VSF 10th Anniversary CEO Interview

Editor's Note: This is the transcript of an interview held live and recorded on Dec. 16th, 2021.

To turn this 50 minute long interview into a comfortable read, we divided it into 3 segments, each one covering a specific time frame, namely past, present and future of the company.

You are currently reading Part 3 of 3 which includes a bit of fun with the bosses, deep insights into the personality of our CEOs and a glimpse into the future as seen through their eyes.

Part 1 covered the past and history of VSF Experts - from the spark of an idea to the creation of a new company able to deal with hopes, fears, lessons and bigger pictures on the way to becoming what VSF is today.

Part 2 cover the present state of VSF Experts, our company values, philosophy and culture - and how we at VSF actually embody these principles on a day-to-day basis.

Please Enjoy!

Q: You’ve just opened a path into the future with that statement, so let's go have a look. What exactly is our main goal, main objective, main mission for 2022?

Christian: 2022… Yeah, definitely consolidating and bringing the company back up to a healthy state. We need to recover from Covid-19 and the financial impact it had on us a little. Bring the company back to a stable environment where we have room to continue investing in our products and customer services rather than just maintaining them.

Q: Let's say it's the first working day of 2022 - What is your first order of business in relation to the mission you just stated.

Christian: I’ll continue working on the projects we already started, get in contact with all the people and consultants and external companies as well. It's not like that we start on the 3rd of January with a new strategy - we are already on it for a couple of weeks or even months. We’ll try to pick up some speed, and hopefully have some nice shop talks with our current clients and potential new partners that have lined up for the beginning of 2022. So, lots of meetings ahead.

Q: Ok, and Andy, what's your first order of business?

Andrew: It's a continuation of business as usual for me too, because we planned out everything to come in this quarter already. I think I will make sure that I’m on track with the to-do’s before Christmas and then I'll just continue with that come January. Just something to add to Christian’s list: There’re three big things coming up next year. First thing: We're looking for investors. Second thing: We are working on establishing our partner program, so we want to find more partners who will be reselling VCX and our other services. The third piece is to get VECaaS kicked off as a product and marketed in a way that represents us and our way of doing things. There's a lot of work coming our way as marketing and sales team.

Q: Here’s a bit of a fun and Andy, since you know this question already, you go first. Imagine it’s the 1st of January 2022. You look out of the window and there's a billboard in the sky everybody can see at least once a day. Your face is on it. What would you like to say, Andy?

Andrew: I would say “Everyone. Listen to each other, now please.“ that's it.

Q: Short and snappy! Christian. What would your billboard say?

Christian: Something similar like “Start talking to each other."

Q: That's a pretty clear message from both of you. Let's say at the same time, a little sticky note appears on your screen that you see every day, a „note to self“. An inspirational mantra or quote you like or something motivational. What does that note to yourself say?

Christian: Good Question. Probably something like “Don’t be afraid”.

Q: OK, and yours, Andy?

Andrew: I actually have a sticky note on my screensaver already! It says, “Go big or go home.”

Q: Is that your everyday mantra or something?

Andrew: Not really, but it's something my dad used to say. He always told me it’s the American way of thinking, the “Go big or go home.” At the moment that's motivating to me, you know, in a way that it's OK to think and go big. If you remember, we never wanted to become a big company. So this encourages me, helps me think about and understand what “big” means for us and so on. In our case it would mean “Just big enough to feel secure.”

Q: That's a really strong message. Maybe more of us should have that sticking on our screens. So, we're almost at the end with these rather positive notes for the future. Do you remember the first question I asked you guys, whether you are you now where you imagined yourself to be 10 years ago? Time to ask the question the right way around: Imagine yourself now in 10 years. What do you see? How do you imagine yourself? What would you like your life, your morning, your company to look like in 10 years?

Andrew: Well, hopefully I'm not very far from retirement and I'm working on my second or a couple movies because movies are my hobbies, so I wish I had more time for my movies and other cultural activities. So, in 10 years I hopefully do more of that.

Q: Christian, what about you?

Christian: I hope that I'll be in a more “senior” role - I'll be there to help people but definitely from the second row. I’ll let the others do the firefighting and the daily boring stuff! And I'm like the man behind the curtain - And I could also work from everywhere. I'm not really the type of guy to sit in the office everyday so I could see myself work with the notebook on my lap, anywhere, somewhere in the world and still bring value in the company. And if people say “We don't need you anymore” that's also fine for me.

Q: So you're both looking forward to slowing down. That sounds like a good plan. All the best of luck to you with that vision of yourself! We will do everything to support you in that, of course. Thank you very much for having founded VSF, for still being there for us and providing us with an environment where we can grow and develop ourselves. I think this is all for now - thank you guys for your time and once again: congratulations!

This concludes the VSF 10th Anniversary CEO Interview. Please look below to find the link to Parts 1 and 2!