There are those who have the big ideas, and there are the people who help bring these ideas to life. They are not always the loudest or the most celebrated, but they are pivotal to achieving results, and eventually success. Let’s call them “facilitators of change”.
According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, a facilitator is “someone who helps a person or an organization do something more easily or find the answer to a problem”. Their ultimate goal is to enact change, to help the individual or group move forward in their objectives. And we need them now more than ever. Humanity is in a complex phase of transformation, initiated well before the pandemic. All areas of coexistence, our relationships with nature and people, and the economy must change decisively in the coming years. In these times, people are needed who initiate and drive the necessary dialogue about how we want to live in the future and take action. We are interested in the question, what characterizes these people? How have they become “facilitators of change,” and how can we encourage and enable more people to shape the future in a humanistic sense and with a positive attitude?
To kick off our quest, we spoke with Joerg Rheinboldt, managing director at APX, a Berlin-based early-stage start-up investor backed by Axel Springer and Porsche, about what being a “facilitator of change” means to him.
If you had to describe yourself in let’s say the length of a tweet, what would you say?
I am a human entrepreneur, investor, and I love to turn ideas into realities.
Could you tell us a little more about your professional background?
I grew up in Cologne, Germany, constantly asking myself what I would do with my life. And then, luckily, someone invented the web, and I knew what I wanted to do. I became a digital entrepreneur, which I still am today.
In 1999, I co-founded Alando, the company that would later become eBay Germany. After we were acquired, I spent several years as the managing director of eBay in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. I took some time off in 2004 to spend it with my family, my wife and our twin boys, newborns at the time. After a few months, I started investing. I spent eight years as a business angel before becoming the managing director of Axel Springer Plug and Play, a very early-stage venture capital investor.
Today, I’m the managing director of APX. We invest in early-stage startups from pretty much all over the world. APX is my main job, so it gets about 98 percent of my time. I’m also on the board of several businesses, such as Bahlsen, a family-owned cookie company, betterplace, the non-profit that I co-founded with friends close to 14 years ago, and Berliner Stadtmission. In addition, I work regularly with ESCP and its students via the U-School entrepreneurship programme.
I wouldn’t have described our company’s role, for example, as a facilitator of change, but we are. We invest in people with ideas and then hopefully allow them to build successful companies. And usually, they are.
Looking back at, let’s say, the last 20 years of your career, have you experienced any kind of turning point? Anything that has changed your perspective on work or life?
I’ve always had the idea that everything is connected and that work and life are about developing a better understanding of how things are connected in combination with accepting that you can’t understand it all anyway. All the same, I desire to understand connections deeper and know-how people, companies, and things can develop their full potential. This, I think, has always been a quest of mine, in addition to wanting to have a good time. That’s the egotistic part. I want to fit this quest around also having a good time.
What does it mean to you to be considered a “facilitator of change”? Is this something that you connect with?
This is not how I look at what I do every day. I wouldn’t have described our company’s role, for example, as a facilitator of change, but we are. We invest in people with ideas and then hopefully allow them to build successful companies. And usually, they are. They will change something. They will make something easier or available to more people. They can also create disruptive change.
Can you give an example?
Yeah, I’ll take eBay, for example. When we started Alando, we wanted to create a marketplace where people’s attitudes towards owning things could change. A place where you could consider yourself not as a permanent owner of something but rather as a temporary owner, where you say: “Hey, I can buy this super nice, ultralight hiking tent for 500 euros and use it this summer. And if I don’t destroy it, I can sell it for 200 euros or maybe 250 euros at the end of summer to someone who will use it.” When we started, we had these thoughts, but we didn’t tell anyone. It took us five years to earn enough money to finally do some research on people’s attitudes in Germany towards ownership. In my last year at eBay, we had a company ask thousands of people how they related to owning things, and we found that eBay had changed attitudes.
In your opinion, what are the qualities that can make someone a facilitator of change?
I think you need to create opportunities and environments where people and companies can develop their full potential. A facilitator of change does not just initiate something and then it gets stopped at the next level. You must create environments where things can change and grow, where the new thing can become so powerful that it’s unavoidable, even if it’s uncomfortable or people don’t want it to happen because it changes something that has been the same way for a long time.
What role do VC funds play in facilitating change as we rebuild post-Covid?
The same role we always play: we enable great entrepreneurs to turn their ideas into reality in the current environment. The Covid environment (like any other environment) creates chances as well. Although I have to say, I would rather have missed these opportunities. But at least, in the countries I am connected to, digitization, education, media, digital payments, e-commerce, new and more remote work formats have accelerated massively due to the pandemic.
In Europe, our venture capital ecosystem is continuously growing. I hope that once we get to a new normal, the trans-European startups and investments continue to grow.
We need facilitators of change in all areas: society, politics, education, and business. Always and forever. We need to let them do things, encourage them to dare, and give them time to succeed.
Looking at the present moment, in your view, what are the main challenges where change is needed for business and society?
In the short term, I think we have to “win” against COVID. Mid-term, we have to figure out how we want to organise our relationship towards digital information. What is truth? And how do reality and truth work? I think we have to figure out how we want to live as humans in this universe in the long run. How do we want to work, learn and earn a living? We have these questions in our developed, technological societies, such as “Will artificial intelligence replace me in my job?” But in some places, the question is instead, “What are we going to eat tonight?”
I’m optimistic, though. As a humanity, we will understand our connectedness better, and we will find new ways of working, new ways of leveraging ourselves.
Where do we need to see more facilitators of change?
We need facilitators of change in all areas: society, politics, education, and business. Always and forever. We need to let them do things, encourage them to dare, and give them time to succeed.