
New Blog
This blog post first appeared first on old medium publication (https://medium.com/startuprad-io), and was moved to this blog with the relaunch of our website in summer 2024.
We used all these SaaS tools and every time an employee left, we ran in the same problem: Closing all the SaaS accounts of this employee. That is why we founded onetoolGordian Braun, CEO and co-founder onetool
Update July 15th, 2021: onetool is the first startup in the world trying to sell itself as NFT
Tune in to our Internet Radio Station here:
Subscribe Here
Find all options to subscribe to our newsletter, podcast, YouTube channel or listen to our internet radio station here:
If you don’t keep track of all the SaaS tools, you usually run into 15–20 percent of overspending Gordian Braun, CEO and co-founder onetool
The Founder
In this interview, we talk to Gordian Braun (https://www.linkedin.com/in/gordianb/?locale=en_US), the CEO and co-founder of onetool (https://onetool.co/), a Berlin-based cloud startup. The startup is also a Y-Combinator Alumnus ( https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/onetool ), and an alumnus of the German Accelerator program (https://www.germanaccelerator.com/companies/#onetool).
Gordian already had great experiences in his life before he even started onetool. He founded companies before, including one in Austin, TX. He worked at a VC, as an investment scout and is currently a member of the Forbes Technology Council.
Other solutions allow you to do similar stuff, after up to 6 months of working to integrate them. Our tool only takes you about an hour.Gordian Braun, CEO and co-founder onetool
The Startup
onetool (https://onetool.co/) was founded by Gordian since he always ran into the same problem: What accounts did the employee use, that just left. How can I make sure I don’t overspend and no one has access to my customer’s data, that is not working here anymore?
Our customers usually use only cloud-based tools, so basically all modern startups.Gordian Braun, CEO and co-founder onetool
Venture Capital Funding
The company already counts amongst its investors HTGF. They have already raised more than 1.6 mn Euro in Venture Capital. Likely they will look for a new funding round “very soon” according to Gordian.
We got an email “You are invited to the final interview for Y-Combinator”. Oh, yeah it looks like we appliedGordian Braun, CEO and co-founder onetool
The Video Interview is set to go live on Tuesday, June 15th, 2021, at 17.00 CET
The Audio Interview Podcast
You can subscribe to our podcasts here.
We only spent 26 minutes on the application for Y-Combinator. We were successful because they want you not to oversell. They want to see the real you.Gordian Braun, CEO and co-founder onetool
German Accelerator Program (NYC Program) — Learn more Here
HTGF is among their investors — You can learn more about them here
Are You Looking to get a Task Quickly Done? — Affiliate Links
Try the account of our Affiliate Partner Fiverr: http://bit.ly/2S0f2YF We get there our video editing and graphic work done to free us up for more useful tasks
Feedback
Reach out to us, here is our audience survey, to give us feedback, suggest topics, interview partners or just to say “Hallo!” https://forms.gle/mLV6mVKwGwKuut8BA
The Interviewer
This interview was conducted by Jörn “Joe” Menninger, startup scout, founder, and host of Startuprad.io. Reach out to him:LinkedInTwitterEmail
Keep Up to Date
Here is our publication calendar: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0?cid=MDEyaTI3YWs1MjVxaTNzbWdqbDh2OXRiaW9AZ3JvdXAuY2FsZW5kYXIuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbQ
Transcript
[0:00] Startup Red Dot IO.Your podcast and YouTube blog covering the German startups.With News interviews and Live Eventshello and welcome everybody this is Joe founder and host of startupradio Taro your startup podcast from Germany as well as the world’s firstinternet radio station dedicated to startups and tech companies if you have not already done so make sure to hit the like And subscribe button down hereand leave as a nice comment today I welcome Guardian here with me hey how are you doinghey are you good how are you I’m doing good thank you very much you are here today,because you are the co-founder of a company called went to and will pretty soon get into what,onetool key is but as always I’m linking your LinkedIn profile to out here in the show notes if you’re using some type of.
[1:14] Podcasting app that actually,doesn’t doesn’t provide the ability to Links make sure to go to dub dub dub startupradio diode forward slash blog and there,you will find all the links in the show notes of course or just Google the the headline of our individualsorry about that is Zoe you are the founder of onetool to CEO and co-founder.But you have had a pretty interesting life I have to admit you actually went to University not too far away from me actuallyin the area of high can we start a little bit there and you take us through your CV.
[2:03] Yes I went to the University of Mannheim which is like a very prestigious business school here in Germany.And I did that with a special degree program back then it was called antonyms Universe which basically stands for the law and business administration at the.The reason why I wanted to study these both combinations it’s because I always wanted to be self-employed at some point I didn’t know if it was.
[2:32] Founding company you’re taking over a company but I was for sure I wanted to be self-employed so what happens is that,chose that degree program and I graduated from there then moved over to America because for me the Manheim experience you know it’s very tough business school but it’s also very very theoretical.And what I wanted to have is I wanted to study a master’s and Entrepreneurship back then that was not really a thing in Germany like the word barely existed.And so I moved to Florida to study entrepreneurship in my Master’s there and yeah and then state in America for a while.How long have you been there and how did you go from Florida to Baylor in Texas.That’s correct so what really happened there in the in the master’s degree is that we were allowed to instead of writing a master’s thesis to also write a lot of papers about a startup that camethat you came up with using your degrees.And we came up with a startup called little Kana do Kana is basically a version of Amazon but all the inventory is available locally.So you don’t get it delivered but you can actually see what’s available in Broadway and Austin Texas and so on and.
[3:56] And the reason for us moving to Austin Texas then was that Austin had this big movement back then it wasn’t 2049.
[4:05] Big movement that going local Keep Austin Weird so we thought that local retail stores will be,you know the best choice for us to launch a Marketplace within the states and.The only option for me to stay in the country because not I’m not in the Native American was to go via another degree program which was my MBA which I then got at Baylor University and I’ve also got to say that they were very very.Accommodating because they made me custom studies custom programs and stuff like that just so that I could work for onetool for Akana,and yeah it was a fun time until I made my way back to Berlin then after we finish this little Kana in 2017 here to Belen.What did he do that you sell the kind of did you close shop yeah a little bit of both like we had a technology and technology developed that,was very capable of connecting to different inventory systems of local inventory stores.
[5:07] And that system then you could see what’s available so we sold that one which is nowadays called click and collect you know basically the back end stuff up behind that,the platform itself the big Marketplace which look like Amazon we close shop and let it go,and one of the major reasons back then was especially Visa problems you know that the investors the few that we had on board,back then Donald Trump got elected which is not a positive side immediately if you are not a Native American and what as Native American but the American.And yeah so that was enough 2016 and then the beginning of 2017 I moved back to Germany,and there you got again into the startup World working as an investment Scout rightyeah so back then it was a really interesting project I never really wanted to leave the state so I have plenty of job offers and also worked for ABC part-time in Austin and then had some job offers in New York City and Silicon Valley of.
[6:10] But there was one company which really yeah.
[6:15] Still cast it out somehow and that was Moya back than Moya was a very new brand of Volkswagen in a big car company.And they had this very massive brand of just purely investing in new Mobility startups and for that they set up this investment vehicle Moya,the few billion and potential investment sizes and.At least on paper my task should have been to travel around find the companies Scout them look out for them and then yeah.
[6:48] In ideal scenario put them over into a transaction with our finance and investment team that I was part of,and I already deduced from what you’re saying that it didn’t work out that way and then you went on to work with another startup called clever shuttle and my understanding is,out of there directly or indirectly you founded one to right,yeah correct so what happened at Moyer was that it was fun working there the team was super talented but again if you are coming from a start-up perspective from startup background you’re not used to corporate processes,and I think that was a deal killer for me that if you realize that things are taking.Probably 20 30 times longer than they should take that this is not the environment you want to work and so what I decided is I’m going to move to the competition which back then was called clever shuttle.And they were more agile than where the same thing in a different color but in a start-up mode.And for them I joined as the director for growth we did stuff like pros Business Development finance and especially fundraising.And was responsible for raising everything from Sears a to then the exit that they had.And after we trigger the VX of that was to dodge the ban which was where is still I think the biggest Railway operator in in the world probably.
[8:14] I was looking for a new challenge and then you challenge that I found there is what I was leading this team is that we are using.I don’t know I kind of tell but probably a hundred different fast tools and if you’ll eat these teams you constantly running in the same problems.
[8:31] If someone leaves the company you need to close all these accounts,you don’t know who was using what’s and you constantly even with the existing employees you constantly Chase invoice.And I just didn’t want to have this and this is why I ended up founding onetool which allows you to on and off Port all your employees to SAS tools and software with just one click.So you must imagine that as one dashboard where you just to one click to deactivate a user from all their tools rather than having to go into every tool like select Ray Lewis on I don’t know what individually.
[9:09] I have heard several times to stories that some,SAS tools actually send over physical mail with overdue invoices to companies for employees who left like half a year ago a year ago because nobody really closed thoseaccounts and that’s always Troublesome if you don’t have likeany means of overseeing who is using what on behalf of the company,it’s pretty easy for me I think I have a pretty good overview of what I’m personally using but as soon as you start to have like 50 people in different functions itit totally gets,crazy and if you don’t track it properly you’re already have a lot of spending wasteful spending plus you lacking the overview I think that that’s a point you’re going at right.
[10:06] These two things and that’s the one so first it’s of course you are overspending and we see you know roughly anywhere 15 to 20 percent over spending.And the second thing is the overview where you have Shadow it if you don’t have control over who is using what people just subscribe to random services and you looks complete track of it.And then the third one and that is I think getting more and more important to security,you know does it make sense when an employee who has been gone for six months still has access to certain tools it’s a really big security threat for you and you know should be worth all the money in the world to not let that happen.
[10:43] For everybody who was not working in the culprit we may explain what shadow at he is basically let’s say I’m working for company ex-wife said and I use my corporate card to reduce ter,something some sass account that I used for my job and then I filed the expenses with my travel expenses,and then at one point I leave and forget to cancel this and that’s basically first they’re still annoying sound running,maybe would data of the company and that the it and just the cybersecurity it and all the comeAldo other people in the company are not aware of and it’s a big problem especially for companies when they get bigger and bigger and bigger and that’s.Basically a point where two belief YouTube is extremely useful can you tell us a little bit about who is using your truth,not necessarily like reference customers we can also talk to them but I would talk like geography.Where the people are located I would like to talk about a size when does it make sense to start thinking about something like that and,best best cases not when you have a data breach incident due to an account an employee opened and then never gets closed but rather beforehand.
[12:11] Yeah I think the perfect and ideal demographic of a customer is firstly its most most likely a start-up anywhere maybe even already seed round 2 series C round.So what we’re saying is anywhere 50 to 500 employees and I think the most important thing is here that this startup is mostly using cloud-based applications means nothing on-premise which are locally installed,means pretty much every single modern startup is that.
[12:41] But Here Comes the more important thing that startup had already discussions internally if they wanted to have a fully fledged.Team with deaf UPS engineers and so on to develop very complicated and Implement very complicated Solutions.Or that start-up decided they going to put this on hold or don’t have the dedicated full-fledged it team yet to the very simple solution because this is where we differentiate from othersother solutions that are out there they allow you to do a similar stuff but it takes a set of 6 to 9 months,and our setup takes you maybe an hour maybe one and a half if you really really slow so on the other side we don’t go as deep.But it just works so if you want Flawless seamless Integrations that cover the basics and maybe a little bit more than the basics it’s awesome if you want something that goes very deep into some tools,but therefore doesn’t do any other tools for example then we’re not the right solution.
[13:42] Always thinking basically if you have installed something on premise that’s nothing I wouldworried too much about because it’s something and somebody ordered you have invoices you know where it is even in amaybe in a physical sense like it’s on this computer over there but would worry be as much Furniture is if my data is somewhere in the cloud and I think that is where you to come in you talking aboutstarting at 50 there will be a little bit higher than I would guess you could start and up to 500 why do you have a limitation of 500 or is it just a guesstimate,um so there’s you know wearing you incumbent in this market and,previously companies that are at the size starting at roughly 500 employees they’ve most likely already looked into a solution and back then we weren’t out there so most likely if they looked into a solution they found another one.
[14:38] No I’m not saying that these other Solutions they’re not great they probably are great use case some of them might not be 100% satisfied with them but for us the sales pitches way easier to companies that havethey don’t have a solution yet then to convince someone who already has a solution to switch over.I see see see and how does she to work let’s say.One or more of the roughly 7,000 entrepreneurs that listen to us every week is now interested of course they will be down here in the show notes link to your website and then they can learneverything but can you give us a little brief overview what the people would be to you how it would look like and how they actually,people like onboard meaning that they actually used to chew.Yes so let me try to put this into words because I know they pot apps,so first thing first when you decide if you wanted to like this or not is you’re using roughly anywhere 215 to some some customers even 150 SAS tools,now you know the most common ones are Office 365 G Suite or not Google workspace slack Trello Asana help spot these.
[15:59] Confluence.
[16:00] Now if you realize some of these tools of course chances are higher we only will also most likely have all the other tools integrated that you are awesome.Now in the first step when you sign up for one tool is we ask you to connect all the tools that you are using with our integration.
[16:19] Now if you let’s say we do that for slack it will show you a button connects like and you click on.When you click on connect it will auto forward you to the integration that we have with.So there will ask you for your slack username and your password you log in and you give us access for license creation and deactivation.And that takes you roughly 30 seconds for each tool so if you want to be part of one tool you’ve got to at least somehow know already which major tools you are using.
[16:52] Now let’s say you connected all your tools and that took you 30 minutes after that we will Auto pull all the information that we get from these tools.Means which users are on them what the email addresses are how much you’re spending on them which plants you’re on,and you will have that and a very nice overview and the overview can basically be categorized in two different ways,the first way is where we show you what tools you are using and what your overall spend for these tools is and the second view is where we show you which users are using which tools.
[17:29] Now this is just a very broad overview but what’s more importantly now is that we also pull your department infrastructure.And why that is important is because departments and teams use different kinds of tools and also different level of pricing.
[17:45] And what that does is if you want them to onboard a new employee we can say I want Joe menninger to be part of the market.
[17:54] And if we just type in general manager it will automatically create an email address for you.And then if we type in you belong to marketing it will Auto Select the tools that are required for you to use in marketing.So rather than going than into the 20 tools that I would have to create license for you individually,we could just go and click marketing click one click and you are on border to I don’t know it’s like a sauna Trello and all the other tools that you are using in.
[18:24] And the same thing vice versa also goes for off-boarding and also just removing someone from a tool who is still with the companyI was actually smiling because when you set the email I thought and that’s very thoughtful because before the creation before you’re introduced onetool actually a lot of people may have for several reasonsfor example that personal email addresses for this test Tuesday using professionally maybe for the reason that they want to.Sunset from home acts as a mobile or on a mobile device you cannot do from the company for whatever reason or maybe that they actually have the intention when I’m gone I can still use tool on company bill.All of that is possible not saying anybody’s doing that intentionally but that is something an entrepreneurneed to be concerned with and therefore are really really like what you guys are doing as people may know from our description you guys,haunting this tool but use you’ve also been in the Y combinator can you can you take us.Through this journey we already established you have an affinity for the United States and.
[19:48] But you founded the companyin Germany and how did you get like back to Y combinator how did it work out with the process and they have like between you and me and like 10 20 thousand people who are listening to this or watching this interview,any secret tips yes and yes Salah let’s go into it.The first thing is we never expect it to be to be part of Y combinator and the truth is when we apply for it I we already forgot that leave.
[20:22] So the way we got in I cannot even explain it myself yeah,but let’s start here like end of 2019 we found that onetool and was one tool you know the mission was always very big we wanted to simplify the way we manage SAS.
[20:38] And with that we got pretty quickly accepted to an accelerator which was called the German accelerator that one is also based in Silicon Valley it’s like for especially prestigious German companies for example in 26 was part of it.We met at for our audience that we’ve been at the German accelerated New York back in 2018 and of course we link the playlist from there and you’ve but I assumethat means you’ve been part of the start of not going to New York but going to Silicon Valley that’s correct great and,of course I have a very deep affiliation with with America and I never really wanted to leave the company I did though and I,I thought you know why not going back to where you started the other company because you know how the market Works how these people are.
[21:29] And so German accelerator was a first step towards it and what we pretty quickly found out that the market share between the people that we would like to Target or the companies.
[21:40] It’s way easier to sell to an American company because they’re way more Affiliated to SAS.In Europe it’s now slowly catching up but you know two years ago when we really started at or one and a half years ago it was way more America than it is today I would say right now it’s roughly 60 percent America 40%.Europe now at back then I remember exactly how we were sitting outside there was,late summer when we’re sitting on the bench and we had some friends that were at y combinator we talked how randomly it is to getting there and that I you know the chances I think somewhere 0.2 percent or so and,that it shouldn’t be worth applying for it because of that it’s a waste of time if you spend too much time for it.But nevertheless like beginning of 2000 now became beginning of November or I think end of October or November 2019.We all of the sudden got an email where it says hey you’re invited to the final y combinator interviews.And what happened is like oh yeah it seems like we applied so we look back at to our application,and it showed in the timestamps that we spent like 26 minutes or so on the actual filling out the.
[22:57] You know secret tips I know from so many people now that approached me that want to have tips on how to do the application that they spent way too much time on.Like what Vape y combinator really values is if you’re not overselling if you are honest and you’re just typing in what comes to your mind because that’s the real you and they want to see who’s the real you.And I think that’s was a reason why we maybe have been accepted to the final interview.
[23:23] So yeah then we flew to Paris and same thing again you go through a 15 or 10 to 15 minute high pressure interview where they asked you probably every 10 to 15 seconds in your.So you’ve got to be really concise with your answer.And same thing again once you get the yes for the interview a lot of companies prepare for like two three weeks in a row to try to go through every possible scenario.
[23:47] And back then we said no we’re not going to do this we are right now at that time we were in the web Summit in Lisbon so we have really busy presenting our start up there that we didn’t even have time to prepare for anything.So all we did is before the interview in Paris we said okay let’s just be confident.And be honest we this probably not a question we haven’t heard before and if there is let’s just admit that we don’t know the answer and that’s how we went into this batch after,after the interview we got asked by the head of admissions if we can send over our prototype so I think that’s a requirement that you have something that is,already kind of working and we did and then a week later we got the call that we were in and then.
[24:32] Three weeks later we moved to Silicon Valley that was the beginning of 2020 and then well,and then we went into y combinator unfortunately that’s what we have to say about this it was the chaos that,we’re Corona broke outs you know middle February everyone started to get very nervous by March everything was canceled and then even our demo day was not a real demo day anymore we officially had it but.You know everything was accommodated towards Corona which was,unfortunately unfortunate for us in that case the Key C and increase or decrease in interest.In you tool during times of Corona,that’s a good question because it we cannot really tell because we launched through y combinator so we launched doing Corona,so I think the interest is there what we are seeing and that’s a hypothesis that I have is that especially during the first month of Corona.
[25:33] No one had no one had any idea how to work and really remotely because let’s be honest everyone wants to be remote company but most companies are not and that led to that the people that are the decision makers don’t didn’t make decisions anymore which was hard for us,to sail.And now what we’re seeing is a phenomena which I think will be over soon is that people are tired and I think we see that’s especially in Europe that people.They’re not quick to respond they’re very slow and they.We assume that’s because as we are also quite tired from all these lockdowns and we can see it already in the American markets where things are picking up again and convert conversations are way more positive and we have here.So I think this will be something for the history in terms of also maybe later for PhD candidates to research about this impacted sales and you know psychologies of sales.So you guys really did the tough thing launching during the time.Of coronavirus you guys lunch your tool in 2020 and before that you started in 2019 so I follow you guys find it did did you bootstrap at the beginning they did you getexternal funding from the start how did it work.But we were very lucky to have H TGIF which is I think Germany’s biggest investor pretty quickly on board.
[26:55] So when we found that the company that was in July 2019 when we first started you know just slowly going into it we bootstrap for a few months.And then by October we already with with the acceptance to White Community we also have the.The precede rotten H TGIF already in our bank account.We met that likes the CEO of H TT F Europe’s Most,Tiff seed investor was published in December 2020 and if you go down here in assurance of course we will link this interview there as well.
[27:36] Yep so what happened after that of course you’ll being in y combinator and lots of investors approach you but also truth to be told this was Corona time and I remember exactly like.Sequoia was one of the fun sending out this big memo in March 2020 where it says.To every investor would basically said please don’t invest right now just take care of your portfolio companies so it was incredibly hard for us to race at that point.We raised in total until now 1.65 million so we raised a little bit more.After y combinator with a few selected VC’s.And will most likely go into the next round very soon yeah but we’ll see what happens.
[28:23] And of course every investor is interested go down here in the show notes stays your personal LinkedIn profile that can link Reach Out,directly to you we are already running a little bit longer,then we all rich the sign for this interview so I would like to thank you very much for your time,if you don’t give this possible best of luck and of course we will keep track of you guys as well thank you very much I appreciate your time was fun talking to you it was totally my pleasure thank you very much bye bye.Faith if you are a professional looking at the European startup scene Germany is a place you cannot miss.
[29:10] Music.
[29:19] Each week most likely you have never heard or read anything only startups before in English but you will in the future be ahead of the curve And subscribe to.
[29:30] Music.
Comentarios