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Below is our recent interview with Mathias Wengeler, CEO and Co-Founder at Atheneum:
Q: Can you tell us what your business does?
A: Atheneum is a global platform revolutionizing market research & knowledge sharing. Its mission is to accelerate the decision making of its clients by connecting them to the world’s top professionals and industry leaders. Atheneum delivers interactions that generate intelligent insights and creative ideas ensuring clients can drive their businesses forward efficiently. Atheneum has a pool of 400,000 renowned experts of former and current knowledge leader in their field, e.g. music streaming or crypto currency.
Q: What’s been the most challenging thing in developing the company?
A: There have been many challenges and roadblocks, starting from a one room bootstrapped startup with little budget to a ten offices global organization. If we had to choose one point, it would be getting HR right and further enabling best in class HR processes, from recruiting to training and retaining. From culture to motivation, developing the right incentive schemes, defining values and company vision and communicating that to the team – and living it every day.
Recommended: Q: What do you provide to your clients that your competition can’t?
A: We are often quicker and source experts more easily than our competitors due to the diverse language capabilities of our team. Our staff is made up of 35 nationalities and our employees speak more than 50 languages.
On top, we distinguish ourselves from other companies by combining a data approach and service. We are disrupting the industry of market research. Our technology is automatizing and digitizing the market intelligence space. We start where Google stops – offering our clients a deep understanding of topics and expert research which is second-to-none.
Thirdly, we are very strong in our survey capabilities and are dominating the market with regards to emerging and frontier markets.
Q: You have recently raised €10M, could you tell us more about it?
A: At the beginning of September we closed a €10 million investment round led by independent tech growth investors Crosslantic Capital Management. The investment will be used to help grow our business by another 50% in the next 12 months. Furthermore, it will enable our business to expand its global footprint in new markets and we are aiming at recruiting 70+ new employees in the next years and making further key investments in our technology platform and services. The funding round will enable us to take Atheneum to a whole new level. Enhancing the technology platform will be key to the future of the business as we will utilize our technology to further automate and digitize the market intelligence space and streamline our services to clients.
Recommended: Q: What’s coming up next for Atheneum?
A: A key focus will be on hiring the best in class team members to strengthen our team – which is currently already the strongest we ever had due to the introduction of new processes and a new infrastructure. Furthermore, we plan to expand to new markets which will increase our presence of currently ten offices on four continents globally. The expansion of our team by a senior and experienced new team member is also coming up and we will announce a new partnership with a world leading company soon.
Last Updated on November 10, 2018
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