To have an opinion on the Samwer brothers' creation communicates a certain aesthetics of work, answering questions like: . For entrepreneurs who prefer to fly under the radar, the Samwers were left exposed. "My younger brother is probably the most intelligent and my older brother is probably the best at execution -- I'm somewhere in the middle," he says. "From a business point of view, it's the fastest-growing business ever," Glaenzer says. The business strategy lauded by the company sprang up from their first success with Alando. Entrepreneurial families should therefore ask themselves, if they can pinpoint their common future goals with the same precision as they did for the rocket mission. Oliver takes issue with the prevailing notion that he and his brothers are driven purely by money. Instead, creating new business models even with less technology and simpler solutions can often be the right approach. How do. many hopeful entrepreneurs, the people behind Rocket Internet (Rocket) are arguably the most successful in building new companies based on existing business models. Rocket Internet became famous (and feared) for beeing the most successful and most aggressive clone factory for startups - on a global scale. 1. The Samwer brothers took their company Rocket internet (that became infamous in the mid 2000s for copying business ideas from elsewhere and launching them in Germany) privat after about 6 years, when the share price was a fraction of its IPO price. They sold thatto Verisign in 2004 for $273 million. Samwer: When you start working for Rocket, you learn a lot; not only about business, but also about yourself. ", The Samwers remained at eBay for a year, before leaving to create Jamba!, a mobile-phone-content platform. What is the importance of the Samwers brothers? ", Oliver Samwer and Stefan Glaenzer both mention the Japanese automobile sector when explaining how copying can foster innovation. A recent fundraise and indications of an IPO for the Samwer brother's company-of-companies Rocket Internet has caused some to scratch their heads, questioning the validity of a >$5B valuation. You could argue that unless the Samwer brothers did what they did, there wouldn't be a SoundCloud." Germanys Samwer Brothers To Become Billionaires With Rocket Internet IPO. Google killed them because they did it better. This statement, however, made many smile condescendingly. "We had one person focusing on stamp dealers, one person focusing on consumer electronics etc," Oliver says. My first venture firm provided the initial capital to do that. "I very rarely do interviews -- almost never," says Oliver Samwer across a conference table in the brothers' venture capital firm, the European Founders Fund, in Munich on a late September afternoon. "Copycats are not companies that work on ideas and make them a little better, they simply try to copy it and sell it very fast," Reber says. The examples of the founding brothers Albrecht (Aldi), or the Dassler brothers (Adidas on the one hand and Puma on the other), or the Strngman brothers (Hexal), Chandler brothers (Legatum and Chandler Crop in Asia), or even international entrepreneurial families like the Rothschilds, that emerged from father and sons, indicate that brothers who work together and set up one or even more companies can very well become the roots of successful family firms. Mentorship: Mentorship? The importance of the Samwers brothers. Talking about the Samwer brothers and Rocket Internet in the US will often lead to chuckles and mentions of 'clones' and 'copycats'. The case Samwer: All cooperation between the Samwer brothers as owners and their externally staffed management teams is governed by absolute unanimity of interests with regard to reaching the defined goal: Becoming number one or two in those markets that are to be conquered by the relevant companies. Now the brothers are facing more than peer disapproval. That success would provide the blueprint for the next decade. Oliver Samwer, one of the three Samwer brothers who own the e-commerce building beast that is Rocket Internet isn't interested in being part of a league of innovators. The only reason I remember it for was the massive stink that caused. In this portfolio, the individual companies are always strategically connected to their other shareholdings. These ideas, it turns out, will be executed without the help of two of the four managing directors who were running Rocket Internet until recently. This means that for every current and future problem that every manager in one off. In many respects, traditional entrepreneurial families have already separated themselves from the companies they have founded, or have advanced into further markets and business models. This became very apparent by the often quoted Blitzkrieg e-mail. What would happen if they left or sold the company? The brothers say they sent several emails to eBay suggesting that the company establish an online auction platform in Germany, and that they should be hired to run it. August 1972) und Alexander Samwer (* 31. The Russian-born US billionaire Leonard Blawatnik reportedly just invested $200 million in the company. "The reason we exist is because of the Samwers, because they have demonstrated that we are able to create fast-growing startups [in Berlin]," he says. Rocket Internet recently sold its remaining stake in Zalando, which is valued at around $5 billion, to the Swedish investment company Kinnevik, one of Rocket's main investors, though the Samwer . Oliver Samwer (left) and his brother Marc Samwer (right) at the DLD Conference in Munich in 2010. CEO Oliver Samwer (M) with board member Alexander Kudlich (l) and CFO Peter Kimpel at the IPO in Frankfurt am . The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. The success of the German eBay also alerted major US tech firms to the potency of the market in Germany. Just months after the startling IPO of Rocket Internet, Oliver Samwer and . Current challenges of entrepreneurial families: It is often hard for traditional entrepreneurial families not to place their history but their real core competencies in the focus of their considerations, to benchmark with new markets and technological fields, and to adapt their competencies, if necessary.. A concerted external action will give additional strength. In 1998, the Samwers lived in San Francisco and studied many of the companies emerging in Silicon Valley, with Oliver co-authoring a book on his findings entitled Americas Most Successful Startups. Operating through their Headquartered in Berlin and oper-ating with local offices worldwide, Rocket Internet has launched more than 100 companies, With a raft of innovative startups expanding from Berlin -- including SoundCloud, ReadMill and Amen -- Reber thought the time had come to send a message. Back then, the American companys ascent to $1 billion in gross sales gave the Samwers proof that global e-commerce would be a rapidly evolving industry, where companies that established themselves quickly and executed well could dominate their local markets. Current challenges of entrepreneurial families: Master International Marketing and Brand Management, Courage News: Educating Latin American MBA Students on Innovation Made in Germany, MBA Students Take off to Singapore for Their Second International Week, How Products Can Make People Happy and Make the World a Better Place: Happiness Coffee Afternoon With Guya Merkle and Josephine Dransfeld. Alexander SamwerMarc Samwer So why are they so vilified? Over the next few years, the brothers invested in German versions of YouTube (MyVideo), Twitter (Frazr) and Facebook (StudiVZ), as well as other technology properties based on US models. That act was followed by the backing of StudiVZ, the German clone of Facebook, as well as a smart investment of more than $10 million in Mark Zuckerbergs company in 2008. Sure." How it works . Plus: Microsoft fixes several zero-day bugs, Google patches Chrome and Android, Mozilla rids Firefox of a full-screen vulnerability, and more. In 2014 Rocket Internet switched its legal form to an AG (IPO around the corner). he sighs. He speculated that Berlin's Mitte district had become the global centre for cloning digital businesses, and called on investors and entrepreneurs to summon "the courage to think big and try to improve the world rather than chase the fast buck". Whether we're talking about art, music, culture, software, technology: come on, what isn't derivative?" Rocket Internet specializes in replicating the same business model and technology platform in multiple countries at once. In an industry that celebrates innovation, the Samwers are not originators, but they are extremely effective in their chosen field: they see concepts that are working in the US or Asia and replicate the approach for new markets with high barriers of entry. Oliver says that coming of age in the mid 90s was a "lucky accident", as the internet was transforming business. Rather, he suggests that what galvanises them is winning: "To prove over and over again that we're the best," he explains. By August 2000, they founded Jamba!, a wireless content provider that had pictures, games and music for mobile phones. Did someone write that Dixons copied Best Buy, or did anyone ever write that Best Buy copied Dixons, or that [German electronics retailer] Media Markt copied Dixons? Q: What is the importance of cultural empathy to foreign marketers? Lessons Learned: Traditional entrepreneur families may learn from the Samwer brothers that this very routine of constant development should be the heart and center of all business, and that only constantly challenging what is taken for granted including ones own position and rules plus launching into new markets and technological fields will, at least to some extent, ensure long-term survival. "Never. That is why today, they are present in Southeast Asia, Africa or Latin America. Oliver Samwer and his brothers Alexander and Marc founded Berlin-based tech incubator Rocket Internet in 2007 and took it public in October 2014. Website or App cloning is absolutely legal unless you are breaching their IPs, copyright, patents or trade marks of existing businesses. It has helped create and launch over 100 start-ups and is . "You haven't arrived until your web application has a German clone it seems," TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington mused back in 2008. "We took it into our own hands and didn't wait for the market to be founded. "Give me a break, OK. Whose idea isn't derivative? Rocket Internet shares initially rose on the news Tuesday morning, before falling around 1.3%. On its website, Rocket states that it supports companies in more than 20 countries. It starts, develops and funds e-commerce and other online consumer businesses. Moreover, it is obvious that none of the brothers seeks to appear in the press as often as possible, or to be more important than the other. We are growing in number of people and companies every month. A broader range of products is promised. In 2007, they founded Rocket Internet, their Berlin-based incubator that's often derided as a clone factory. In addition, they look for growth markets, where they can quickly implement their business models and where they can quickly become market leader. They have used their profits to invest in Facebook, LinkedIn and Zynga. To bolster his argument, he mentions a recent Reuters story about Groupon turning to executives from Citydeal to help boost slowing growth in the former's US business ahead of a planned IPO. Its name would say something about its mission: Rocket Internet. Currently, Oliver Samwer is the CEO of Rocket Internet. It's like attending a mini business school for entrepreneurship.". 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