This week Austria’s biggest quality newspaper Der Standard published an interview with Jumio founder Daniel Mattes (both print and online). Not wanting to sound too lofty, but an interview with Founder D is – luckily – a regular occurance. This particular interview is mentionable, however.
Why?
Firstly, it’s a bit longer. The author is an expert in Web/IT/Start-Up issues (and so are the readers), so the conversation was held at a high level. Since the interview didn’t get stripped down, Daniel had the chance to elaborate on his motivation behind his new venture Jumio.
Call Daniel what you will, but he approached the massive footsteps he and Roman Scharf left with Jajah very analytical. Three Internet “problems” persist: Legitimate content, hyperlocal (bringing the Internet into your neighbourhood) and payment. And payment is the problem Jumio is attempting to tackle, since the solutions require dealing with more than just technical capabilities. National and global regulations, a certain amount of funding. Probably not an area for first-time start-ups.
Daniel secondly talked at length about the operational side of running a start-up. How he took some of the core team of Jajah to set up Jumio (both development and marketing). Why is it easier to function in the Silicon Valley? (‘Cause everyone is there. Everwhere you go everyone has everything to do with the Start-up scene.) How to get from Upper Austria to Cali-for-nigh-ey? Do the trip to the Valley and use the countless networking events that happen every day to mix and mingle (True dat).
And you can’t help but read between the lines how much Daniel enjoys doing what he’s doing. True to Austrian online media culture there is a lot of envy and bickering in the comments below the article. For us, this is both motivation and – sounding lofty again here – entertaining.
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