Watching cities grow

Campus news - Hire acquaintances or a grueling recruiting campaign: How do start-ups find their first employees' What makes them attractive when they can't offer much in terms of pay' Does a start-up boss have to hold an impassioned speech at least once every week? An interview with Jakob Bitner, who built the company VoltStorage as a student, and entrepreneurship researcher Prof. Nicola Breugst, occasioned by the IKOM career fair set to take place from June 19 to 22 at the Campus Garching. Mr. Bitner, only a little more than a year ago you were still a student, now you employ seven people. Are you sometimes intimidated by the responsibility? Bitner: I think that's a question of personality; up to now I've always been able to sleep at night. I also find the overall responsibility bearable because my two co-founders and I were very quick to delegate a lot of responsibility to our employees. You worked hard for months in a closely-knit and committed team to plan all the details of your company - then suddenly you let people you hardly know get involved. Was that a difficult thing to do? Bitner: Not at all: Because all the people we hired are clearly better at what they do than we are ourselves, for example in IT. What's more, we all talk with one another continuously. Every day we have a 15-minute "stand-up" where each of us talks about what he or she did yesterday, what's in store for today and what difficulties there are, if any. Ms. Breugst, what do your research results say - has Mr. Bitner done it all right?