Daniel Schmitt-Haverkamp founded his first startup around 18 years ago. The platform Experte24, an insurance and finance comparison site, was intended to capitalize on the boom in online comparison portals. Although the site generated more sales than established providers at times, the company failed after four years. The reason: a change in the Google algorithm that caused traffic to plummet.
Pitch & People Episodes
PITCH & PEOPLE Episode 24: Daniel Schmitt-Haverkamp
It wasn't the only experience of this kind. A later fashion startup, a price comparison site for fashion with vouchers and cashback, also failed after a short time – including an investment of around €500,000. For the founder, this was a painful but important lesson: ideas must be tested quickly. Daniel Schmitt-Haverkamp says in retrospect in our Videocast Pitch & People:
"I've learned that I can't just develop something that I personally think is great – I have to quickly test whether it actually works."
"I am not a specialist. I am a generalist."
Over the years, Schmitt-Haverkamp has built up numerous projects. He sees himself not as an expert in a single discipline, but as a generalist. He considers his strength to be his ability to quickly initiate, test, and develop ideas.
Typical of his work style: After two to three years, he often loses operational motivation because processes become repetitive. He then consciously seeks new challenges and delegates responsibility to specialists within the team.
Everdrop: Impact as leverage
Schmitt-Haverkamp achieved his greatest public profile with the sustainability startup Everdrop. The company develops cleaning products that dissolve in water as tablets, thus avoiding the need for plastic bottles.
The launch was rapid: In its first year alone, Everdrop generated around ten million euros in revenue and completed a Series A financing round within 13 months.
But for the founder, the impact is what counts most: millions of plastic bottles saved, as well as fewer CO₂ emissions and chemicals from the products.
Why many founders fail
Despite all the successes, Schmitt-Haverkamp sees typical patterns among founders. One problem: ego.
"I think we founders are all a bit crazy. Especially at the beginning, many think they're the coolest and therefore don't ask anyone for help."
This very attitude can be dangerous. Feedback – especially critical feedback – is crucial for truly improving an idea. The most valuable conversations are not with supporters, but with critics. Someone who dissects an idea is often more helpful than someone who simply agrees.
Another key to success, according to Schmitt-Haverkamp, is rapid experimentation. Instead of working on a product for months, he recommends testing ideas on the market as early as possible – for example with advertisements, landing pages, or simple prototypes.
This way, it's possible to determine within a few days whether there is genuine interest. Those who instead develop for a long time without gathering customer feedback risk a lot of time and money.
Startup Match Startup Match is the latest project from serial entrepreneur Daniel Schmitt-Haverkamp. The platform aims to fundamentally modernize the fundraising process for startups. Its goal is to connect founding teams with suitable business angels more quickly using data analytics and artificial intelligence. This addresses a structural problem within the startup scene: fundraising often takes several months and ties up a significant amount of time that founders should actually be investing in product development and customer engagement. Startup Match aims to make this process more efficient by comprehensively analyzing founding teams and matching them with investors who can contribute not only capital but also expertise and networks. The goal is to enable significantly faster and more precise financing. (Photo: Daniel Schmitt-Haverkamp)
Entrepreneurship as a game
Setbacks are part of everyday life for the serial entrepreneur. He describes his own life as a series of highs and lows. However, he believes it is precisely during difficult times that one learns the most.
"My life isn't a hockey stick. It's an upward trend, but with many ups and downs. And it's precisely in the downs that you learn the most."
Therefore, one's own attitude is crucial: Instead of seeing problems as a catastrophe, founders should understand them as a learning opportunity.
Startup Match: Rethinking Fundraising
His current project is called Startup MatchA platform designed to modernize the fundraising process. Because although many areas of the startup world have changed dramatically, financing is often still surprisingly analog. Statistically, fundraising still takes several months, even though websites can now be built in a few hours and MVPs developed in a short time.
The result: Founders invest enormous amounts of time in pitch events, networking and finding investors, instead of focusing on product and customers.
The idea behind Startup Match: to automate the process more and use data and AI to bring founding teams together with suitable business angels.
A key element of the new approach is the analysis of founding teams. Various personality tests and data will be combined to gain a more comprehensive understanding of team dynamics. This should enable investors to more quickly identify which startups are a good fit for them – and allow founders easier access to capital and networks.
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