Breakthrough on the white sheet

Zurich is not only home to Google's European think tank. A young Zurich start-up also wants to use the World Wide Web even more sensibly from here. The platform Stablish.me is declaring war on networks such as Xing and LinkedIn. "Our goal is to match talents with the right jobs," Benedikt Escher and Dominic Zünd explain the concept. On Stablish.me, everything revolves around the crucial question: "What are you really great at?" The answer is not given by the user himself, but by network contacts and friends by giving each other "badges" for special skills and characteristics. So far, 170 individual badges are available, which are awarded for "skills ", "personality traits" or "specific achievements". The result is aggregated profiles that show at a glance what makes someone special. Students, graduates and young professionals can thus show potential employers how others rate them.

"This allows much more credible conclusions to be drawn about an applicant than resumes or self-created online profiles such as those on LinkedIn or Xing," the two young entrepreneurs are convinced. After all, they have already been able to experience this effect more than once on their own. Benedikt Escher comes from Hamburg. There, he saw a report on TV about the university in St. Gallen and thought it was a "great university, because at the HSG you have the freedom to be involved in professionally working student initiatives alongside your studies." Escher earned a bachelor's degree in international relations. "It's a pretty broad degree in which you can pursue a wide variety of issues."

Benedikt Escher then gained his first professional experience - like most of his generation - with practices at Lufthansa and Credit Suisse. "Those were two large corporations, and in that environment I sensed: this corporate world couldn't have been everything after all." Escher additionally sought to satisfy his curiosity with a second degree in Rotterdam. There, he earned his first master's degree in entrepreneurship. He then completed his second in international relations during a comeback in St. Gallen. In the meantime, he also realized professionally that he "had to be entrepreneurial somehow". At this stage, the call for applications from the Institute of Information Systems at the HSG came in handy. It was possible to apply for this competition even without an already fixed business idea. During the "casting" of the candidates, Benedikt Escher was randomly assigned to a team of two with Dominic Zünd for the following workshop. "We didn't know each other beforehand." Dominic Zünd grew up in Zuzwil and studied business psychology in the Limmat city. This subject appealed to him "because it covers a very broad spectrum and allows a fundamental understanding of the processes and interrelationships of human interactions." Zünd had also previously enrolled at the HSG, but then "intuitively" decided on the University of Zurich. V

or his master's degree, Dominic Zünd also completed two internships. First in the marketing department at Debrunner Acifer in St. Gallen. He then gained further experience at Hannes Zaugg. This business consultancy specializes in interactive media projects. Dominic Zünd was allowed to "supervise and drive forward" various social media projects for a year. During this phase, he also learned about the competition of the Institute of Information Systems. At the HSG, they have been pursuing such design thinking projects for existing companies for quite some time. "In order to strengthen its reputation and apply the method to a start-up for once, as well as to prove its enormous potential," the Institute of Information Systems decided to invite tenders for a start-up project. The candidates were selected on the basis of their personalities, "which should complement each other as much as possible". Such a profile was requested in various interviews. Then several teams were assembled and put into a workshop. "Normally, a design thin- king project starts with a clearly defined problem.

For our start-up, however, we began with a white sheet of paper." On the blank ground, the task was to get an idea off the ground in a relatively short time. In the first "dry run," Escher and Zünd developed a concept of how social channels could reward "good behavior." The concept was not realized. However, it convinced the jury in St. Gallen: The Escher Zünd team is capable of "mastering" a larger project in the field of design thinking. Just one week later, they had to pack their bags. With a starting capital of 100,000 Swiss francs in the bag, which a group of 56 crowd investors, including numerous experienced entrepreneurs, had collected via the C-Crowd platform, Escher and Zünd traveled to another workshop in Stanford together with the regular Design Thinking course at the HSG. It was here in California that the design thinking method was originally developed. What all design thinking projects have in common is that you don't develop an idea and then go to the market and see if anyone wants it. The approach is the other way around: "You observe people's needs and analyze what unmet needs are out there," explains Benedikt Escher. Then you feel your way toward how you could solve this problem.

The researchers build "prototypes," test them on the target group, and use the feedback to constantly refine them until, in the "best case scenario," the developer can deliver a mature and actually usable product to the market. Over the next six months, Escher and Zünd boiled their 80 "prototypes" down to three. One of those ideas was an app for sharing items not constantly needed, such as a personal lawn mower. Finally, after about six months, only one idea was pursued. "For Stablish.me, we and our investors saw the greatest need and therefore the best opportunity." Between spring and fall 2012, the basis for Stablish.me was further fleshed out. In late fall, the project was developed to the point of market readiness, and the platform went live in a beta version in December. During this time, the team was continuously professionalized. In addition to the two founders, the first employee has already joined the team in Zurich. In addition, three software developers in Budapest and two designers in Poland work full time for the start-up. "We were forced to outsource like this because we couldn't pay similarly trained specialists here until now." In Switzerland, he said, it is "very difficult" to find idealistic people for a start-up. "Real talent in the online sector would rather work for Swisscom or Credit Suisse for much more money. And if they're willing to accept a lower salary, they usually start a startup themselves right away and pursue their own ideas there." Regardless of this situation, however, Escher and Zünd are more than happy with their colleagues in the East.

"The collaboration also works very well in terms of communication." To finance this professionalization, Stablish.me was already able to raise a further capital injection of 140,000 francs last summer via its own crowdfunding portal. In the next few days, a capital increase of 500,000 francs is scheduled. This will be used primarily to build up the company's own development and sales team and to intensify marketing. So far, the young entrepreneurs have done almost no advertising for their invention. Nevertheless, more than 3800 users are already registered on the platform. "Now it's a matter of cranking this number up massively." Initial successes were seen in recent days following a report in 20 Minuten, "which generated many new users in one fell swoop." To this end, of course, the network should also spread "from within." That the idea of Stablish.me is indeed a need among the target group can be proven by various feedbacks in the meantime. "The whole HRMarket is boiling and you realize there that you have to do something. You can't do recruitment the traditional way anymore." One problem, for example, is that almost all applicants the same age as Escher and Zünd have almost identical qualifications when they start their job search. One graduated from college with the highest grades possible.

In addition, you can show two internships. And one or two semesters abroad are also standard. But how can you set yourself apart from your competitors with this profile? Benedikt Escher and Dominic Zünd are convinced that the recommendations and personal qualifications on Stablish.me can provide recruiters with much more information on which to base their decisions. Because the users of Stablish. me, for example, also get a personal face with the personality badges in addition to their credentials. "But these are not worthless comments from well-meaning friends," the pair counter the project's critics. "At the heart of our platform, there is a very complex control system that evaluates and ranks the recommendations, much like the search algorithms at Google," the inventors explain. Zünd and Escher are therefore also convinced that their idea cannot be stolen from them so easily. And the business model? Both the advanced search and the targeted matching of talents with suitable jobs are to be offered for a fee in the future. Strong interest has also already been registered by various companies in using Stablish.me internally as a talent management tool. However, Stablish.me will remain free of charge for individual users. After all, a platform is only really successful when "as many people as possible can benefit from it". And that was also a basic idea during development in the spirit of design thinking.

Andreas Panzeri