Podcast
Verena Hubertz co-founded the successful cooking app Kitchen Stories – and has just won a direct mandate for the SPD. Now she wants to make politics more approachable and bring in her perspective as an entrepreneur.
Lucile Gagnière
When she opened the capital office of stern, Capital and Business Punk on Potsdamer Platz, Verena Hubertz and her two young companions do an Instagram story in the foyer. On the 6th floor she sees the conference room with the great view of the Reichstag. Another Insta story. You can feel: energy, euphoria, there is someone who is up to something. The newly elected member of the Bundestag for the SPD wants to make politics more tangible, she says. “I definitely think that politics should be more approachable and not so polished,” says the founder. “And of course Instagram is one of them. I also used it very heavily in the election campaign.” With a video diary, for example.
The first days in the Bundestag – where everyone searches, bustles and introduces themselves, felt “like at university,” says Hubertz. She doesn’t have an office yet, and if she should only get a container – rooms are becoming scarce due to the bloated Bundestag – well, “then it just feels like a startup again.”
The newly elected SPD parliamentary group is younger, more female and more diverse, around 100 newcomers are in the Bundestag for the Social Democrats. And Hubertz, who won the direct mandate in Trier, is on the one hand an example, on the other hand an exceptional phenomenon: She is a successful founder who left her startup to do politics. “I’ve decided to leave Kitchen Stories behind for something I’m just as passionate about. And that’s social democratic politics,” she wrote on Twitter at the time.
Younger, more feminine, more diverse
After completing his studies, Hubertz co-founded Kitchen Stories, a video-based cooking app that eight years later has over 20 million users and 60 employees and has since been bought by Bosch, with a valuation of 20 to 25 million euros. With the question “An entrepreneur in the SPD? The bad employers?”, She has been confronted several times, reports Hubertz. The 33-year-old has declared war against these “barriers in the head”. Her motto is “less prejudice, more exchange, more encounters”.
The subject of the minimum wage drove her to the SPD over ten years ago because she only earned a good six euros at Burger King. It’s about justice, but that doesn’t necessarily have to be a wealth tax – which is part of the SPD’s program. “I am in favor of strong shoulders carrying more, “says Hubertz, who studied at the renowned business school WHU. But there may be” other taxes that are easier to implement. “
As a member of the Bundestag, her heartfelt issue is now the “Future Fund 2.0”, a public welfare fund based on the model of Scandinavian countries. With this, she wants to solve the “huge problem” of pensions: “It just makes sense to put a small piece of the puzzle on the stock market, but also in the technology industry,” she argues. She has also started a project with the Friedrich Ebert Foundation to simplify the establishment of works councils in start-ups.
Listen in
- Why the co-founder had to sell her car to get started
- What tip Hubertus Heil Verena Hubertz gave on the first day
- How Apple CEO Tim Cook’s visit to Kitchen Stories went
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Jane Stock is a technology author, who has written for 24 Hours World. She writes about the latest in technology news and trends, and is always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to improve his audience’s experience.
