After Opening on Sunday morning The Bits & Pretzels startup festival presents a whole series of prominent speakers. Jan Böhmermann explores the meaning of entrepreneurship. Nico Rosberg reveals himself as an expert in the mobility industry and answers a question that has always troubled Formula 1 fans.
Böhmermann initially flirts with his reputation as a troublemaker, which he earned with his "defamatory criticism" of Turkish President Erdogan. Right at the beginning, the ZDF broadcaster emphasizes that, for a change, he doesn't want to trigger a national crisis. But then, as expected, he continues his offensive approach: He speaks of Bavaria as an "authoritarian national community," cracks jokes about the age of ZDF viewers, startup jargon, and the poor working conditions in delivery startups.
“There’s nothing to be gained in business except money”
Böhmermann bases his speech on startups by highlighting two products available for purchase on board a budget airline: chocolate balls and smoothies. The bottom line: What's the point of investing your energy in entrepreneurship if the end result is such a banal product? You might find that inspiring or arrogant, but Böhmermann immediately offers an alternative suggestion:
“Wouldn’t these young people, with all their energy, perhaps be better off in local politics, for example, or in state politics, somewhere where they can realize their wishes and dreams without being subject to the dictates of profit maximization?”
Entrepreneurship is not suitable for the search for meaning at all:
"Could it possibly be that business as a means of self-realization has run its course? There's really nothing to be gained in business except money. Probably no one will ever erect a monument to an app."
From racing driver to mobility investor
On Monday morning, listeners may finally gain the impression that technology and entrepreneurship may have some influence on the world. In a conversation with Britta Weddeling, Handelsblatt's Silicon Valley correspondent, former Formula 1 world champion Nico Rosberg shares his perspective on the mobility industry and presents himself as a well-informed industry insider. He says he's finished with his life as a racing driver. His own startup is currently being developed, but he can't say anything specific yet, except that it's about "sustainable technology."
Rosberg, who maintains close contacts with the German automotive industry and transport policy, sees the European mobility industry in the dangerous situation of being degraded to a hardware supplier by American and Chinese digital companies.
He is enthusiastic about the American openness to innovation. For example, US startups, when the legal situation is unclear, first bring their products to market, and the legislator then tries to facilitate their operation. In Germany, on the other hand, all one sees is that this is illegal.
However, Rosberg, who is an investor in Elon Musk's company SpaceX, had to deal with an unpleasant consequence of his technological optimism: During an autonomous drive in a Tesla on a public road, the software misinterpreted the entry into a tunnel and reacted with a life-threatening evasive maneuver.
https://twitter.com/munich_startup/status/1046687159959388160
“Progress equals happiness”
After his interviewee, Britta Weddeling, reported that in Silicon Valley, people—including herself—work nonstop, with excessively long working days and no vacation, Rosberg surprised everyone with a commitment to a structured workday: He actually takes the complete opposite approach and values a happy private life. After all, a good life improves performance. Furthermore, routine is important to him, and he reads a lot:
“Progress equals happiness.”
https://twitter.com/munich_startup/status/1046687839273005056
After his talk, there was still time for a question from the audience. A listener wanted to know Rosberg's answer to a long-standing debate in Formula 1: What's more important, the driver or the car? Rosberg's answer was surprisingly specific: The drivers' skills make a difference in the range of tenths of a second, whereas the car can make a difference in seconds. That would also be clear.
