Flash Founder Stories: Boris Bösch
Flash Founder Stories: Boris Bösch
We chatted with the co-founder of Munich's logistics-as-a-service provider everstox about his time as a consultant, how he fell into entrepreneurship and the tools that helped him build his company
everstox co-founders Felix Haberland (left) & Johannes Tress (middle) with Bösch (right)
Through a simple conversation, it’s clear to see the charm of everstox co-founder Boris Bösch. He credits the experience he drew from Boston Consulting Group for giving him an edge in sharing his vision with investors, customers and prospective hires.
In late 2021, he applied his skillset to help his company, a Munich-based tech platform empowering e-commerce merchants to scale their logistics operations at breakneck speed, raise a €20 million Series A.
In this interview, Boris shares insights into the skills that he transferred from top tier management consulting to startups, building the company from the ‘day 0’ stage to today’s success and the biggest wins he has experienced alongside his team at everstox.
Like a lot of other entrepreneurs, you started your journey in consulting at BCG. Why did this pathway appeal to you?
When you perform well at a good business university, the big consulting firms and investment banks show interest in you. I decided for myself that at the very least, I wanted to see what is happening inside those companies, because there's so many smart people to learn from. So, I applied for an internship at BCG during the summer period.
The project that I was on during the internship was very insightful, but the highlight was actually the people I worked with. My project leader, for example, spoke five or six languages fluently. She managed the complexity of one of the projects we worked together on with absolute peace of mind and ease. As a new joiner, she directly gave me so much trust and responsibility basically from day one. And in those eight weeks I felt like, “okay, I’ve never had a learning curve like this before”. So I ultimately decided that I wanted to continue with consulting and build my network within the firm to gain experience across projects for a couple of years. For me, this was paramount to get the learning experience for what I really wanted to do: starting and building a company.
That said, clearly there are different ways to get this experience. For example, you can also join a high-performing startup or scale-up. I have one particular in mind!
What was it about consulting that prepared you well for starting your own company?
In my view, there are two major drivers.
One is rhetorical determination. In other words: How do you talk, convince and get people behind your idea? When you move into starting your own company, rhetoric combined with a good amount of determination are fundamentally important.. For example, in our case, we are building a B2B solution with the mission to reduce the complexities of commerce and logistics operations. When I talk to potential clients and partners, I speak with people who have much more experience than I do. And it takes more than just a customer testimonial to convince these decision makers on choosing our solution as their trusted partner. I feel comfortable speaking to these audiences due to the exposure I had to clients and executives at BCG.
The other big aspect is how to get organized and get processes under control. There's a lot going on in consulting, a lot of different To Do’s and projects that land on your desk. You need to be on top of them and you need to ruthlessly prioritize according to deadlines, co-dependencies and available resources. Obviously it's very, very similar when you start a company with many different balls in the air, first for yourself and then for a big team.
When did this initial itch to become an entrepreneur actually come to you?
For me, that basically happened during university. When I was back at school, I didn't know much about business or entrepreneurship. When I look at my family background, we have all been employees and earned fair salaries more in the nine-to-five world, and we’ve all been very happy about that. So there was no pressure for me to think, “hey, I need to become an entrepreneur, I need to become a businessman”.
But when I started to study business administration at University of Mannheim, one of Germany’s well-known educational institutions, I met a lot of inspiring people. I started to read a lot, both about the economy and financial markets, but also about entrepreneurship. And that’s when the fascination truly started. So I worked with some friends on a business model that we tried to build alongside study. It was basically a simple booking platform where you could search, organise and find the best option for whatever service you’re looking for.
We were on our bikes and basically riding from one shop to the other and trying to sign customers up with a very simple prototype. We actually signed up 10 or 15 customers, but priorities and the timing were not right and the project never fully came to life. But the experience was fascinating to me. And so I always had the mentality of, when the time and the idea and the team is right, I will go down that path again and this time all the way.
You ultimately arrived at the decision to become a founder. What gave you the confidence to take the leap of faith?
I decided to leave BCG to give myself the space, the time, and also the mental and emotional capacity to really give everything for finding the right idea and the right setup. When I left, I sat with Johannes, a very good friend of mine and also a former BCG colleague. We had the shared passion for starting a company and very complementary skill sets.
And we both had some clear criteria of what we wanted in a business that we’d build together. It was a focus on a more traditional type of industry, like logistics, and more complex B2B software. We had a lot of conversations with different players in the operational logistics space to find our way towards a clear problem in the market that has not been solved. And we’d actually already been in touch with Flash when we were both at BCG, so once we had the determination that we really want to go for it and start something, we got back in touch with the team.
Over the next couple of weeks, we were able to excite Felix to complement our team as Co-Founder and CTO, we spoke to players on the logistics side and people in e-commerce and the Flash team. Everything made sense. The conversations we had gave me more confidence that what we were looking at was a massive opportunity.
What was most valuable about having Flash Ventures in your corner from day 0?
I mean, I've done many, many due diligences within BCG but they've been very theoretical. You look at market opportunities, you look at models. But the Flash process is completely different, a very hands-on entrepreneurial DD. We were originally looking for market trends, competitors and all market entry barriers. And Flash came to us and was like: “who will be the first five users? Who will be the first five suppliers? What will the first 100 days look like? How do we get this off the ground?” It was a very practical approach that really helped to transfer from theory to reality. When you combine the more long-term perspective that Johannes, Felix and I brought to the table with the input from Flash, it really set the tone for where we are now.
Once we decided that this was the opportunity that we wanted to run at, we were excited to take the investment. We started hiring our first team members. And during this stage, Flash’s network was fundamentally helpful to us; they are incredibly well-connected to various industries, ecosystems and experts in their field.
What has been the most fulfilling thing about building Everstox?
The development of our people and our team, by far.
There have been many successes, many milestones and also many challenges that we had to overcome. But at the end of the day, the most fulfilling part is looking at the team picture of the early days, when we were maybe like 10 or 15. Now we are more than 80 people, it’s incredible to see how all of us have developed over those two years. I’ve seen people who started out as juniors now becoming team leads. I’ve seen people going from sales intern to account executive, bringing home big international clients. Thinking about all of the individual stories from our team is by far the most fulfilling part.
What’s the one piece of advice you’d give to people who like their job, but have an itch to start a company?
If you really dream of starting a company, give yourself the opportunity to do it. I mean, if you work as an employee in a tier one consulting or banking firm, you can be certain that you’ve come this far for a reason. Imagine where you could be in 2, 5 or 10 years seizing the opportunity to create a company yourself. Even if it doesn’t work out for you, there will be great opportunities waiting for you afterwards.
The journey is really not comparable to any other job or profession that you can take. So it's really just about giving yourself the chance if you have a feeling that it’s something that you identify yourself with. Test ideas, talk to people, try to get those first five users of your model together.
After this, you’ll know whether you have the passion and whether there’s a market. From there, Flash helps you in validating if this is a pathway actually going down. And then I can tell you, within a couple of weeks you will know if starting a company and the particular opportunity feels right for you. It grows on you.