#16 Robert Wetzker, Founder & CEO of Aklamio | Making It Real Podcast with Jan Brinckmann

Robert Wetzker is the Founder & CEO of Aklamio. Founded in
2011, Aklamio has become Europe’s most successful referral
marketing solution, trusted by companies such as Virgin Media,
Vodafone, PayPal, Endesa, o2, and over 300 international brands.
Aklamio believes that a company’s best assets are its customers,
their networks, and the power of incentive marketing. Their
mission is to empower brands to succeed in a customer-centric
world by building the world’s #1 platform for customer
incentivization. Their 80+ employees work in our HQ in Berlin and
London, with teams in Madrid and Paris. Aklamio was ranked 2nd
fastest growing technology startup in Germany (Financial Times,
Europe’s 1000 Fastest Growing Companies, 2019) and continues to
expand internationally. Robert has a background in engineering.
Prior to founding Aklamio, he led the research team at TU
Berlin’s Competence Center for Information Retrieval and Machine
Learning. 








Robert Wetzker, Founder & CEO of Aklamio | Making It Real
Podcast with Jan Brinckmann | Episode #16








00:00 What's your personal journey into the entrepreneurship
space?


01:32 From a researcher to starting a company - how did it come
about?


03:49 How did you take the first steps to build your product?


06:30 How did you get in touch with your first customers?


08:49 Doing sales as a founder


11:12 When is the right time to start contacting your target
customers?


12:35 What's the best way to reach out to people when you have
nothing to show for yet?


14:52 How many customers do you need to determine a common base
for a scalable product?


17:23 How can technically strong people be a sales-driven CEO and
find a specialized sales person?


20:01 What are your core lessons learned in the process from
doing the first sales to building Aklamio as an impactful
company?


24:08 How to approach internationalization


26:14 Should you start with one country manager first or build a
small team early on?


30:46 For people looking into referral marketing, what are the
core lessons learned that you can share?


33:48 Besides the size of incentives, what are other components
of a successful referral campaign?


36:39 What's next for Aklamio?


38:54 What is your core advice for people who want to make it
real?