Democratically dynamic

Beni Hirt combines many opposites. As a student, the business economist was intensively involved with the Young Socialists and the SP. He sees himself as a strong team player, but found too much democracy and too little decision-making freedom for himself in the four-member founding team of his own company. He loves the dynamism of a startup, but also appreciates the stability of a large parent company. He doesn't see this as contradictory. Rather, they are things that should be reconcilable. The 34-year-old looks younger than he is, and you can imagine that he is sometimes underestimated. The fact that he doesn't try to overplay it makes him likeable. He is open and sociable - you could easily spend an afternoon chatting with him. He has "no fear of strangers" and quickly strikes up a conversation with someone, Hirt says. "But I find building on existing relationships more exciting than making small talk. I'm also not a classic sales guy who can sell a refrigerator to an Eskimo. I'm someone who cultivates professional relationships."

Political commitment

Politics plays an important role when Beni Hirt talks about his career - even if he now only pays the "income-dependent membership fees" at the SP, as he sums up with a smile. At the age of 24, the former Steiner student and business administration student made it into the Bern city parliament for the Young Socialists. After completing his studies, he worked in the national secretariat of the SP, where he was first responsible for campaigns and communication issues and later headed the finances. In 2010, however, he had enough of party work and moved to SBB. He had already hung up his political posts a year earlier. For one thing, the first of his two sons was born at that time. For another, "the desire and passion had been lost. Hirt was tired of "the same local political issues all the time and that everything was moving forward so slowly.

The own agency

This was followed by his first own company, Apps with love, which Hirt founded in 2010 with three friends. In an instant conversation back then, they came to the conclusion: we want to implement our ideas in our own tools. "The mills of the political system grind slowly. A startup is the opposite. It's brutally dynamic. I liked that." Apps with love was strongly art- and culture-driven and remains so today, Hirt tells us. The agency was founded with the motivation to realize its own app ideas, he says. Only later did the agency accept client orders in order to cross-finance these app ideas. He still finds the development of his own tools exciting, but for him - in contrast to the rest of the founding team - "the entrepreneurial development was already in the foreground at the beginning," Hirt admits in retrospect.

A few months ago, there was a break with Apps with love. According to Hirt, the deciding factor was different ideas about the future of the agency. "I wanted to grow more, for market considerations, " he explains. "There will be consolidations. At the same time, small startups will drive down the price. In a middle position, I think it's difficult to compete." Apps with love is successful in its own right. The likeable Bern-based agency has more than a dozen employees and has won several Best of Swiss Apps awards for its creative apps. But Hirt feels that his economic considerations were not given enough weight in the founding team. Over time, there was a lack of mutual appreciation and trust. "I pushed through decisions that didn't suit everyone." A dismissal on Hirt's part that was not agreed upon was the straw that broke the camel's back. The friction losses became too great for him, and he had to "orientate himself too strongly inward" due to the conflicts. Hirt speaks calmly about the events of the last few months. However, these had already taken their toll on him. He speaks of a mourning process with various phases. In the meantime, however, he has also made plans for the future and discussed them with many friends and acquaintances. His dream scenario was to be active again as an entrepreneur. In terms of industry, Hirt was open. "I brought the network and experience that matched for the current position at Swiss Digital. But that could be applied elsewhere," he says. Hirt describes himself as a generalist. He's interested in mobile technologies "because it's a growth market in which you can grow along with it and there are still a lot of unexpected things possible.

Technology know-how through the parent company

Swiss Digital is part of the Europe-wide NTH Group, which employs 25 mobile developers and designers, among others. Thanks to the close cooperation with the parent company, the startup, which has only three employees, can offer comprehensive solutions in the area of mobile technologies, such as specially produced beacons including software modules. A small, agile team of consultants and, in the background, a large resource base with a lot of technology know-how, that is the strength of Swiss Digital for Hirt. A lot of administrative work is also handled by the NTH Group. He appreciates this comfortable situation. "It allows us to focus on the core business. Of course, it's not the same as building a company from scratch. But we are very free with the further development of the offering." Creating ideas out of thin air is not his thing anyway. But when he gets some, he's relatively good at developing something from it. "One of my strengths is modeling things and making more of them." And Swiss Digital has nothing standing in his way.

Simone Isliker