Markt-Pilot founder Tobias Rieker on founding in lockdown, an outstanding investor pitch and the right mix between innovation and down-to-earthness

"We wanted to show it to Corona and everyone."

You can listen to the full podcast episode here. (German)

Tobias Rieker founded the software start-up "Markt-Pilot" on 4.4.2020, the exact date of the first lockdown. "We wanted to show Corona and everyone," the founder comments on the somewhat unconventional decision: "We had the attitude: now more than ever."

The software developed by Markt-Pilot helps mechanical engineering companies price their spare parts for sale in line with the market:

 "We have developed a software solution that, for the very first time, brings transparency to the spare parts business of mechanical engineering companies," explains Tobias Rieker.

In concrete terms, this means that Markt-Pilot's business customers are able to view the prices, availability and delivery times for spare parts. Thanks to this information, they can set the price for their own spare parts for sale based on a realistic assessment of market conditions.  

Even though this B2B business model may seem a bit dull to some, don't let that fool you: Markt-Pilot and its founding team are a lot more unconventional than they seem at first glance. 

For example, Tobias Rieker surprised investors during a pitch by unceremoniously adding a live customer. But this was far from the only aspect of the pitch that the Markt-Pilot team approached a little differently.

"We only had 10 slides at the time,"

the founder explains, "But what we did have was a very strong and structured backup. Whenever a question came up, we could answer it with the backup."

He advises other young entrepreneurs to prepare well, but to resist the temptation to cram everything into the presentation: 

"Your counterpart already knows what he wants to ask. One investor puts more emphasis on traction, another on the founding team, and the third on the business model. Nevertheless, as a founder you usually know the questions or have at least heard them before. So you can deep dive on any topic and need to be prepared for what's coming."

Market Pilot has by no means taken the usual route when it comes to the timing of the company's founding, either. Launching a startup always takes courage. Doing so at a time when no one knew what was coming with Corona required a double dose of courage. Nevertheless, the decision was not based on pure recklessness. Because Tobias Rieker had done his homework here, too: 

"We took a very scientific look at the whole issue," explains the young entrepreneur: "After looking at service aftersales data from other crises, we realized that this business area is actually a pillar of support during the crisis. The data showed that mechanical engineering companies usually don't sell machines in times of crisis and only rarely buy new machines, but sales from aftersales and service remain the same or even increase."

In addition, Markt-Pilot had another decisive advantage: an initial version of the software already existed. He explains how this came about with the following anecdote: 

"The boss at my first company asked me to come up with a strategy for the sales pricing of our 12,000 spare parts. The bottom line was that as part of this task, I discovered that you can benchmark a lot with research. I then started my little one-man business and continued to do that while studying at my home office. At some point, I had the idea to automate the whole thing. My current co-founder and CTO Armin then wrote me the first system that took data from the Internet."

Founding in the middle of the Corona crisis was nevertheless not always easy: 

"We had to react at very short notice and be very dynamic in terms of the many issues that came flying at us at the time. For example, the co-working space at our university that we were using at the time closed down from one day to the next."

Despite these difficulties, Tobias Rieker believes that the initial trial by fire actually did Market Pilot good overall: 

"We had to develop a business model that is very resistant to crises," reflects the young entrepreneur. "I wouldn't have wished for Corona, but it also played into our cards a bit. Because the digitalization push forced by the pandemic showed the rather conservative engineering industry that digital is not the devil's stuff, but also provides great benefits." 

Last but not least, the world situation at the time trained the Markt-Pilot team from the very beginning to act flexibly, find new solutions, and at the same time keep their feet firmly on the ground. It was precisely this mixture of being down-to-earth and thinking differently that led, for example, to handwritten letters now being a permanent part of Markt-Pilot's sales. The start-up founder explains how this came about in the following words: 

"In 2020, we sent our customers a bottle of wine at Christmas and a few handwritten personal words. The customers then called at some point and thanked us, but never for the bottle of wine, but for the letter. That gave us the idea of turning it into a sales channel. Today, we write very appreciative handwritten letters to potential customers. In some cases, customers even call us on their own afterwards. In any case, the conversion rate is many times higher than with classic e-mails or cold calls."

In general, he advises other founders to go their own way: 

"Many founders run after some role models. Being authentic and staying true to yourself is incredibly important."  

From his point of view, the crisis forced his team and himself to also consider unconventional approaches to solving the problem right from the start: 

"I don't know if this different thinking would have come if we hadn't had the Covid challenge,"

the founder says looking back.

The example of Markt-Pilot shows us that even a mechanical engineering software company from Esslingen can cause quite a few surprises. If you want to find out why Tobias Rieker decided to start up away from Berlin and why he likes to plan the following week on Friday, then listen in to the podcast.

You can listen to the full podcast episode here. (German)