiing around, but I just felt Canada in itself is a great place to be and also spend some time during university. I just love the combination of Canada as a country and then in Ottawa in particular that people speak English and French, so felt I could connect to both languages, meet a lot of people there from Canada, locally, but also internationals. And I just had a fantastic time there.

Jörn "Joe" Menninnger | Founder, Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:03:33]:

What is your favorite dish in Canada? Was it poutine?

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:03:40]:

I did like poutine, indeed. Really liked it though. Just like the whole culture around, let's say sports bars and everything that you sort of haven't do there in terms of like watching sports, having some beers with friends and having some, most cases unhealthy food, I really enjoyed that.

Jörn "Joe" Menninnger | Founder, Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:03:57]:

That's part of the allure for me, watching football as well. You've been also studying in Stuttgart and Viha. We'll soon get to that. And you've been working with BC Boston Consulting Group. Then you founded Flix in 2011 and on your LinkedIn CV it looks like you did it in parallel with BCG. I know the working hours from consulting can be sometimes quite demanding. How did you manage that?

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:04:28]:

It's very true. I mean, how do we get to sort of to do and launch Flix in the first place? So we actually, one of my co founders and myself, we met at bcg. The other guy, Daniel, he's our tech co founder, he's a former friend of Andre, They've known each other from school and the three of us were sitting together multiple times around. Look, we're not going to do consulting forever. We wanted to do something entrepreneurial. And actually in 2009 the German government had announced their coalition contract. Back then it was Merkel and Westerville who said, we're going to deregulate the German market for long distance coach services. So to understand this, something like Greyhound actually didn't exist in Germany.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:05:11]:

So it was forbidden to run bus networks in Germany to initially protect the trains from competition. The law was almost 80 years old. And then in 2009 we were still deep into consulting work and didn't have too much time to look left and right. And then started in 2010, a PhD research project. So Andre and myself effectively did this in parallel. Different universities, different research topics and stuff. But this was the moment where we were in fact still employed by bcg. But they kind of gave us that sabbatical and we had a bit more time to look also into other things.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:05:44]:

And that was when we got even more excited about the opportunity of the market deregulation. And that was ultimately how we ended up also founding flix, looking deeper into it and over time transitioning from spending more time on research on the PhD stuff to founding the business. And this was more of a gradual process that happened over like multiple months. And that's why this has this is in parallel I guess in the CV. And as you said, I think I started the PhD but ultimately never finished it. I think it's good and bad. It's. It's always a bit of a.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:06:15]:

You want to finish the stuff that you started but at the same time if I hadn't started the Ph.D. i think I never got would have gotten the chance to actually launch flicks and ultimately be here today.

Jörn "Joe" Menninnger | Founder, Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:06:26]:

Two hints. One, you hopefully you forgive me. It explains a lot that you didn't finish your PhD when you started working more and more in Flix instead of your PhD work. On the other hand, the question is what was your topic?

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:06:43]:

Yeah, I've actually I spent a lot of time during my consulting times in B2B environments, so industrial engineering, industrial goods, et cetera. And I've actually researched on industrial service pricing. So I was fascinated about how you do service right and how you price these services. And that was what I was spending time on the research front. I said spent a lot of sort of time and research and actually also put up a bigger study, quantitative study with multiple companies. Never got to publish anything around it. But I said learned a lot for me and I said have at least had the flexibility to then look into the flicks opportunity. And back then, and that's the.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:07:23]:

In hindsight it looks obvious but back then everybody thought we're crazy. Like why would you launch a bus business in Germany during that time and why would you not just finish your PhD, go back to consulting, have that safe job, good employer and everything around it. And everybody I said including our families, friends, wives, meanwhile wives back then girlfriends thought we're completely crazy to do this bus thing then. And we just felt this is such a big and unique opportunity that we couldn't resist. And in the end it was the combination of there's a market being deregulated so this doesn't happen all that often. And at the same time we felt it's an old school traditional industry with like true family owned businesses, actual entrepreneurs who are lacking one thing that we felt we could bring to the table which is the brand sort of the platform logic. We helped them to orchestrate everything around it, I mean ultimately partnered with them and felt this is a unique combination that we just, we just couldn't let pass. And we felt if we don't do it and someone else does it and this is working out and there's going to be a big and successful business, we're going to regret it for the rest of our lives.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:08:32]:

And that ultimately Made us jump and try it out and ultimately launch Flix.

Jörn "Joe" Menninnger | Founder, Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:08:38]:

I have seen your partner Andre, when he did a presentation at TU Darmstadt where he was also starting and not finishing his PhD. They still invite him over. So I think there are no hurt feelings on both sides here. We just started talking about. So basically what was driving you was a political decision. When I was growing up in Germany, I wasn't aware of the legal restraints, but I thought it very odd that you could drive almost every big city by barn. But you had this amazing, really big network of German Autobahns which are renowned around the world, but you could not use it by bus. Little disclaimer here for our American audience.

Jörn "Joe" Menninnger | Founder, Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:09:21]:

Yes, there are buses driving on the Autobahn, but they cannot go as fast as they want. Only vehicles with people in it. Like no trucks, like no, no buses can go as fast as they want. Really sorry, if you want to speed, you have to rent a car. Going a little bit back more to the serious topic, you founded Go Bus, later renamed to flixbus and, and now rename to Flix because you do a lot more. That was basically a political driver where you saw the opportunity. How did you approach the problem? Because as we said before in the beginning, you did not own the buses. I do understand in some countries you're now owning parts or all of the bus fleet, but in Germany you still don't, right?

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:10:09]:

Yeah, that's right. I mean, when we, and maybe sort of looking at how the business model works, our initial hypothesis on this market was that you need someone to orchestrate all the different players to ultimately put up a nationwide network to have a big brand, big customer awareness and also the scale to build technology around it, to sort of invest into marketing. And there's tons of companies out there who know how to operate coaches and bus services and they would probably be much better than on that, than we would ever be. And that's why we felt the model should be some sort of a partnership between us and these typically asset, family owned, small, medium sized businesses that are doing all sorts of bus services already. They run charter business, they run school transportation, public transit networks, all sorts of stuff. And they would run a part of their fleet for us under our branding, together with us. And that's kind of how we set it up in the first place. And we told them, look, we're going to invest into the brand, the platform, build the technology, do all the sort of network planning, optimization, pricing, yield management and all the marketing around it.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:11:15]:

And you'll operate these buses for us and Then we'll partner and we'll share revenues with you. And that was the initial hypothesis and the initial model. And that actually survived since the early days with a few evolutions here and there. But ultimately this is still the model in which we operate. So we felt we're not going to be the good and the best operators, but this is what our partners are, are really, really good at. They're very efficient, very good quality operators. And that's how we partner and that's why that sort of helped us also to scale faster than everybody else. The original model in this industry is capex heavy.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:11:49]:

It's asset intense, it's integrated, so people try to do everything. So being the retail and sales platform, the marketing platform and at the same time the operators and the old school companies in this space, so the transportation companies, also the train, the state rail folks, et cetera, they sort of do and think this and live this business out of an asset perspective. They're like, how do we use our assets efficiently and not really think about it from a customer centric point of view. And that's been the big differentiator from us to everybody else out there. We were very focused on the customer, on optimizing the product service levels, pricing, how do we do marketing efficiently, etc. And this was the game changer and as I then have had the sort of, the luck and I guess also lots of work to ultimately persuade them to partner with the strongest operators out there. And this has been ultimately the sort of secret source of our success, that this partnership has been much stronger than any other setup, any other business in our industry because it helped us to scale a business that historically has been capex heavy and you need a lot of capital to build this. With us being very focused on the platform, technology, marketing and brand side.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:13:00]:

And I said then partnering with these private family owned businesses.

Jörn "Joe" Menninnger | Founder, Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:13:05]:

When you say cabax you mean capital expenses, meaning all the investments like in physical stuff that needs to go in there.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:13:13]:

Exactly. All the investment that goes into the fleet, into building up the operations. I mean we were, we were also using the existing infrastructure from our partners. They have existing depots that they operate out from. If you need to build this from scratch, it's hundreds and hundreds, if not billions of investment that you needed to put up to effectively run a network like ours. And I mean you mentioned ground. Ground is still operated in this more traditional model of an integrated business with own sort of sales outlets, retail, etc. But also own fleet, own assets, own depots, own terminals, own maintenance and all of this, this has been the historic way of doing it and we're sort of as I have disrupted the industry by ultimately partnering with the industry and helping also them to participate in our market.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:14:01]:

Like, because individually none of our partners could have effectively participated in this market because like they're all typically local at max regional, but none of them could have built a nationwide or like above regional level network that we ultimately put together with hundreds of partners that we're now having on our side to operate our networks across Europe, the US and also meanwhile other countries like, like Brazil.

Jörn "Joe" Menninnger | Founder, Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:14:27]:

I have some fond memories of traveling Greyhound when I was in college because I didn't own a car. And sometimes you could either fly or go by Greyhound and as a student, college student, you always take the Greyhound. You were not the only ones looking at this opportunity back then in Germany you had a very fierce competition with a long distance bus called Meinfandbus, which literally translates to my long distance bus. At one point they've been larger than you, but they disappeared and you prevailed. Can you tell us why?

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:15:05]:

Yeah, it was quite interesting. Like in the early days in Germany when the market was deregulated, what happened was pretty much what everybody expected, that tons of players were coming up on the market, intense competition. So we've had a few startups apart from ourselves, we've had the big corporates. So Deutsche Bahn, the German state rail guys put up a network from even two brands. UK transportation companies came over and launched networks. Some very intense competition. In the end there was us and Meinferbus who were sort of growing the fastest, who were like building the biggest customer traction, especially in the first 12 years. And we always knew that ultimately this market needs to consolidate at some point to make it work and to make it profitable and to make it sustainable in the end.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:15:53]:

And then we've at some point also started talking to the founder team of Mindfirmers and sort of had a chat around, hey, what's your philosophy and your vision about this business? And we immediately clicked in terms of we have the same ambition level. We need to build something that's lasting, that's sustainable, that's, that's working, that ultimately also gives a good and healthy business to our partners and also have the same idea around product standards, quality, how do we run this business, how does the business model work? And that's where we felt this is a very, very exciting opportunity to put these two businesses together. And that's then how we did it. And I mean as you mentioned, we launched under Go Bus initially that was the first brand that we thought would work. Then relatively quickly figured hey, it's very difficult to get all the domains that you need. And Google was always asking us did you mean Globus when we typed in Goba? So we felt that's not a very good starting point to build a brand and then looked into what's other possibilities and ultimately came up with Flix where we felt hey, this is great, it's international, everybody can say it, pronounce it, write it, it works in multiple languages. All the domains were available and we had a similar discussion then with mind families on how do you build a brand out of these two. And actually Flix started as a blue brand.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:17:09]:

So Flix plus was blue initially Mindfambers was green. And then we said look, we need to make the best of both worlds, like bring the teams together, unite them, create more as a pure sum of the parts. So this needs to be one plus one is three. And then also on the branding side said look, let's take the green, it's very much the color that also transports how eco friendly this means of transportation is. But let's use Flix as the name because it's much more international. It's going to work also outside of Germany. We want to expand across Europe and multiple other countries. This is the sort of future brand and that's kind of how we, we put it all together and that's ultimately how it worked for us and also how we explain it to the team, explain it to the customers and then built this sort of ongoing story from there.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:17:53]:

And this was end of 2014, so only only two years into the market launch. We actually put these two businesses together to create the German market leader and then use this basis to expand further across Europe.

Jörn "Joe" Menninnger | Founder, Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:18:06]:

When you talked about ditching Gobuz and coming up with Flicks, I had a picture in mind of three guys sitting around a table in a Hofbrohaus drinking beer. Was that approximately how you did it?

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:18:19]:

There was a lot of brainstorming involved and there may have been a few beers involved too. But it's been intense discussions for sure with like amongst us plus sort of the small team that we had back then. And I said ultimately felt Flix is the way to go and today still very happy with it because I mean as you said early on we're now the company is called Flix se so it's a sort of a stock holding corporation. And we also built not only Flix Bus but Flix Train on the side. There's services around it. So we just use Flix as the, as the guiding brand, but also build additional products and services around it.

Jörn "Joe" Menninnger | Founder, Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:18:59]:

In an older interview you talked about unit economics. Flix would only make sense if you make profit on every trip. I think that was also one of the reasons why you, why you've been doing that. Good. Because you started out with, with a profit per trip. Do you think in the current market environment we are recording this towards end of August, do you think the founders out there also should focus more on generating profit or at least having profit inside, not just generating a website with a zillion website visitors and say, oh yeah, you know, we will sell diamonds to them.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:19:46]:

Yeah. No, I mean, I guess from the very first day our philosophy has been we need to build this into a sustainably working business. And this needs to be also making money first for our partners because they run all the risk of the investment into the fleet, the drivers, all the operations, which is massive. And then over time also for us as a global business and on the platform and technology side. So we always were very focused around healthy unit economics in general. And I mean coming back down to what you said in terms of every ride needs to be profitable. That's how we try to manage our network. And this is where all the complexity of our business comes in.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:20:26]:

When you want to break it down to every single trip and every single part of the line and trips that you're operating. So we would usually operate not like an airline business in A to B connection, but it's an A2F connection, all the combinations in between. So this can be B2C or B to D or C to F and everything that you can sort of imagine on that line. And that makes all the complexity of our business. And that's why also technology is so powerful for us to really break it down into every single detail of our network and to optimize every single detail. And that's been, I think, one of the driving forces behind our sort of thinking about it. Like how can we be customer centric? How can we optimize every single detail of our business to ultimately make this profitable? And I said we needed to create healthy unit economics relatively early on for our partners to continue to operate with us and continue to invest with us and expand their fleet. So this was a, I think a very different mindset from, hey, you build a venture backed business and like burn a lot of money from the early days until at, I don't know, decades thereafter, profit is going to be inside at some point.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:21:28]:

So I Said we, we've always managed our portfolio of you have a network of multiple lines and like, the longer the lines alive, the closer you need to go to profitability and then into profitability relatively early. So that was, that was the mindset. And coming back to your question, in terms of what's the sentiment in the market and how should founders think about profitability and unit economics, I think it's the underlying, the underlying reason of a business is to make money. That's why people build businesses and that's what business is for. And if you don't have a path to that for unhealthy unit economies or for no way to get there, then it's just probably, it's just not a business. And that's, I think, where the setback and the sort of sentiment change on the investor side is something that I feel is actually very healthy. From the heydays through the pandemic, where a lot of businesses were funded that probably wouldn't have gotten funding in normal times. And I think it's more of a normal time that we see versus a, a catastrophe or a crisis right now.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:22:27]:

And I think that sort of sharpened focus on unit economics, on healthy businesses, on a path to profitability is something that's actually very, very good and also differentiates the good businesses from the no businesses. And in that sense, we feel we're in a very good situation because we've had our crisis like through the pandemic that was incredibly hard and tough and it wasn't our fault in this case. Right? Like it was not our fault that a global pandemic hits our markets and travel demand is just collapsing. But we've sort of navigated through this and now we're in a position where demand has come back. We've put a lot of work and effort into driving efficiency, driving automation, improving profitability overall and how we can manage and steer our business. I mean, that's why we're now in a very, very good situation, have a very healthy network and business overall. And we're not yet there because there's still sort of the aftermath of the pandemic visible in our numbers. But we're getting to profitability very soon.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:23:22]:

And then I think we're asset in a very good spot. And this has always been a driving force behind us to build a healthy and ultimately sustainable business.

Jörn "Joe" Menninnger | Founder, Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:23:31]:

Not everybody is following on a regular basis. Our news rep ops we do on a monthly basis. And if they would, they would know that for some time during the pandemic you completely shut down all the coach operations. How long did it last?

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:23:47]:

Yeah, this was relatively early on in the pandemic. And this is, again, the benefit of having a portfolio of countries. We've seen the impact that Covid had on Italy in the early days. So I've received WhatsApp messages from our local managing director sending me pictures of empty shelves and, like, what's going on? And, like, we obviously kept track of demand collapsing in Italy and numbers going down and stuff, and we kind of could prepare what was going to happen across all our other countries. And as you said, we had to shut down the almost entire network, except for a very few exceptions, but over March and April 2020, so almost seven, eight weeks, we didn't run any operations. And this was dramatic to see a business collapsing completely from growing massively. I mean, we've been used to growing significantly, and Also in January, February 2020, we were growing 40, 50% over the previous year. And suddenly the whole business disappears.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:24:47]:

So this was absolutely dramatic. And back then, we didn't know if it's ever going to come back and if we're going to survive this and what was going to happen. So this was a very, very difficult time, but ultimately had this incredible team there that found solutions that brought all the passion to the table and helped us navigate through this time and through this crisis. And I think, in the end, helped us also come out of it stronger. We talked about it earlier, also allowed us to do bold moves like the acquisition of Greyhound to even also expand our market leadership in the us, consolidate this market for us and help us build a sustainable footprint there, too. I mean, I think this is just thanks to all the passion and all the incredible work that the team has put into Flix over the sort of more than two years of the pandemic. And it's great to see now this unfolds, that demand is coming back, that people go back to travel, and it feels like a much more normal environment now. And it's great to see that all of this hard work now pays off.

Jörn "Joe" Menninnger | Founder, Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:25:46]:

Mm. You've had. You've still have an incredible team, but according to Crunchbase, you also had incredible investors who funded you up to Series G right now with US$1.2 billion at the last published valuation of US$3 billion. You're also active as a business angel. We get late to do that. Can you give us a few hints about good fundraising? Have your numbers, your way to profitability there, get a solid team and have an idea how you actually get your clients. Because I frequently see People who either have an awesome idea but no idea how to make profit out of that, or they have an idea how to make profit but not how to get into this business.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:26:35]:

Yeah, I mean it's, I guess also what you need for fundraising changes over the stages that you're in so that the later you go, the more it's going to be about all the details, all the numbers, asset healthy unit economics, customer acquisition costs, lifetime values, et cetera. So there's a lot of very granular and detailed due diligence from the investor side. And that's I think totally makes sense. I think in the early days you need to start off with a clear vision and a clear strategy on how to make this work. Just as you said, there needs to be a big market out there that you can tackle and you need to have a very clear solution for an actual problem that people had. And the problem that people have and had in our market was the, the lack of sustainable and affordable mobility. It was just not there. You could either use your car, which has come, I mean, especially nowadays, even more expensive.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:27:24]:

It's just incredibly expensive to run your car if you look at, not only from a gas price but also from a full cost perspective. And then it was expensive train tickets and that was pretty much it. So we created this alternative and that's why we've been so successful, because we're solving an actual problem and a very, sort of catering for a very big demand. And then I said over time I think you still need to get people excited about the long term vision and the long term strategy. And if you don't get the excitement from the investors, then it's probably not going to be the right investor for you. So there needs to be this early excitement and this passion and this love for the business also on the other side. And if you don't receive this, then you probably shouldn't spend too much time on these investor discussions. That's at least my big learning.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:28:07]:

And then I said it ultimately comes down to all the details of the numbers. You need to prove that the business is either already profitable or has a clear path to profitability, or at least has healthy unit economics that you can build from and that you can sort of drive efficiency over time, drive improvement over time and that you have a clear way to do this. And this is what I think you need to demonstrate. And that's the ultimately also the, I think the ability that the founder and management team needs to bring to the table to not only run this business, but also pitch it and explain it to investors. That's a crucial part in fundraising that many people underestimate. So if you, I think if you ask people, do you want to be in sales? Most founders and managers would say, I'm not so sure about it. But if you're founding a business and trying to raise money, you're always in sales. You're selling your story, you're selling your business, you're selling your equity pitch all the time.

Jörn "Joe" Menninnger | Founder, Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:28:58]:

You're also selling your vision to potential employees.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:29:01]:

Exactly. And that's the same. That's the sort of other side of the story. You need to sell this also to the people that you want to join your team. So you're always on sales, if you will.

Jörn "Joe" Menninnger | Founder, Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:29:12]:

One question I had when I was preparing for this interview. Would you agree to be called the Uber of buses?

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:29:21]:

Not really. Because of course we're kind of in a similar market. At the same time, Uber is addressing the urban mobility and transport problems, we're addressing the mid and long distance space. So it's a, it's a different segment of the global mobility market, if you will. And also our model is different in terms of we're not working with single individual operators or people that ultimately drive these Uber cars, we're working with companies that employ these drivers, that invest into the fleet, etc. So it's professional structures. They also have other businesses that they operate in and only sort of work part of their, their business with us. So it, it is different in that sense.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:30:03]:

And to be fair, there's been a lot of negative noise around Uber and like how the model works and if it's, if sustainable, etc. So I wouldn't want us to be too deeply associated with it, acknowledging that we're kind of in a very similar market and addressing a similar problem at a different segment.

Jörn "Joe" Menninnger | Founder, Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:30:21]:

And now we leave the question open if Uber ever becomes profitable, in your opinion. Last year, talking to Lukasz Gadowski, he said you have to go deeper and work on the details to outperform your competitors. He gave, for example, the idea that they used to get the orders in the app and then had to send a fax to the restaurant to actually get this. And at one point they just made an app and the restaurant saw it and confirmed it. That's it. But you have to go deep into the details to actually do that, go deeper than your competitors. Would you agree to that?

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:31:00]:

I would absolutely agree. I think it's especially true for all operationally complex businesses that operational excellence, passion for detail and sort of that Laser focus on customer centricity and ultimately also user technology is something that's compounding over time. So if you improve a little bit every single day and also drive this into your culture, that's something that compounds. And people completely underestimate that compounding effect that you can build out of this. This is incredible. And this has been differentiating us again from everybody else because we've been building technology that's been dedicated for our specific industry, for our use cases, for our very specific problems, and building it on a granularity, on a level of detail that nobody else did. And this is compounding and this is differentiating, and this ultimately creates a competitive advantage that's very, very, very difficult, if not impossible to replicate. So I absolutely agree.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:31:59]:

And this is also what I think, if you're on the investor side, what you should look in founding teams on what's their ambition, especially I said in these operationally complex businesses, to really get into all the depth of the details of the business, to understand this, to optimize it, to find new and innovative solutions. This is where big businesses are being built.

Jörn "Joe" Menninnger | Founder, Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:32:21]:

Mm. Talking about building big businesses. Awesome. You give me all the cues I need. This is awesome. You have a long and successful history of acquisitions. Mind fanboys we already talked about then in 2016, you really got to work with Megabus in Central Europe. Post bus of the German mail operator Deutsche Post.

Jörn "Joe" Menninnger | Founder, Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:32:46]:

They were going, oh, in the past, we used horses and just delivered the mail. And maybe, maybe we can do it in the belly of buses and also transport people. Not thought from. From the customer perspective. Hello. From Austrian railway operator Bundesbahn Sweebus in Sweden. 2018 Polsky Bus in Poland, 2018 Euro lines with European routes. In 2019, you already bought something in Turkey.

Jörn "Joe" Menninnger | Founder, Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:33:15]:

And now, now political correct to say Turkey.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:33:18]:

Yeah.

Jörn "Joe" Menninnger | Founder, Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:33:19]:

And in 2021, Greyhound lines in the US and first thing I had in mind, how do you make good acquisitions? Basically, first, you need to make sure this aligns with you. And secondly, you have to make sure at one point you can get the unit economics out of it. Like, and plus everything on your platform. Because it doesn't make sense to have like 20 countries, 60 platforms and 90 operating models that will completely bankrupt your company instantly.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:33:49]:

Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, totally agree. I mean, on M and A, I think for us, this has always been an integral part of our growth strategy. We always felt there's a massive value in also integrating existing businesses onto our platform. And this is for, I guess, a few things. First, of course, consolidation in these markets. Help us to drive profitability for sure. But we believe that we're ultimately the best owners for pretty much all of these businesses because we've built this technology that's just superior to anything that you would find in the market.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:34:23]:

And this is where we're driving massive synergies on the cost side on the one hand, but also on the how do you optimize this business on the other end? And it's just every like time and again, it's incredible for me to see with how little technologies and software solutions, data, understanding the incumbents are managing these businesses. I said this is incredibly complex. I mean, we're now operating around 5,000 destinations and just a sheer sort of mathematical number of combinations that you can build in this vast amount of destinations and with that network. It's just incredible to manage without the proper technology. And that's where we've created a lot of value by integrating these businesses into ours and especially into our technology. And that's, I guess, also the clear path for us is always we need to integrate onto our platform. There's no way around it, period. So there's no.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:35:18]:

We connect the old system to our system. There's no APIs or something. We just throw it away and integrate it onto our business. We may build a few features that are specific for these very markets. But you mentioned Turkey. Turkey works different as a market, so customer behavior is different. So we had to build a few features that we didn't have before. But in itself, it's still the same platform.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:35:41]:

We run it out of that exact same technology stack. It's the same tech that operates Germany, that operates in Turkey, that is also soon to be operating in the us. So just take Greyhound as a second example. Certainly a massive business. Everybody knows it in the US and as you said earlier, it's quite interesting. You hardly meet anybody who doesn't have any sort of a personal and in many cases emotional association with grant doesn't necessarily always have to be positive, but at least you have one. So it's a good starting point to also use that brand value for us. And we will integrate this onto our business very soon into our tech stack.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:36:20]:

The existing tech that Greyhound is using is older than the average age of our engineer, so it's very difficult for them to maintain it. They actually in some cases needed to get people out of retirement to sort of continue to maintain the technology stack and their sales platform.

Jörn "Joe" Menninnger | Founder, Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:36:35]:

Pretty much sounds like the banks who still hire Cobalt developers out of retirement because their systems are so old.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:36:43]:

Yeah, exactly. And this just gives you sort of very, very clear picture of how much potential upside is there for us, and that's the cost side of things. So we can be much more efficient on running the technology, that part of it, and then also optimizing it. And I mean, it's much easier to sort of optimize such a complicated network over many decades with like incremental improvements, etc. But when we've built our own dedicated software that helps us optimize it into our network, that makes proposals on how do you operate this business most efficiently, where's the demand, how do you build the network around it, how do you build dedicated schedules, how do you optimize it, few minutes here and there, etc. So there's all this again, coming back to the level of detail that you need to, in the end, run a profitable and sustainable business.

Jörn "Joe" Menninnger | Founder, Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:37:32]:

I already told you before the interview that this question will come. You have so many routes, so many destinations, more than 5,000. You already said what is the longest distance you can cover with Flix. I would have in mind something from Portugal or something on the Algarve coast to central or Eastern Europe or something from northern Sweden to southern Turkey. Yes, your buses cannot swim, but they can go on ferries.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:38:01]:

It's, it's, it's, it's an interesting question and probably it's pretty much on par if you look at North America, where you can, you can meanwhile go from coming back to early part of this interview to, to Canada, and you can probably, with a few interconnections, go all the way down to Mexico if you want. And at the same time, you can go from the eastern parts of Turkey all the way down to Portugal. That's over 5,000 kilometers all across Europe. That's probably the longest distance that you can cover at this point. I'm not sure if anybody has ever done that, and I'm certainly not going to be the first, but in theory you could. To be fair, most of our customers are traveling in the ballpark of two to five hours, which in Europe is 200 to 500 kilometers. In the US you can take the same number, but translate it into miles and it's the same. So 200 to 500 miles as like the typical distances that the people travel with us.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:38:55]:

And that's where also the bus is just a very, very efficient mean of transportation. Very efficient on the cost side and also on the sustainability ecology side. So our carbon footprint is just very, very efficient. And that's, I think, where it makes just the most sense to use a bus for, for your travel.

Jörn "Joe" Menninnger | Founder, Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:39:14]:

One quick question. You're headquartered your Greyhound operations, your operations in Dallas, not as you usually do, either in New York or in Silicon Valley. I assume it's mostly for the reason that Greyhound is already there. But do you already know a few good places to have breakfast and dinner in Dallas?

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:39:36]:

Indeed. Like we've. When we launched the US we actually set up our first team in Los Angeles because we started on the west coast and felt the Valley is just incredibly expensive and it doesn't make sense for us. Then we also built a team in New York where we had the first sort of Flix headquarter pre ground. And as the ground team is significantly larger than our FLIX team has been, we decided to also move our US headquarter into Dallas and feel it's actually a very good place to be. Not only for breakfast and dinner locations and good steak, but also for talent. I think that sort of the talent market there is great and it's not yet as competitive as it is in the Valley or New York. So I think for us it's actually a very good location.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:40:28]:

And there's good flight connections into Europe too, which also plays a role in terms of how often can you be there on the ground and sort of

Jörn "Joe" Menninnger | Founder, Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:40:36]:

manage and help the teams you already hinted at. Stake my personal favorite, Texas Roadhouse. So sorry, a little detour. But also your company took a little detour because you are operating as flix, not only as Flix Bus, because you are now also doing train connections at least here in Germany. Can you give us a little bit of an idea how this ties into one another?

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:41:03]:

Yeah, sure. And I wouldn't say this is a detour because we already had it in our very first pitch decks in the precede round, if you will. We always said this, this space is being is being driven by bus and train. So you ultimately need to also connect these two means of transportation and there's a big sort of synergy between them. You can interconnect and you can use a bus where it's most efficient. You can use a train where this is more efficient. So this has been always on our agenda. It took us a while actually to get into this business because it's very complicated.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:41:32]:

It's even more sort of capital intense. You need to pull up the rolling stock, you need to find partners to ultimately operate it. So business model wise, we operated in a very similar way and I said have launched this gradually over time and they've started in Germany with a few partners that were operating private train connections and long distance connections in competition to the state monopoly. So the German state rail folks, they still own 99% of the market, but we feel it's ripe for private competition, it's ripe for adding a new product to the market. And this is a bit again coming back to deregulation and analogies. This is a bit like what happened in the airline space 20, 25 years ago where low cost carriers were disrupting this market completely. And initially I think the flagship carriers were like, I'm not sure how big this market is ever going to be today low cost carrier, they run more passengers than the flagship carriers usually and it's massive businesses, most of them are run very efficiently. And part two to many other airlines actually turn a profit.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:42:39]:

So we think it's actually the better business. And I said with a combination with our bus network, our of brand reach that we have, our existing customer base is a very logical step for us to move into this and continue to build out our network, our inventory and provide an additional product that's very attractive to our customers.

Jörn "Joe" Menninnger | Founder, Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:42:57]:

We already recording for more than 40 minutes. We cut the last part a little bit short because I only booked one hour with you and we talked before, but let us go a little bit into the outlook. I was imagining what the next step for Flix could be and I was thinking you already, you did buses, you bought a lot of bus operators, now you do railways. Is your next step to buy a few railway operators?

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:43:26]:

Well, to be fair, there's not so many private long distance rail operators out there that you could possibly buy. There's a few but not so many. So there may be an opportunity here and there at some point, but we feel this is going to be an organic growth strategy primarily for us. So we're building this out of our existing capabilities, built this organically over time. And this is a, I mean we feel a decade long growth story ahead of us. So on top of, I think what we're adding on the, with the Flix frame product, we will just continue what we've been doing over the past 10 years for the next 20, 30, 40 years, which is expand our network, add more cities and destinations, add more countries and ultimately I said provide great service to our customers. And we've started out as said in Germany, we've expanded pretty much all across Europe and today we're effectively, we're in 40 countries globally. So adding North America, Canada, US, Mexico, I'm launching to Brazil.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:44:24]:

There's many places in the world where we're not present yet. Brazil is the first place in South America. Most of these markets bigger bus markets than any single European country because it's the backbone of their transportation system. People are very used to using it. At the same time, we feel it's not great products in many cases. So there's a lot of innovation that you can bring. There's a lot of also better prices that you can bring. And the same is true for Asia.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:44:53]:

Just take the bigger countries in India, in Thailand, in Vietnam, you name it. I mean Indonesia. I personally like Indonesia a lot. So there's a lot of places where we feel we have a right to win and there's no reason why our product and business model shouldn't work in these places too. So there's a long way for us to go in terms of expanding our business further.

Jörn "Joe" Menninnger | Founder, Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:45:14]:

When you talked about Indonesia, I had a mind like the salience of Little Island. So you may want to think about also operating ships there.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:45:24]:

We may add Flix Ferry or Flix Boat or something to the for the mixer.

Jörn "Joe" Menninnger | Founder, Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:45:28]:

Ah, pretty good, pretty good. You are also active as a business angel. For example, you have invested in the unicorn sender, Carla Medkit Dog or cleverly how do you make decisions to invest and where could people pitch a deck to you?

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:45:49]:

Yeah, I mean over time and we're maybe this is as a note before we always invest together. So the three of us, Daniel, Andre, myself, that we've launched Flix together and build Flix together, we're also investing together. So we kind of over time had inbound from other startups and founders that felt we may add value to their cap table to what they're building with the stuff that we've seen, the experience that we're bringing and possibly also the network that we're bringing. And that's usually the situations that we like when we have the feeling of we can add something to the table and help these teams and founders build their business and maybe avoid a few mistakes that we've done in the early days. And that's I said usually the situations that we like the most and I think the sort of investment hypothesis is pretty simple. You think you need to address a big market, an actual real problem and have very strong foundry teams. And that's usually what it comes down to for us as we're investing very early stage. So it's usually pre seed seed rounds.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:46:48]:

In some cases we invest in series A, maybe series B together with funds that we know well. But it's usually I said very early and we get excited when these founders really have the drive to change something in a big market, in a big industry, that's what excites us. And I mean the examples that you mentioned are these cases. So very real problems for customers, very big industries. And that's where we get excited. And then I said we usually get inbound through all the different channels, through the network, via email, cold emails, calls, LinkedIn, whatever. And that's usually also how you reach

Jörn "Joe" Menninnger | Founder, Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:47:24]:

us best I see Jochen, I've been now interviewing you for almost 50 minutes. That should set a new record. Even longer than Finn Hensel or Lukasz Gardowski. They are always welcome to come back and do a longer interview with me. It was nonetheless, thank you very much. Pleasure to have you as a guest and congratulations again to winning your award.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:47:48]:

Thanks a lot. My pleasure. It was great talking to you and hope whoever listens to this enjoyed our conversation.

Jörn "Joe" Menninnger | Founder, Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:47:54]:

Thank you. Have a good day. Bye.

Jochen Engert | CEO and Co-Founder unicorn Flix (Flixbus) | Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 (German Startup Awards) [00:47:56]:

Bye. Thanks you too. Bye.

Narrator [00:48:02]:

That's all, folks. Find more news streams, events and interviews www.startuprad.IO. remember, sharing is caring. When you're an entrepreneur with a great idea, it can be daunting to find funding. Startup Raven takes the process out of your hands by helping entrepreneurs connect and learn about potential investors all in one place without any long filled forms or thousand questions. Sign up for early access@startupraven.com.

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