from Michael Pertek at
St.Gallen has a new start-up: Michael Pertek and nine other members have founded the digital transformation agency "diselva". Are ten founding members not "too much"?
Ten of you are founding the digital agency diselva. Why did the time come exactly now? How did you come up with the idea?
I would ask "Why not now"? The best time to take your destiny into your own hands is in the past. The second best is today. We have thought carefully about this step into self-employment and have left our comfort zone for it. We did not take this step with our backs to the wall, but because we believe in ourselves as a group and in our service portfolio. We are convinced that success in our industry requires certain prerequisites. We want to create these prerequisites in a self-determined manner. The belief in ourselves combined with the possibility of being independent and self-reliant has been the deciding factor.
How do you relate to each other within the founding team?
We have all known each other for a very long time, in some cases for almost 20 years. For many years, we worked in a wide variety of roles and together at the St.Gallen-based full service agency Namics. That's where we have our common roots. We are a very well-coordinated team, we appreciate each other, we work excellently and, above all, we enjoy working together. Not least because private friendships have grown out of professional relationships.
Ten founding members "sound" like a lot at first, catchword "too many cooks spoil the broth". How is the cooperation between the members going?
Our collaboration has been well established over the years. We have worked on projects and challenges as a team for countless customers and developed solutions. To make these projects successful, we need different disciplines or, as you say, the different cooks. This interdisciplinarity does not spoil the broth, it ensures much more that we can create exceptional solutions with and for our clients. We also deliberately offer a working environment that is characterized by trust, co-determination and exchange at eye level. This is not an end in itself either. However, we are convinced that this is the only way to create the conditions for working successfully and innovatively. This conviction is reflected in a modern understanding of leadership.
Together with customers, you develop solutions that have a sustainable and long-term positive effect on the business. Where exactly do you start with digital transformation?
First and foremost, we want to help our customers structure the Digital Transformation and guide it in the right direction. This transformation process is a challenge and must be approached properly. That is what we stand for. Over the past ten years, we have developed, refined, and sharpened methods in many customer relationships that pay precise attention to this. We are able to structure the Digital Transformation, put it on roadmaps and make investment recommendations so that the process becomes digestible for companies. In doing so, however, we do not just produce paper, but deliver actionable results. These can be architecture concepts, entire business transformations or concrete software development projects. Examples of applications are customer portals, eCommerce, CRM, website or individual development projects.
The economy is still going through turbulent times after Corona. How big were the challenges you faced at the start-up? What did you have to struggle with the most?
The biggest challenge was definitely the decision-making itself. Many of our co-founders have families and other commitments. It takes a lot of conversations in the private sphere. And in the end, it takes courage to take the step into self-employment, to leave the safe haven of employment. But the desire to become self-employed and to take advantage of the opportunities that arise from it are far greater than the concern about the imponderables. Since we have started talking about what we are doing, the reactions have been overwhelming and so far exclusively positive. That makes us very happy and gives us further tailwind. Nevertheless, we are aware that nice words are not enough. In the end, we have to prove that we can sell our services sustainably on the market.
What, on the other hand, went smoother than planned?
Since we all already have some experience and we have people in the group who have also run companies, everything went pretty well until the startup. A very pleasant experience was finding office space. We have now established office sharing in addition to job sharing. When we started looking for office space, the Wohnbaugenossenschaft Lerchenfeld offered us the opportunity to start in their premises, which we of course gratefully accepted. It was also very helpful that we all had a good network and thus had access to people who could and wanted to help us. We certainly also benefited from the environment in St. Gallen. For example, we had contact with Startfeld and the IT cluster "IT St. Gallen rocks!
Where do you currently stand?
We have existed as a company since the beginning of February, we have been working on our portfolio of services and since yesterday we have started to actively talk about ourselves, our history and especially our offer. Now we have to work the market, have many conversations with potential customers and then hopefully as soon as possible we will be allowed to write concrete offers and convince customers that it is value-adding to work with us. And to be quite honest, we are currently enjoying the start-up feeling and the freedom to make decisions.
What are the next goals and projects you are tackling?
We want to make the high standards we set for ourselves a reality in customer projects as well and deliver on our performance promise accordingly. Otherwise, it's certainly establishing the diselva brand as a reliable partner in the digital transformation of companies.
When we get to the kind of projects we would like to have, we will quite soon encounter the challenge of being able to ensure our scalability. However, we are prepared for that. We will establish some partnerships in the coming weeks and expand our own delivery capabilities.
Die Ostschweiz published 19.02.2023
