Our ‘Profile: A Day in the Life of’ feature takes a look at some of the global professionals working across performance marketing. It aims to shed light on the varying roles and companies across the flourishing industry.

In this edition we head to Berlin, to speak with the managing director and co-founder of Productsup. 

Job title and company:

Co-founder & MD (Strategy, Finance & Business Development), Productsup. 

In one sentence, how would you describe what the company does?

Productsup provides a cloud-based product data management platform that enables you to collect product data from multiple sources, to optimize and structure the data, and to distribute customized feeds to multiple shopping and marketing channels -quickly and easily.

What are the company’s unique selling points?

  • It’s quick, easy and powerful.
  • An intuitive, user-friendly interface means no technical skills are required.
  • The highly scalable and flexible software enables you to process millions of products in seconds.
  • And advanced features ensure you create customized, relevant, high quality product data feeds.

Within the last six months/year, what stands out as the company’s major milestones?

  • November 2013: Opened office in San Francisco.
  • February 2014: Selected as one of the startups to take part in Plug and Play’s 3 month Retail Accelerator Program in San Francisco.
  • March 2014: Surpassed the 1 billion mark for number of products processed on the platform per month.
  • April 2014: Signed strategic partnerships with two major US players: Adobe and Marin Software.

How long have you been in your current role?

4 years.

Where are you based?

75% Berlin & 25% San Francisco.

What previous performance marketing-related companies have you worked at?

None.

What are your main job responsibilities?

I like to quote of an experienced VC on that: 

“A CEO does only three things. Sets the overall vision and strategy of the company and communicates it to all stakeholders. Recruits, hires, and retains the very best talent for the company. Makes sure there is always enough cash in the bank”.

In my case I would add that identifying business development opportunities in form of key strategic partnerships is also key role.

Take us through what you get up to on a typical working Monday:

Typically I get up around 8am and have a coffee whilst checking my agenda for the day. Then I go running for 10km. At 10:23 we have our all-hands meeting to talk about our top priorities, before I go diving into my emails for 1-2 hours. After lunch (typically at Die Eins or Soho House Berlin, or a quick soup somewhere) I will have 2 to 3 one-on-one meetings (mostly related to sales and marketing topics). I take the afternoon to cross off my top priorities for the day – at least the top 3 but ideally the top 5. 

What top three websites can you be found browsing during your lunch hour?

I always refer to the daily newsletter from Handelsblatt to keep updated about main events taking place. Then during lunch hour I check www.tagesschau.de, http://jamesclear.com/blog to get inspirations on personal development and http://www.ted.com/ to be inspired by brilliant people thinking about topics I did not necessarily have on the agenda.

What are your top three tips for someone looking to get their hands on a job like yours?

For me the most valuable tips when it comes to being an entrepreneur and building your own company are:

  • Try to be as focused as possible.
  • Network well and talk about your idea/product as often as possible -incorporate feedback.
  • Hire A players (ideally people brighter than you).

Career-wise, where do you see yourself in three years time?

I love what I do, the people I work with are brilliant, we have an awesome product and we get terrific customer feedback. Therefore, I do not hope for much of a change. I think that we will have rolled out our platform globally by then, apart from Germany and US where our activities are concentrated at the moment. That would go well with my career goal of gathering experience in Japan and South America. 

Tell us one thing people at work don’t know about you?

I played hand ball in Oxford with the Oxford University Handball Club (The Blues) and we won the British University Championship.