Founder and millionaire
“The richest in society do a lot of lobbying to disguise what is good for all of us”
Sebastian Klein is the founder of the Book Blinkist book and thus became a millionaire. But the great inequality worries him. In his current investments, he pays attention to the common good instead of return.
Mister Smalldon’t like to read, or why did you invent an app, briefly summarize the non -fiction books?
I always had at least three books lying around at the same time, but I rarely managed to finish one. And I knew that others were the same. In 2009 I started sending book summaries via an email distributor, as a hobby. At that time, the dream came about to just be able to read about five years.
Nevertheless, they founded Flashing not immediately.
No, after my studies I worked as a management consultant at the Boston Consulting Group. The exciting thing was that you could work and help shape with the DAX board members. But after three months at the latest I wanted to quit, it was a nightmare and as you imagine: far too much work and pressure, the only thing that counted was performance, material, money. I was 100 percent controlled, you belong to the company. No freedoms, no autonomy. A superior was severely depressed, he thrown in tablets at work and often looked as if he were collapsing. I didn’t want to be as unhappy as my colleagues around me. After 15 months I quit.
To person
Sebastian Klein, 41, grew up in an academic household, in a house with a garden in the Allgäu. It took almost 30 years to understand that this is not a matter of course. During his psychology studies in Marburg, he founded a student management consultancy with fellow students. Even then, he developed the idea for the company that was supposed to make him rich: turn signal, an app that summarizes the most important thing from non -fiction books.
With what hope?
I thought I was starting now, getting rich and successful. A buddy and I wondered how we can earn a lot of money with little effort and came up with cooling neckerchiefs. We thought a summer and we are millionaires. After all: We came up with a product in three months, had it made and set up a website. But we forgot marketing. After a year we had sales of less than 5000 euros. I noticed that scarves were not a heart project. So I continued to work on the book idea.
How did it become a business idea?
We had started to develop a first prototype, which was called Wait Mate at the time and was supposed to deliver small, clever texts for waiting times on the smartphone. When the third co -founder was added, the idea arose to further develop this in the direction of the book summary. In spring 2012 we were looking for investors, in summer we founded our company.
How did you earn money with the flashing app?
Blinkist works with an abomodell: the users pay for a premium version. In the meantime, quite a few use that.
And when did the first million come?
That took. We paid ourselves so low salaries in the first time that I was permanently inflicted and broke. In 2017, I had already got out of operation, I was able to sell company shares for the first time. That was a great feeling: to get a few hundred thousand from the zeros and the minus in the account. Finally out of lack of freedom and external determination. I bought an expensive bike, a hi-fi system and a suit. The million was then a gradual step: in 2018 I was able to sell shares again, and in 2023 we sold the entire company with the exit, so I had about five million. I kept ten percent as an age protection, gave the rest to a non -profit GmbH.
Why didn’t you keep your millions?
Source: Stern
