Your love story - painted and told by AI

I meet Paul and his co-founder Marcus in the co-working café of the 25hours Hotel in Cologne to talk to him about his story. The two of them meet here once a week to discuss important matters, along with the other three employees of the company when it suits, as there is no conventional company headquarters and everyone works from their home offices.

From Detmold to Berlin

In 2013, after graduating from high school in Detmold, Paul moved to Berlin, where he trained as an event manager. As an event manager, he was still working hard during his training: as an apprentice, he organised the home games of the football club Hertha BSC, it was textbook event management, but he worked up to 60 hours a week. Still in training, he changes employers, organises trade fairs and has to lend a hand himself; the working hours are brutal here too.
"Do I want to do this for the rest of my life?" One of the answers to this question comes from reading a book recommended to him by his father: In "Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow", Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahnemann explains the brain's strategies for interacting with the environment and how errors in thinking influence our decision-making.

Business psychology and a little culture shock

Paul then decides to study business psychology and ends up at the Rheinbach campus in 2018. He moves into a shared flat in Bonn and has to get used to the provinces again. He doesn't have much time to think about it; his studies and work keep him on his toes. Even the fact that Paul is significantly older than most first-year students only keeps him busy for a short time, as he meets his girlfriend during his studies and is still with her today. He tells me that he liked statistics and business, but that maths was hard. But Paul persevered, even though he also worked as a student on the side, including in HR management at DHL, for the United Nations and for Rewe in the Business Insights team.

A taste of the startup scene at CENTIM

Even before his semester internship, Paul's interest in startups was growing; he listened to podcasts, read specialist books and took part in hackathons, even though he initially had a lot of respect for them. After all, as a student he also works at the Centre for Entrepreneurship Innovation and SMEs (CENTIM), which supports start-ups founded by university members with its own start-up centre, the Start-up-Manufaktur. Paul visits several start-ups, talks to founders and CENTIM staff, who encourage him. His bachelor's thesis, supervised by Frank C. Maikranz, revolves around an idea for a start-up: "Dressive" aims to eliminate as many pain points as possible for customers when shopping for clothes. A smart changing room that provides pre-selected items of clothing in the right size. Paul looks for two co-founders and visits fashion manufacturers, but the implementation of the idea is extremely complex and brick-and-mortar retail is in crisis, partly due to the pandemic.

"Just do it" - semester internship in Canada

For his practical semester, Paul applies to the small clean tech start-up Carbon Upcycling Technologies in Canada. He graphically realises his CV, which was perhaps one of the reasons why he - as the only applicant - has to go through three rounds of applications before the team is convinced by him. This may have been the spark that eventually turned him into the founder of the company. "It was incredibly intensive, I did everything for them: I designed company presentations, discussed the company's core values, but also lent a hand on site when a machine had to be assembled. It was a small team and they just got on with it, which really inspired me." Unfortunately, the internship ends after just two months, as it is the time when the global coronavirus pandemic strikes - he returns to Germany, where he and his sisters move back in with his parents for six months. "It was a bit like six months of childhood all over again",