IHappy people work in Grosse Theaterstrasse next to the State Opera. Generously proportioned office spaces with deep windows are distributed around a lounge – with a coffee bar, a table football table, beer fridges and an adjoining roof terrace that looks more like a hip café than a company canteen. A few young people are sitting in front of their laptops.
Just a few months ago, the Hamburg-based market research company Appinio moved into the almost 1,000 square meter floor. 80 of the 150 employees worldwide have a desk here – but can work where they want. “Whether you are sitting here or in Bali is of secondary importance to me – you can do your job from anywhere,” says founder and CEO Jonathan Kurfess.
New structures: role models Facebook and Netflix
It is important to the 31-year-old that his employees enjoy coming to work like himself. “I am an idealist. For me, a good corporate culture is one that follows a positive image of human beings and assumes that everyone wants to give their best first. ”Kurfess considers too much control or pressure from employers to be superfluous and traditional, he relies on the intrinsic motivation of each individual .
“The people I hire are experts in their fields – I can’t tell them how to do their job anyway. It is my job to create the right framework conditions. ”US companies such as Facebook and Netflix showed the way – Kurfess recently announced an“ Unlimited Vacation ”rule: everyone can take as much vacation as they want, there is a limit it not.
The Hamburg-based company is thus following a trend that has not yet had many followers in Germany. Rethinking structures and going your own way – this drive led to the founding of Appinio in 2014. Based on the function of social networks, in which users share their opinion in posts, Kurfess and his team developed an app on which everyone can register for free and take part in surveys in a gamified form.
Companies, in turn, have the option of directing surveys to precisely defined target groups. “In the past, the processes in market research were slow and expensive, and the data quality was poor in the end – now we can deliver representative studies extremely quickly for every topic and every product,” says Kurfess.
First a revolution in market research, now one in capitalism? “We have defined four values for ourselves: Positivity, Ambition, Ownership, Care: We want to be positive and ambitious, think entrepreneurially and take care of one another,” said Kurfess. His employees have maximum flexibility in terms of workplace, time and organization, and he expects entrepreneurial thinking from each and every one of them. “I would like everyone to act like mini-CEOs out of attachment to Appinio and take responsibility. Each of us 120 colleagues is one hundred twentieth of the company. “
Jonathan Kurfess is a self-made entrepreneur, he created the start-up from nothing. He grew up with his single mother, a psychotherapist. After graduating from Walddorf School, he completed a dual course of study at the Hamburg School of Business Administration, learned business basics on the one hand and working as an employee on the other.
He was not taught how to run a company. A short time later, however, he and two friends founded Appinio in the windowless storage room of a befriended start-up – “without a lot of professional experience, without money, without financing, without expectations”, as he says. But with the freedom to design your own company the way you like it.
And that is: striving for more than just maximizing profits. Appinio now has more than 1000 corporate customers worldwide, and this year the start-up has broken the double-digit million mark in sales. Appinio does not depend on institutional investors who regularly show interest. Kurfess: “It doesn’t matter to me if a fund says my company is worth so much – that’s just the financial dimension. What is more important to me is how my employees and customers rate the company and that what we do makes sense. Working is not just about making money. “
Kurfess wants to do nothing less than improve the world – and also take on greater responsibility: Ten percent of sales or one percent of profit – whichever is higher – should be used from this year to counteract the climate crisis. The money is to go to the Hamburg cooperative project The Generation Forest, a separate foundation is being set up. “The more successful we are, the more good we can do – the more good we do, the more meaningful we feel at work,” he says.
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