Meet Matthias Hub of Forward31
By: Porsche Digital
Tags: Software Development, Career Paths, Venture Building, Leadership, Startups

”I Always Try to Challenge the Status Quo.”

Get to know Matthias from Forward31

With a background in cloud-native application development, Matthias Hub brings technical knowledge and extensive expertise to his role at Forward31, the company builder by Porsche Digital. Matthias has spent most of his career working as a software engineer focusing on innovation, which makes him a perfect fit for building new businesses and creating new ventures.

In our interview, Matthias explains how he uses his digital expertise in venture building, talks about his role as a Company Builder at Forward31, and what led him to Porsche Digital in the first place.

Hi Matthias, can you describe your daily doing at FWRD31?

As I have a technical background, my job is to bring ideas into an MVP (minimum viable product) state by either building it myself or together with agencies, contractors, or future founders. I also evaluate new cases to find out if the used technology is feasible, scalable, and state-of-the-art or if the approached development capacity fits.

As we are a small but compelling and complementary team at FWRD31, there are always opportunities to look outside of my focus area. I broaden my skillset just by working with our experts. We are mindful of the fact that one single individual cannot “know-it-all,” but rather strive to be “learn-it-alls” — as Satya Nadella communicated it at Microsoft, or as we call it “the power of the beginner’s mind.”

What fascinates you about engineering?

The fascination in engineering is about creating something tangible out of nothing, based on ideas and thoughts. For me, this creative process is very fulfilling. I think the public perception of engineers, or so-called “nerds”, has changed a lot over the last years. And yet, it’s still uncommon to connect this to creativity. In my daily work, I’m stuck multiple times a day, so extensive problem-solving skills are a must, in addition to intrinsic motivation, to overcome those challenges. There are some tools available for solving technical problems, but without the creativity of the engineer, they are pretty useless.

How would you describe your career path so far?

I still remember an “ask-me-anything” session vividly about “a career in management” when I was on a management training program. When asked why choosing a management career path, the speaker bluntly said, “because of more money and more power.” This made me think about how to approach career transitions and to be honest when talking about my career.

To me, a career is not a “ladder” or even a “straight path”. These metaphors put unnecessary and misleading pressure on employees. I recently found a quote by Herminia Ibarra, which resonated with me, who said: “Career transition is not a straight path toward some predetermined identity, but a crooked journey along which we try on a host of ‘possible selves’ we might become” (listen to her interview in the Next Visions podcast series). This is a very frank and honest way to state the complexity of career transitions and dealing with many unknowns.

In fact, I want to look at myself in a holistic way. My “career” is not separated from the rest of my life. I think it is important to integrate everything into one whole, be it work, or family, or friends, or a hobby. For me, the term work-life-integration, a concept that I heard first from Jeff Bezos, makes much more sense than work-life-balance, which conveys that a balance between “work = bad” and “life = good” is needed. Having said that, I believe that “personal growth” is what my career is all about.

You worked at IBM for about 8 years — what are your most important takeaways?