#7 From a Side Hustle to Running an IT Consulting & Development Company in Switzerland[Escape Your Boring Job Stories]
By: Ivana Mitrović
Tags: Life Purpose, Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Journey, Career Change, Purpose Driven Life

I’m interviewing Mario Burger today, the co-founder and CEO of Simpit, an IT consulting and development company.

Can you please introduce yourself?

I’m Mario, I’m 28 year-old CEO of Simpit, a small B2B IT company, which mainly works for other SME businesses in Switzerland. We have three departments: engineering, business application development, and digital consulting. I would describe myself as a technology enthusiasts and an engineer. I like a lot of stuff also in my private life; everything that’s fast, loud, dangerous, or in combination, like cars and motorbikes, water sports. I started kite surfing two years ago. I generally have really wide interests, but technology is my passion. I like to try new things in the technology world. I’m also interested in politics, economics and I’ve started to study economy part-time because I realised I desperately need it for my business.

You also studied IT?

Yes, but that’s not fully correct. I studied electrical engineering at ETH Zurich and my focus was more on microchip engineering, embedded systems, computer architecture, network and security, and not particularly IT or software engineering. I was working as a web programmer throughout my studies together with my current business partner and co owner, Dario Bosch, as a side job. In the last few years of university, I finally decided to open Simpit and I ended up in the IT world.

Are you still coding or just managing the company?

I also do coding, although not as much as I actually would like to code. At first, I coded a lot, and as the company started growing, I realized I really need to get more into management. That was the reason why I started studying economics.

You also worked at a university

I worked as a teaching assistant at ETH, and I discovered that I like teaching. I also give some lessons…in another school, which is not an university… So in Switzerland, there are a lot of different types of studies you can do. Hochcshule, called in German, I also teach there, but only a few evenings a month.

How did you start teaching at ETH?

I was working as an assistant, training students for the exams or for doing the exercises. There are jobs for students at the university where you can teach younger students and I enjoyed it. I love seeing other people using this knowledge to fulfill their jobs or to fulfill their dreams, to see that they manage to do something because I was teaching them. They offered me the job as a docent professor at the school because they were desperately looking for someonewho can teach electrical engineering.

When did you first decide to become an entrepreneur?

I’ve never got up in the morning and said, I am an intrepreneur now. It was more a gradual process. As I said, I was working part-time during my university, just as a side job. After we opened Simpit, it was somehow more official. At first, I was working from home environment. I’ve never planned being an entrepreneur. I also tried to find a part-time job. It was challenging to find a part-time job in engineering. People generally don’t like if you want to do something on your own, they are afraid that you are good in something and then you’ll leave. I went to an event where you can apply and get jobs… you go from counter to counter and everyone offers you a job. All of them wanted to hire me because I was studying at ETH. I was a good student but I always ask them, is it possible to work part-time at your company? And then they were looking at me as I just landed in the spaceship…”Why do you want to work part-time?” And I just said, I want to build something of my own. And their response was “oh, that’s a pity.” Irealized that, as soon as I said it, they were not interested to hire me anymore. I already had officially founded my company. I was trying to find a part-time job, but I couldn’t found one. Actually I found one for a short period. I’d got an assignment, and I programmed an app for refugees in Africa, but for two months only. Luckily, we had more and more assignments from clients, so I never needed a side job in the end.

How did you find your first client?

There was a small graphics agency we were working with. They were doing websites for clients and they didn’t have a programmer, so they were looking for programmers that can actually develop their sites. When you have your first client, then they recommend you, and that’s how you find another client and so on.

When did you hire more people for your company?

At first, I was on my own, Dario was my business partner. He was still studying and working part-time. A year later, he also started working full-time in Simpit. We had more and more clients and we always had enough work for both of us. It was always my dream to be an entrepreneur, but the most decisive step was when we got our first office. I realized, there is no turning back now, I am an entrepreneur. This was also the moment when we hired our first apprentice. The company was founded in the end of 2015 and we rented the office at 2018, around two years later.

How is it to work in the IT industry here in Switzerland?

It’s interesting, but it’s also tough. Swiss people generally are more hesitant when it comes to trying innovative things, compared to maybe the US. You Ivana, are in Zug, in the Crypto Valley and you’re surrounded by really innovative and crazy guys who love new things. That’s not the average Swiss citizen. What I actually realized is that Switzerland is not as far when it comes to IT, as people generally think. This is especially true when you look at the Swiss SME companies. I have read a study, the Swiss economy is made of by 99.8% of SME companies. That’s amazing. I couldn’t believe this. I thought half of the companies are big companies like UBS…I was surprised to hear this. And 70% of the people are employed by SMEs. So actually the heart of the Swiss industry is the SME companies, although you never hear about them because they are small companies with 10 or 20 employees. A lot of things are still done manually and people are not so eager to try out new things. You need to convince them that you have a way to make their business better. As I said, when you’re in Zug, in the Crypto Valley space and you have all these startup companies around and everyone is enthusiastic about technology, it’s much easier to convince someone to try out a new web application or something like this. But if you want to convince a small business owner to change the way of how their business works, it’s much more difficult. People need to come to you with a problem and to want you to solve it, then it’s easy. But that means getting new clients out of the blue is really, really hard in Switzerland.

Dealing with clients

I must say I love it! I love programming, but I couldn’t be a programmer and code all day long. I really like both; working on a really tough technical issue, but I also like to make clients happy and see them working with our software. Sometimes it can be demanding. Some customers, they don’t feel the ease with new technology. The very fast pace of the environment today is challenging for them, and they’re a little bit afraid. Sometimes they have little or no technology understanding, so I need to help them to understand some basic facts in order to work with them. Usually, this pays off because if you convince people and you solve their problems, they are generally happy. And they will recommend you to their friends. That’s why I actually love working with clients too.

Have you ever managed to convince your client that your idea was better than theirs?

As a consulting company, you have to keep looking for new clients. It’s not like you create a product, you program it once, and sell it a thousand times. You’re working on individual projects for the clients. And if you’re lucky, the clients find it cool and they want to go on and improve things even more. They give you more projects, but still, you have to keep looking for new clients all the time. You cannot make one big marketing concept where you sell your product and have a fixed income stream. You can improve your products, but you really need to work on getting new clients all the time. The most often I manage to convince them that the solution I was proposing is the better one. If you rationally explain that to clients, they usually understand. If you have studied ETH for example, if you have a degree, they generally accept you as a very proficient expert, even though I’m an electrical engineer and not an IT expert. It’s not so hard to convince them to do something else.

How did you meet your co-founder?

We were friends for a long time. We met in high school. He was convincing me to try squash, and since then I play squash. He wanted to be a professional a few years ago, it didn’t work out, so he decided to go into IT. We always tried to work together on some projects.

Who are the people you hired first?

It was out of my network. I had a friend and his son was looking for an apprenticeship in a company. I thought, yeah, why not? Let’s try it out. You cannot make a big mistake. If it doesn’t work out, we can still find another solution. And we hired him and it worked out.

Could you imagine yourself not being an entrepreneur, but working in a corporate job?

Yeah, I could imagine working a corporate job, but it would be less interesting. There are some pros and cons. The pros of working in a corporate job lies in its the security. You have fixed work time… There might be corporate jobs where you work a lot, but it’s a lot less fun and you cannot do what you want. And these advantages of being an entrepreneur and building your own stuff is much more important to me. The other pros of the corporate job are getting a fixed salary and financial security. However, I would always choose the path of an entrepreneur before a corporate job.

Can you list the three biggest pros of being an entrepreneur from your point of view?

If you do something, you do it for yourself and not for someone else’s company, it’s for your purpose. It was your goal to do that. It makes much more sense for me to do something that I want and not what someone else wants me to do. This is certainly one big advantage. Also, if something goes wrong, you can only blame yourself. I like that. If you do something right, that’s your thing. And if you do it wrong, it’s your fault and not someone else’s. You are the one who suffers from it. If you do a really great job, you also get the fruit from it. You take a lot of risks, but you also get the profit. It’s hardfor me to work so much, and then someone else profits from that. I’m working a lot, maybe 14 hours a day. I still don’t suffer, I love it. You can never go at that pace if you don’t really love your job so much.

Work-life balance and the flexibility of an entrepreneur’s working day

There were days when I was lying in the bed and saying, no, today’s not my day, I will sleep a little bit longer today,I don’t feel like getting up. And it’s really cool to be able to do something like this. But you cannot do it all the time, of course… you also have responsibilities. If you have important clients waiting, you cannot do that. In moments like that, it’s not the good time to be flexible. I’m needed and I have to work a lot. There is certain flexibility, but you need to sacrifice some time as well. Sometimes I just go home at 2–3 PM because it’s a good day for motorbiking. Eeveryone goes motorbiking on Saturday and Sunday, there is a lot of traffic. I go when no one else has time and I have empty streets for myself.

Based on your experience, what would be your tips for someone who wants to start his own company?

I’ve read some books about entrepreneurship, visited courses at the university. Everyone keeps telling you to write a business plan before you do anything else.I didn’t write a business plan before starting Simpit. Spend some time and make a basic plan about some fundamental things, like what are your goals, who do you want to have on board, what are possible obstacles or consequences. Don’t plan too much either. For some people, it helps to write down these thoughts. It’s important to think about key points, but you cannot plan everything in details. If you spend too much time planning, you might be late and the world doesn’t really wait for you do some a basic plan. Next tip is to think about the first step in your project to get it started. The first step of your project is the hardest one. Once you have made it, you are in motion. It takes courage to make it step and get on. The third step is do it. You plan your first step and then you take it, you start your project. Only then you should think about the next one. The following steps are much easier. Just make sure you don’t lose momentum and keep going. To summarize that, make a basic plan about everything, but don’t plan too much; then think about the first step and then do it.

Any advice on how to get a first client?

I have a friend who I always find inspiring. He said, do good things and talk about it. I would say, do your first step and be proud of it. Talk about this to everyone. If you start talking about it, someone will come and say, “Oh, that’s very nice. I need this or I have a friend who needs this.” Don’t spend hours thinking about how to make an awesome social media campaign or a big, fancy website because it takes a lot of time…and it’s costly if you cannot do it on your own. Use your network, brag about your idea. Go out and talk about your idea, your business. And then the first client will come suddenly. When you least expect it, a client will be there. We were working as a web engineering company at first, and we had an idea of selling individual business applications. It’s always the hardest to find your first client. A client from websites called me, we were talking about a basic mail issue he had. I couldn’t help him because it was another company giving the IT support. Suddenly, we started to talk about a transport company; I tried to convince him that we’re going to build a transport solution for him. It worked out, we built the transport solution for him, I sold the first product. I was never expecting to start selling a product out of a call about an email issue.

Entrepreneurs are always selling.

That’s true. Even if you’re going out with friends and you’re drunk, it’s so natural. Being an entrepreneur is not just a job, It’s also a passion. Even if you’re out partying and drinking, you just talk about the things you love, which is business in this case.

How can our listeners find out more about you and your company?