CEO Dave Hengartner on Leading rready's Innovation Charge

It all began almost six years ago when David was scouting for startups to collaborate with, together with Swisscom. Coming from a startup background, the former Founder had a foot in both worlds.

After attending a talk on the Kickbox methodology held by its inventor Mark Randall, he became fascinated by Kickbox and what it had to offer. He began building a pilot program centred around the methodology, while still working full-time. His budget was small (like that of most Kickboxers!)

David admits, 'I had always been put off by large corporations because I thought I would just be a small cog in a huge machine where you can’t really change anything. So, you can imagine how stoked I was when I got this opportunity to build something from scratch. The fact that it was so radically bottom-up, so radically non-hierarchical, motivated me even more.'

With some persuasion, management increased David’s budget from CHF 5,000 to 150,000 so he could continue validating and developing his idea and navigate his way through the RedBox stage. By the end of it, he managed to prove the concept’s value and was granted the funds for a full roll-out within Swisscom.

At this point, David had been working on the project for almost a year and was looking for support: “That's when I met Reto Wenger, who had just joined Swisscom as a trainee. In fact, Reto was supposed to rotate through different stations during his traineeship, but in the end, he stuck with me.”

So, after a year, Swisscom Kickbox went from a one-person show to a duo, and the implementation could begin. 

Building Up a Team 

Now that the project was up and running, the second year was about building up a small initial team. David and Reto received support from various trainees and apprentices. 'This way, we could run the program internally, not only proving the value behind the concept but also making a real difference and shaking things up,' David recalls.

The team continued to grow, as Ralph Hartmeier, who had founded a startup with Reto in the past, joined. Vinzenz Leuenberger then joined as a summer intern. During it's second year, Swisscom Kickbox consisted on average, of six to eight team members.

The four Co-founders of rready (formerly GETKICKBOX): from left to right: Reto Wenger, Dave Hengartner, Ralph Hartmeier and Vinzenz Leuenberger

The Next Big Step: Commercialization 

Following the success of the internal Kickbox program, the team convinced management to open up the program to external partners and commercialize it. But shifting the focus towards B2B meant that the team was forced to optimize the internal program making it even more streamlined to focus their energy on building up these new B2B partnerships.

This is one reason the solution we know today is highly automated, scalable, and efficient – it all stems from this time where the team just didn’t have the capacity to run a program with so much overhead. As David describes it, 'this is where the shift occurred – both in terms of our mindset and our workload – moving further away from the internal to the external business.'

Recognizing Potential

After this initial year of working on building up the B2B business, management recognized GETKICKBOX’s potential and made it a full, independent business unit within Swisscom. 'It was like being given our own section of a garden to take care of,' recalls David.

However, it was also becoming more apparent that GETKICKBOX would probably never form part of Swisscom’s core business: It wasn’t strategically beneficial for the telecommunications business, it was very international, and it was too small to move the needle for a large corporation like Swisscom.

At this point, one member of the team was assigned to focus on the internal Swisscom Kickbox program so that the rest could place their full attention on the B2B business, which in fact led to something of a renaissance for the internal Kickbox program at Swisscom.

David explains, 'this allowed us to start looking for ways to spin out. We had a great entrepreneurial spirit and had already experienced success, but we knew it just wasn’t the right fit for Swisscom in the long term.' The search for fundraising began, to spin out the business and ensure new growth. 

On to New Horizons: The Beginning of rready

Once it became clear that the team was going to spin out; it was time to talk strategy.

Question number one: Would the business continue as a single-solution provider or fan out with different solutions for other innovation methods?

Ideas were soon Ideas were swiftly circulating, sparking creativity and discussions among the team. The decision was made to add another solution to the portfolio to cover the next steps in the innovation process – improvement and further development.

As David says, the team knew how they wanted to work from the start. 'We knew we wanted to use the same strategy as with KICKBOX to create a well-designed, out-of-the-box solution, based on an existing, proven methodology, where you’re given everything, you need. Kind of like the Apple approach, but for innovation solutions.'

The discovery process began, to create a new brand for this multi-product strategy. What are the driving values? What will be the offers? It didn’t take long until they came up with the name 'rready'. David proudly explains, 'rready encompasses so many facets of the brand. We provide ready-to-use solutions to make companies ready for the future with innovation and future-proof their employees by giving them new skills. It resonated with the whole team, so that’s what we went for.'

One thing is for sure: Along their journey thus far, there's never been a dull moment! David concludes: 'It’s been such a fascinating journey. Moving from the realization that I could make a real difference in a large corporation, to rolling the program out and seeing its impact, to experimenting with B2B and running the independent business unit and now fundraising and spinning out as a real startup. But this is just the beginning of the next phase of our adventure with rready.'