Where did you get the idea for your start-up?

Ben Thinnes. – “My girlfriend uses a calendar to manage her life. I use a calendar to manage my life. While at work it is natural that calendars are shared within the company to ensure easy collaboration, privately this is very complicated, very poorly documented or even impossible for someone who is not so digitally savvy or who can use the same platform.

My girlfriend uses an iPhone and I use an Android, so it was impossible for us to use a shared calendar. However, since we love to spend time together, and despite having a busy life, we were looking for a solution without missing the advantages of a Google, Apple or Microsoft calendar, or having to laboriously copy entries back and forth.

But there was simply no solution on the market without the above-mentioned compromises.

From the idea to its realisation, there is only one step … and yet. What triggered your entrepreneurial adventure?

“As a software developer, I thought to myself, this can’t be possible. Everybody likes to spend time with someone else, so she has to coordinate with them. Why should I only help my girlfriend and myself when I could help so many more people?

After I brought out Ceasy, I got so much positive feedback, not only from friends and my family, but also from people who do not know me at all. Just to name a few examples: With my friends we now have a MTB calendar with which we plan our tours. My three nieces have a car calendar with which they plan who will use the car and when. A young couple, both working, have set up a childcare calendar with the babysitter during Corona. An electrician, who was not so digitally savvy, now uses Ceasy to manage customer appointments with his staff… When I asked him why he didn’t use G-Suite or MS Office professionally, he said that at 8–12 euros per month per employee, that would be far too expensive.

It is exactly this feedback that gives me the courage to continue.

What are the qualities needed to launch your start-up?

“I think the most important quality is having fun. Joy is what drives us and lets us overcome all the depths. 

As a founder of a company, you go through many deep ones. Especially at the beginning there are many critics and unbelievers. It is important not to give up, but to analyse and learn from it. They might be right, but there is also the possibility to prove the opposite.”