The GoGroup way of enabling opportunities and fostering entrepreneurship!

GoGroup was founded by Shishir Goel, Sascha Weiler and Nico Weiler in 2019 to create diverse opportunities for entrepreneurs and engineers. It is an innovation engine that enables ambitious founders to build new-age economy businesses from scratch. The company partners with entrepreneurs early on in their journey and builds digital capabilities like product management, engineering, design, and marketing. By bringing its experience in building tech companies and global networks to the table, GoGroup is helping build multiple startups today across different countries around the globe. CXOToday has engaged in an exclusive interview with Mr. Shishir Goel, Founder of GoGroup.

How has this journey been for GoGroup? How do you see it overall?

Officially, we launched in 2019, but the seeds of this were sown around a decade back. Our people are at the core of what we have built. We are immensely grateful for how our teams have weathered all the storms together. The camaraderie that people enjoy at GoGroup is unique. This is one of the big reasons why we have been able to build a bootstrapped and profitable company in today’s world. The freedom to choose the opportunities we want to go after is genuinely liberating. So, the journey has been fulfilling, looking back at where we started and seeing where we are today. And the best part is that we are still very early in our journey. We will continue enabling even more significant opportunities and creating even better teams.

What is the company’s USP?

GoGroup is an enabler of opportunity. We bring together ambitious entrepreneurs and talented full-time engineering, product, design, and marketing teams. With our unique setup, capable global founders and talented teams come together on day 1 when starting a new business. Our processes, systems, and leadership ensure that these teams and founders grow together for years to come. GoGroup fosters an open exchange of knowledge enabling the teams and ventures to grow fast and leverage each other’s learnings.

How is your industry growing overall? What does the future hold?

We are witnessing a remarkable change in the overall startup ecosystem. Entrepreneurship is becoming more and more of a career option for ambitious people. There are avenues for to-be-founders to collaborate and learn from experienced founders when starting up. They can become a part of incubators, company builders, and startup studios to work on their ideas and harness the power of community and network.

There is a wave of digital innovation units with big corporates betting vast sums of money on launching new startups. Digital units of corporates like Lufthansa Innovation Hub, Audi Business Innovation, BASF Chemovator, etc., are going after big problems and solving them with emerging technologies. The kind of momentum the pandemic has provided to the digital innovation market is unprecedented.

What are the emerging technologies that will drive the organizations of the future? How do you think your company contributing to this ecosystem?

It’s fascinating to see the emergence of a plethora of technologies – especially when every technology promises to change the future.

We believe a new way of software development is coming up in the form of Software 2.0. AI-powered tools and systems will allow developers to think more freely about more qualitative aspects of building software, like what is the problem we’re solving and why. A part of our team is currently exploring the possibility of bringing this more and more into our daily work.

Web 3 remains the talk of the town, and we see that the industry is bullish on it. Besides the hype, we think that blockchain will be irresistible for certain businesses in the upcoming years. We look forward to launching and building a couple of startups from scratch in 2023, and we won’t be surprised if they come from the web 3 space.

What are the flagship business solutions/offerings where GoGroup stands out?

Our platform is unique and brings together entrepreneurs and talented teams from the very beginning. They can find each other and fall in love. This builds deep trust from the start, which helps them go far and grow together as a team and as a startup.

What are the key startup businesses GoGroup has helped build?

GoGroup has been the starting point for many successful startups. All our partnerships are flourishing to this day. Among many, here are some of the amazing journeys.

FirstA – We partnered with the founders of FirstA on day 1. The company grew from zero to thousands of orders and was acquired by a massive public pharma company. We continue to build it together.

c20y – Max and Daniel were two founders with an idea to revolutionize contact-centre software across Europe. In partnership with GoGroup, they built up a renowned brand across Europe and managed to sell the business successfully to a US counterpart. They continue building together and growing the business to this day. We are excited to continue watching their journey.

HeyPort – With this product, we are digitalizing how ships are managed in Europe’s biggest shopping harbour. Together with GoGroup, Jan and Bastian are building exciting technology that is leading the industry into the digital age.

What do you look at while hiring talent at GoGroup?

We evaluate candidates based on their experience and the core skills required for the role. On top of this, there are two things which we are particular about. We sincerely look for and appreciate people who have a long-term mindset. At the same time, we believe that people with a high sense of entitlement do not fit in our culture.

What should talents look at while working with GoGroup? What is their career growth, learning, and development plans for them?

We are an excellent place for people who enjoy experimentation and building technology products from scratch. We provide this unique opportunity where everyone, from an intern to the founder, works together on solving problems. A special emphasis is on the leaders who can coach their teams well.

Every individual at GoGroup focuses on building one specific product, but we have programs where people learn about other GoGroup products, technologies, and business insights.

Do you foresee more expansion on the cards?

We continue to focus on creating opportunities for entrepreneurs and talented teams. We are very excited to see the opportunities constantly getting bigger and coming faster.

So to answer your question directly: Yes, we absolutely foresee more expansion and are very excited about it.