Big hires, bold vision, Christoph Zöller on scaling Instaffo.

Robin Haak: I wanted to start with your emphasis on the importance of self-leadership and having a clear internal path, and how these principles influence your leadership style and your culture at Instaffo.

Christoph Zöller: I really like this question because I'm someone who communicates very directly and doesn't like to waste time with unnecessary things. That naturally means that I tend to operate on a factual level. It can take some time for people to get used to it. But the main point I want to make here is that I firmly believe that it's incredibly difficult to lead others if you can't lead yourself very well. That's why, at Instaffo, at the beginning, we invested in personal development and coaches for our team.

That definitely helped everyone to build a better awareness of their own quirks and growth potential beyond just their technical skills. However, over the past few years, we have scaled that back quite a bit. Our organization has since grown to around 100 people, and we've drawn a clear line between professional development and personal therapy. In the past, we supported our team in many personal matters, but we do less in this area now.

There's a great article I recently read from the founder of Basecamp that touches on this topic—I highly recommend it.

How do you keep yourself disciplined in the sense of knowing where you want to go and how to lead the team?

Great question - I’d like to answer it on two levels.

On an operational level, we work with OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), which really help us stay focused. We update them quarterly, which gives us a very clear direction on what we want to prioritize and also helps us say no to things that don’t align. We’ve been doing this for a few years now, and it’s made a huge difference in maintaining focus.

As a founder, the challenge is that you're constantly surrounded by opportunities, and there’s always someone, whether internally or externally, suggesting new things you could be doing. That’s just part of being at the forefront of innovation.

Personally, I try to stay disciplined by regularly stepping back and reminding myself why I’m doing this. I have a clear long-term goal of building something meaningful and lasting, and that perspective helps me stay committed, even when things get tough.

You launched Instaffo in 2017, so you must have grown with this company. What do you think you've learned and put into practice during that time?

I’m happy to share. First of all, the journey doesn't feel that crazy to me. It's been more of a natural thing. I know that we have accomplished a lot, but we still have big plans. What's interesting, though, is that I'm now 32 years old and I initially started Instaffo over 10 years ago while I was still in university. The first years were incredibly tough because I was the definition of a first-time founder or a greenhorn. And, after founding the company, we spent nearly two years working on the idea before we actually went live in 2017.

Our initial vision was to build an Airbnb for the job market, but in reality, we were more like a travel agency with tech in the background. Except no one was using the tech. So, in other words, we were working as a headhunter while our platform wasn’t really being used and was almost untouched by our customers. We were growing at a decent rate, but it wasn't the kind of business I wanted to build, nor something I could really identify with. And, as we scaled, it became increasingly difficult to change the direction because what we were doing was working.

But then COVID hit, and our numbers dropped, and that forced a real identity crisis. We made the decision for my co-founder, who was leading the Product team at the time, to leave. So he stepped back, and then I restructured the leadership around Product and Tech together with Nikolai. He was our first software engineer and then CTO, and he stepped up to take full ownership of Product & Tech. Looking back, I would say this was one of the best decisions I've made at Instaffo because at the same time, we also transitioned from being a sales and active-sourcing driven company to a product and marketing-led organization. We also brought in Mika, who's now our VP of Go-to-Market, and he has been super impactful in driving our growth on the go-to-market side. I just pointed out those two, but it was really a team win overall.

It sounds like the COVID pandemic allowed you to completely rethink everything…

Yeah, COVID was the reason we started to restructure the company because the numbers dropped. It was not just because of COVID, our numbers dropped because of COVID, but we could also have gone the same way after COVID. We used this inflection point and this time to then restructure the company to a product and marketing-led organization and to really build a marketplace and not just a tech-enabled head-hunting company. This year, for the first time, we will hit eight figures in revenue, and all while many of our competitors, unfortunately, are struggling and laying off employees.

Can you tell me about your journey to where you are today?

A few things come to my mind there because I think a lot lies in my childhood. Even as a kid, I often had to push through challenges. It's not that I came from a rough background or anything, but I was always more of an outsider, and I guess I could say I was pretty disruptive in school. That had an impact on me. When people make you feel like they don't believe in you, that leaves a mark. Today, I'm actually grateful for those experiences because they shaped me into who I am. I always say that most successful entrepreneurs had just the right amount of childhood trauma to turn them into who they are today. And it sounds a little bit dark, but I honestly think there's a lot of truth to it.

How do you balance your two companies, Instaffo and Paretos?

Just to clarify upfront — I’m not managing two companies. I co-founded Paretos, but I don’t have an operational role there. My two co-founders, Fabian and Thorsten, are the ones running the day-to-day business. I serve as Chairman of the Board, so I’m in regular exchange with the founders and offer support where I can, but it’s not on an operational level. There’s no balancing act between Instaffo and Paretos for me — my main focus is 100% on Instaffo and driving the company’s continued growth and success.

In addition to my role as CEO at Instaffo, I also invest in startups and VC funds together with a few friends. Over the past few years, we’ve built up a portfolio of around 40 to 50 startup and VC-fund investments. But to be clear, this takes up only a small fraction of my time compared to what I dedicate to Instaffo.

Of course, when you add it all up, it’s more than a 40-hour work week.

The real question I ask myself is not so much about balancing multiple companies, but rather how I balance my work and personal life. Honestly, I don’t likethe term “work-life balance.” For me, it all blends — I love what I do, I work with friends, and I see it more as a symbiosis than a strict separation.

I’m a very curious person, and I find it incredibly inspiring to step outside my day-to-day CEO role and dive into new ideas, new industries, and new business models. I would even say it makes me better at my job — it sparks creativity and brings fresh ideas that I can bring back to Instaffo. Many things I’ve seen through my investment activities have been successfully implemented at Instaffo.

And to sum it up, right now, a big part of my time and energy is going into building my career. I just love creating things — that’s what drives me and gives me energy.

You’re also an LP in Robin Capital…

Yes, when I said I invested in funds, Robin Capital is one of those funds. And I won't say this just because of this interview, but it’s definitely one of the ones that I'm most excited about.

In the beginning, it was more of a hypothesis to invest in solo GPS and smaller funds, because if you look at the numbers, it's easier to get a decent return on smaller VC funds than on the bigger ones. I have investments in several solo GP funds across Europe and the US, so let's see if that proves to be right. Over the time that I’ve worked with you, we’ve also made some co-investments in companies like Salesqueze, Spare-it, or Eyva.

I've never seen anyone who's so dedicated, working with the founders and really pushing them to success and so hands-on side by side and supporting them especially in the early phases. That's why I’m really hyped about Robin Capital.

What kind of investor are you?

I wouldn’t say I have a super-defined focus. A lot of my investments are in the B2B space, but I also back companies that combine hardware and software, and even a few in biotech. For me, it really comes down to believing in the founding team — if that’s there, I’m open to almost anything.

That said, these days I mostly do co-investments alongside VCs. In the early days — my first two or three investments — I also did a few pure angel rounds. And some of those worked out really well, like my investment in Codesphere. But I also learned that when there’s no clear lead investor, founders often need a lot more hands-on support, and that can make the time commitment significantly higher. That’s why I now prefer to invest alongside established funds where there’s a lead who can drive the process.

Are you hands-on with the companies you invest in?

I can be a good hands-on supporter, but I don't see myself as an investor who you have to push. I think you can pull all the information you want from me. I will also introduce you to part of my team when you need a sparring partner for Marketing, Sales, or Tech topics. I think that is valuable for the founders because I also see myself more as a founder than an investor. That's also what I tell them when I speak to them: “Hey, I'm not a typical investor. I'm more of a founder because I know the founder side way better than I know the investor side.” The founders usually tell me I’m one of the more active angels in their network, which, of course, I really appreciate! I’m just not great at staying quiet when I have an idea, see a way to improve something, or spot an opportunity elsewhere. So I guess I’m more active than I realize.

What is it then that you look for in a founding team? What makes you feel like they can go the distance?

I'm looking for the dedication of the founders because it's hard to survive and to go all the way. I've experienced it myself and I've learned the hard way. The founders must have the dedication to really make the company successful. They have to be really good at fundraising and Sales because it’s easy to run out of money and you constantly have to be selling — whether it’s selling your product to customers or selling the vision to attract great talent But they also have to make sure the company never runs out of ideas and keep building a vision for how it can become big.

How is AI changing or adding to what you offer at Instaffo?

I don't want to reveal too much about our strategy, but I think you'll be hearing a lot from us in the coming months around AI. And, as a marketplace, we already have strong access to both the talent and the companies. So, when it comes to developing AI features, we don't have to focus on market access because we already have market access.

I think you can automate a lot of the recruiting processes with the recent developments in AI. So, in the whole area of agentic recruiting, helping to improve workflows for recruiters who are spending more than 90% of their time focusing on managing the process instead of talking to the people and getting new people on board. That's where I see a lot of potential to make the lives and work of recruiters and companies in hiring better and more efficient.

What do you think of the situation with AI in Europe right now versus the US? And what could we be doing more of in Europe?

We don't have a competitive foundational model in Europe. Well, we have Mistral, that's the only one, and they have a lot of US influence on the investor and partnership side. I believe in “Project Europe”. I just recently came out of the US. At the end of last year, I was in the Bay Area for 10 days with a VC. We had a lot of meetings in SF and Austin, Texas. For me, Europe is super strong in terms of infrastructure and people. I think we have to believe in our strength. I believe that on the application layer, maybe not on the foundational side, great companies are evolving out of Europe. There are also challenges with all the regulations, etc., but I think we should focus more on our strengths rather than complaining about everything around us.

The latest round of funding for Instaffo was in March 2024, and you raised €10 million. What are your big plans for the next year or so?

There's a lot to come, and we’re building something great. We started with tech positions in the beginning, so our customers could hire software engineers and tech people in Germany on our marketplace. Then, we expanded into other job verticals like sales, marketing, consulting, and we recently launched a finance category. In the end, we want to build a marketplace for every job position, but we’re getting there, vertical by vertical, because we believe that it's super important that the user journey is vertical-specific.

So, as a tech talent, you have a different user journey than, for example, that of a sales talent, and that's why we’re not launching all the verticals together, but we’re building them step by step. That’s been very successful so far, and that's what we’re doing in terms of expansion.

On the software side, I believe that when you own the recruiting channel, you can own way more of the value chain. That comes with more opportunities.

There are a lot of opportunities in the recruiting market. It’s a billion-dollar market in Germany alone. You don't need to go international to build a billion-dollar company, but we want to go international, and we see Instaffo as a European company. But everything comes in time, and we are patient because we are in a red ocean market. It's not about land grabbing. That's why we see that the best product wins. That's also been our story for the last few years, where we have managed to grow at a very high growth rate, even when the market was down.

Do you have a book or a podcast or something that has influenced you in your approach to business or approach to life?

I'm kind of the person who immediately orders a book if someone recommends it. But to be honest, that often just means they pile up even if I try to read them regularly. Having said that, there is one resource I check from time to time. It's called the Mochary Method Curriculum. It went viral a year or two ago, and it's basically a collection of insights from top US Bay Area business coaches covering a wide range of topics from hiring and running effective 1- 1s to high-level strategy. It's like a Google sheet with a lot of resources, and that helps me from time to time when I’m struggling or when I want to dig deeper into one of the topics.

Do you have a mentor or someone you've looked up to?

Aside from my parents, there were two key people—Carsten and Alfred. They were the first investors in Instaffo, and over time, we’ve built a strong partnership. Nowadays, almost every other business venture I’m involved in—whether it’s angel investing or VC-Fund investments —I do together with them. There’s a huge amount of trust, and I'm super happy that they believed in me so early on and they helped Instaffo to become what it is now.

What would you like to do more of in your life right now if you had the time and the energy, and the space?

It depends on the phase I'm in. But right now, I would say I'm very happy. If I have to pick one thing, I would say doing more activities that aren't directly related to business or work. But I do feel good about the balance I have. I would also really like to take time thinking deeply about a topic, digging deep, reading, and doing research. To be honest, that’s something I don’t have a lot of time for in my current schedule, and is one thing I would like to do more.

What gives you balance?

Sports help me to balance things after a long day of meetings or in the office. I used to play soccer quite competitively when I was younger. So, that was during the time before I started my first business. I’ve also signed up for a half marathon here in Heidelberg. It's one of the toughest ones in Germany, given that it’s so hilly.

As a tech founder and investor, what advice would you give to anyone starting out right now?

You need a lot of patience, resilience, and hard work—but if you have those and keep pushing, you’ll make it eventually, whether it’s with your first, second, or third company.

I do think it’s important to be very aware of the sacrifices you’re making along the way.

Thank you, Christoph.

Thank you, Robin.