In February 2023, we founded Diselva AG – diselva for short. A group of ten experienced digital experts who have set out together and euphorically on their way to self-employment to guide customers through digital transformation. Maybe starting a business is also a little bit like having children. It takes a good dose of positive naivety to embark on the rewarding adventure – without knowing exactly what it really means beforehand. But in short: It’s worth it!
After the first 100 days, I allow myself to draw a first, grateful summary – the euphoria has not passed. Even though I thought I had already seen a lot with a good 25 years of professional experience and business management, many new thoughts and perspectives emerged, which in retrospect is hardly surprising.
It feels right
It feels wonderful to be self-employed. To make your own – right – decisions and to be able to work with the right people who get down to business, do the right thing. Doing the right thing for customers without having to meet pointless KPIs. Listen, understand – and make the right thing out of it – say “no” sometimes.
But what is right? Right is what feels good to me. Which is in line with my understanding of values and culture – and that is the great, unpaid – pardon priceless – profit of self-employment. To get up every morning and go to work with joy – to have a “big hairy audacious goal” that accompanies me for years.
It makes me a little proud to be able to look back after 100 days and see that something has been created together. Market presence, service portfolio, structures, ad hoc assignments, customer relationships and the first successful projects. Being independent means having to make your own decisions and moving out of your comfort zone and taking risks. But also to be able to take advantage of the opportunities offered and to develop them further. The best thing – all ten are still on board and customers are happy to see us, we laugh a lot and the big worries are quickly replaced by the important things of professional life, such as choosing the right coffee beans and philosophies of waste separation.
Roller coaster of emotions
Coming from larger companies, a little more distance to work, content, customers and results develops over time. Success and failure are smoothed out by large numbers (turnover, number of customers, number of employees, etc.) and a healthy degree of anonymity and delegation of responsibility.
With ten people, with nine like-minded people, it’s different. It’s more intense. Every event hits hard like a meteorite. Every small success makes your heart beat faster and gives you the feeling that you are on the right (there it is again) path. Everyone has done their part, everyone feels like a winner and the world doesn’t seem to be big enough.
Every failure, every postponement (how can CS trigger such disruptions, especially in our founding phase), every delay and cancellation lead you directly into the valley of tears. Doubts about the decision, uncertainty about one’s own abilities, concern for one’s existence and one’s own failure – if it weren’t for nine others and a network that has been spun together almost invisibly over almost 20 years. The encouragement, the encouragement, the chance to pitch again, to offer, to talk intensively about alignment, USP and delivery capabilities, to get new opportunities and to suffer and celebrate together as diselva founders and to rebuild each other every day and reassure each other – to do the right thing.
It’s like a roller coaster ride that doesn’t want to end. But the adrenaline, the magnificent view on the highest peak and the tingling in the stomach compensate for the rapid, but fortunately finite descents and create a feeling of actually being able to go to work every day with joy and a smile. It is really a special pleasure for me to be able to take this step with diselva and to be able to gain unique experiences.
Reverie, values and insights
The dream of self-employment and your own company has become reality. The values form the irrefutable foundation, but do not earn money on their own – unfortunately. Going through the world in a self-determined way with open eyes and ears helps immensely to gain insights that are sometimes banal, sometimes surprising, mostly enlightening but always explanatory. We are in the comfortable situation of meeting with customers interest, appreciation and broad understanding of our offer – this combined with the need to consistently take steps forward in the digital transformation is an extremely profitable mix.
When a company starts without its own legacy – like diselva – and thus has a high degree of flexibility, commitment and willingness to cooperate, the perspective on some topics changes enormously. In the second part of my blog series on the first 100 days, I will talk about our “Business Insides”: Shortage of skilled workers, maturity in digitization and the challenges of being able to implement projects in companies in an agile and fast way – or in other words “why not everything is going as smoothly as desired…”.