After graduating from university in 2010, Holger Seim and his friends all noticed something: they no longer seemed to have time to read books. This realization led to the birth of Blinkist — the start-up founded by Holger Seim, Tobias Balling, Sebastian Klein and Niklas Jansen in 2012. Blinkist provides users with summaries of non-fiction books, breaking down complex ideas into a 15-minute digital and audio format.
The company’s aim is to share “big ideas in small packages”. Holger Seim, 37, spoke to Business Spotlight about the company’s journey so far and its future direction.
What’s the idea behind short-format, non-fiction content?
Sometimes, we want to read something or learn something new, but we don’t know where to start. Blinkist makes that easier. If you think something is relevant, you can spend 15 minutes on it to get some high-level food for thought. That gives you the key points, and then you can decide if you want to read more.
Did you expect Blinkist to be so successful?
We were optimistic, but getting funding was a challenge. We were introduced to some investors, but it was hard to convince them because all we had was a PowerPoint presentation with some content prototypes.
How do you answer critics who say Blinkist helps people “fake it” in their careers without reading anything in full?
I tell them to have conversations with people who are using Blinkist, because then they’ll learn that there are two big groups of users. There are keen readers who use Blinkist as a complementary tool to discover their next book or to recap one they’ve already read. Then, there are the people who don’t read books. We turn some of them into readers. And even if we don’t manage to do that, we still give them the ability to learn something.
Tell us about Blinkist’s audience.
Once you leave university, learning stops being your “job”. Blinkist helps people to take this into their own hands. The two big age groups are 25–34 and 35–44. I think there’s potential with older audiences, but that age group is generally not as tech-savvy. It takes longer to build trust with them, and they usually have more time to read books.
And what is Blinkist’s business model?
You can read or listen to one title a day for free. There’s also a free seven-day trial. For full access, you pay a monthly or annual subscription fee, like you do on Netflix. Blinkist is available on Apple, Google, Android and web browsers. Most people use the app because it lets you listen offline.
Why are you trying out a four-day work week this summer?
First of all, the war for talent is real. We can’t pay the salaries that Google or Amazon pay, but we can compete on company culture. What we learned from listening to our people was that they felt stressed and had too little time for things other than work. We decided to do something progressive and try “summer hours”.
I read about this concept in the book Let My People Go Surfing by Patagonia founder, Yvon Chouinard. Summer hours are part of Patagonia’s company culture. The people working there are all outdoor freaks and want to go climbing, canoeing or whatever, so they have summer hours.
Additionally, we have a challenge at Blinkist that I think a lot of companies have. People keep themselves busy but end up doing work that’s not necessarily that impactful. We always say: “Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize!” But you need to do something to change behaviour. We still want to achieve the same results. Reducing working hours by 20 per cent doesn’t mean that we’ll also lower our ambition by 20 per cent.
Blinkist tested an anti-hierarchy model a few years ago. How did that go?
The short answer is it didn’t work. We experimented with a model called “holacracy” in 2015. It aims to empower workers by allowing teams to organize themselves without traditional management structures.
We wanted to boost employee happiness and make a more successful business, but full autonomy and no hierarchy didn’t check either of those boxes. Some were happy to be autonomous, but others felt left alone and unsure what to do. We had experienced people who thought they could help others, but they felt like they weren’t allowed to because that would have been managing. It created a lot of frustration.
Now, we have a classic hierarchy, with VP level, directors, heads of department and contributors. We still believe in keeping hierarchies as flat as possible, though. We don’t want managers to micromanage and tell everyone what to do. We want contributors to take decisions, take some risks and be empowered.We’re big believers in situational leadership, in which we tell our leaders: “When it comes to a specific challenge, is a contributor capable and motivated? If both are true, then empower them. But if the employee is not capable, because he or she has never done that before, then be more directive.”
What advice do you have for anyone who is thinking about founding a start-up?
Just get started! Be optimistic and pragmatic. Go step by step. There will be many challenges along the way. Don’t visualize every step because then you’ll never start — just focus on the first two steps. Do them, and then the next two steps and so on.
What are your hopes for the future of Blinkist?
There is a universal need among people to grow, both personally and professionally. We want to grow our business, and we want to be innovative. In three years, Blinkist will look different. Our challenge is to work out how it needs to look to really fulfil that universal need.
Takeaways... Talking about time off
- How much annual leave do you get?
- My boss has told me I need to reduce my overtime hours.
- Thursday is a public holiday, so I’m taking Friday off, too.
- Why hasn’t Janet approved my holiday yet?
- Tom will be covering for me while I’m away next week.
- I’m on call, so I have to be ready to go into work if needed.