The Blue Team

CHAPTER 12. Auf Wiedersehen Berlin

We continued our German journey with a very interesting company with a successful entrepreneur of the German Startup Ecosystem: David Nothacker from Sennder. 

Sennder is a digital road freight logistics partner when it comes to Full Truck Loads (FTL). As Europe’s leading forwarder, they offer their shippers access to their connected fleet of thousands of trucks. By leveraging their proprietary technology, they are taking logistics in a new direction and bring a new degree of transparency and flexibility to the industry. Taking such a unique approach, they save money for their shippers, increase earnings for their carriers whilst reducing carbon waste.

As most of our readers know, Sennder is actually a great story of success resulting from an INSEAD project. Starting from this experience, David has shared with us great insights about entrepreneurship and the ability to reinvent the business as much as needed to succeed. Needless to say, the Sennder business model has proven to be successful in countries around Europe – and it is part of a larger trend of platform business that have shown spectacular growth in recent years. 

Thank you, David Nothacker,  for all the insights on how to better approach entrepreneurship and refine the approach for assessing the main issues in the supply chain.

Our final visit in Germany was with INSEAD Alumni Kai Von Ludwig. We discussed his first venture into entrepreneurship through succession by acquiring a small company which he exited after 3 years. We then discussed his current venture Aleria GmbH which is inspired by succession building. Aleria GmbH has been established as a medical doctor’s partnership, which offers innovative and flexible succession solutions for independent outpatient dialysis doctors in Germany. For independent dialysis doctors, to whom it becomes more and more difficult to find individual medical doctors willing to buy out and settle as successors of their outpatient dialysis centres, Aleria GmbH represents an alternative to selling the outpatient dialysis centre to industrial groups. This meeting was a great way to end our tour in Berlin with a key take away for entrepreneurs, SMEs can be a great alternative to startups and some have great potential for optimisation.