St.Gallen has gained a new start-up: Michael Pertek is founding the digital transformation agency “diselva” with nine other members. Aren’t ten founding members “too many”?
The ten of them are founding the digital agency diselva. Why did the time come now? How did you come up with the idea?
I would ask “Why not now”? The best time to take your fate into your own hands is in the past. The second best is today. We have thought carefully about this step into self-employment and are leaving our comfort zone for it. We didn’t 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 conditions in a self-determined way. Belief in us combined with the ability to be independent and self-reliant tipped the scales.
How do you feel about each other within the founding team?
We have all known each other for a very long time, some for almost 20 years. For many years, we have worked in a wide variety of roles and together at the St.Gallen full-service agency Namics. That’s where we have our common roots. We are a very well-rehearsed team, appreciate each other, work excellently and, above all, enjoy working together. Not least because private friendships have developed from professional relationships.
Ten founding members “sound” like a lot at first, keyword “too many cooks spoil the broth”. How does the cooperation with each other work?
Our cooperation has been established over the years. We have worked on projects and challenges as a team and developed solutions for countless customers. In order to make these projects successful, we need different disciplines or, as you say, the different chefs. This interdisciplinarity does not spoil the broth, it rather ensures that we can develop extraordinary solutions with and for our customers. We also deliberately offer a working environment that is characterized by trust, co-determination and exchange at eye level. This, too, is not an end in itself. However, we are convinced that this is the only way we can create the conditions to work successfully and innovatively. This conviction is reflected in a modern understanding of leadership.
Together with customers, they 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 tackled properly. That’s what we stand for. Over the past ten years, we have developed, further developed and sharpened methods in many customer relationships that pay off precisely in this respect. We are able to structure the digital transformation, put it on roadmaps and make investment recommendations so that the process becomes digestible for companies. However, we don’t just produce paper, we deliver actionable results. These can be architectural concepts, entire business transformations or concrete software development projects. Examples of applications include 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 during the start-up? What did you struggle with the most?
The biggest challenge was certainly the decision-making process 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. However, 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 been talking about what we are doing, the reactions have been overwhelming and so far only positive. We are very pleased about this and it 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 on the market in a sustainable way.
What, on the other hand, went more smoothly than planned?
Since we all already have a lot of experience and we have people in the group who have already run companies, everything went pretty well until the start-up. A very pleasant experience was finding office space. In addition to job sharing, we have now also established office sharing. When we started looking for office space, the Lerchenfeld housing cooperative offered us permission to start in their premises, which we gratefully accepted, of course. 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 are certainly also benefiting from the environment in St. Gallen. For example, we had contact with Startfeld and the IT cluster “IT St. Gallen rocks!”.
Where do you stand at the moment?
We have been in existence as a company since the beginning of February, have been working on our service portfolio and since yesterday we have started to actively talk about ourselves, our history and, above all, our offer. Now it’s time to work on the market, have many discussions with potential customers and then hopefully be able to write concrete offers as soon as possible and convince customers that it is valuable to work with us. And to be honest, we are currently enjoying the start-up feeling and the freedom of choice.
What are the next goals and projects that you are tackling?
We want to make our high standards for ourselves a reality in customer projects and keep our performance promise accordingly. Otherwise, it is certainly the establishment of the diselva brand as a reliable partner in the digital transformation of companies.
If we get to the kind of projects we would like to have, we will soon encounter the challenge of being able to ensure our scalability. But we are prepared for that. We will establish a number of partnerships in the coming weeks and expand our own delivery capability.