Valuable cofounder lessons from co-founder Chrysanth Sulzberger

Innovator and Entrepreneur in Healthcare IT and CEO and Co-Founder at imito AG Chrysanth Sulzberger shares very valuable lessons on cofounding: from the value of having a sparring partner, growing through challenging discussions - and - different from my own recommendation - the success of their 50:50 split! One size really does not fit all. Thank you for sharing Chrysanth!

Originally published on Linkedin on May 10, 2018.

Together with Manuel Studer, I co-founded the imito AG in 2016. We teamed up to start a digital health venture claiming a niche within the clinical documentation process.

Before we teamed up, we knew each other only briefly. Then, in spring 2015, we realized that both of us had quit our jobs to start on our own. Two uber motivated startup greenhorns, both working on their own business ideas. From the beginning, we were on the same page when it came to validating a business idea in a lean way, and we started to discuss these challenges in long phone calls quite frequently.

Getting started

While doing market research for my business idea to radically simplify clinical photo documentation, I was not considering founding the company together with someone else.

At some point, the first market research results were promising and I felt that I might be onto something: I had already seen the loose ends out there and had an idea on how to join them into a product, which would eventually prove my assumptions. The entrepreneurship dream started to look more and more real and time-bound, and I knew it had to be executed.

I already had enough pressure back then. The continuous splitting of my energy between far too many different projects resulted in not only exhaustion but also guilt over not investing myself enough into every single one of them. I was desperate to reduce the pressure and strived for a more balanced life. The way out was eventually a radical change: the decision to start my own business was final, and my digital nomad life began as I left everything behind and started traveling without any home base. But I’m getting a bit off the point... That was the time when I started to realize that I didn’t feel like building it all on my own.

Teaming up

I felt like having a business partner along with me for the decision making and to master the challenges ahead would be a far better choice than doing it all alone. With that in mind, about a month before my last working day, I called Manuel, and we met for lunch in Zurich. Actually, I first thought that we were too similar in our skill set to found a company together since we are both tech guys. The better I got to know him, the more complementary skills I could see. Knowing about his difficulties realizing his own business idea, I asked him if he was interested in teaming up, needless to say, he said yes ;-).

When Manuel asked what his stake would be if we joined forces, I replied without thinking much about it: 50-50. Today, I am convinced this helped us through countless tough discussions that came up. I’ve never regretted the decision and have rarely thought about it.

Trial Period

We then agreed to do a three month trial period until the end of 2015, to see if we were a good fit for each other. Our three week long workathon in Sofia was a very good test to see if cofounding the company could work in a longer term. During this period, we focused on testing the idea with customer development and did a know-how transfer on the hospital domain we had. We conducted more than 20 interviews with physicians and hospital-IT decision makers, analyzed the results together, and crafted plans to setup imito. More than then, I know today how significant that time was to not only build a viable product but also for the personal and business relationship we would build afterward.

Starting-up and the First Year

After the very first meeting with the CHUV university hospital in Lausanne in December 2015 and a scheduled meeting with the IT department of the University Hospital Basel in early January 2016, we decided to found the company for real, imito AG was officially registered on January 25th, 2016.

Because I was still a nomad at this time and did not miss having a home base, it seemed natural to start as a fully remote company. We hired our first developers on Transformify.org to build our first functional prototype to showcase it in Berlin at conhIT 2016, an important milestone for us and imito.

Thinking about this time also reminds me of the interpersonal challenges we faced along the way. Some say that cofounding a company is like getting married. Working together as co-founders, both eager to prove our capabilities to one another, showing our strength and know-how… I do believe this required a strong relationship to get through those tough moments. Both having quite strong and stubborn personalities, the need for a harmonious work environment that Manuel has helped smooth out my sometimes blunt discussion style. He was often the one who said: “Chrys, we need to talk,” which led to open discussions and eventually helped me grow my personality. I started valuing our challenging discussions at some point and never stopped learning from them. Building a company requires so much decision making – over and over again, most of them with much bigger impact than the decisions we had to make in our lives as employees. Having a business partner to make these decisions with and who continuously challenges them has been an enrichment on so many different levels.

The Power of a Team

After more than 2.5 years, I still know that it was the right decision to make. Apart from the decisions weighing on both of us, it is always an advantage to have a sparring partner. It also allowed us to grow in different fields and split the responsibilities at imito. When deciding about founding a company alone or with others, I strongly believe the decision depends on the goal you set for building the business and on the type of company you would like to build. For me, it was clear from the beginning that part of the “adventure“ was learning something new and growing on many different levels as part of this process, which I certainly did and still will, helping me to root my thoughts over and over again. So, yes, I would do it exactly the same way if I ever again have such a great opportunity.

Today, imito AG is made not only by Manuel and me but by an international and interdisciplinary team, passionate to further unleash the mobile technology in hospitals while operating as a fully remote company.