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The insanely successful career of Rocket Internet cofounder Oliver Samwerhttps://www.businessinsider.in/the-insanely-successful-career-of-rocket-internet-cofounder-oliver-samwer/oliver-samwer-was-born-in-1972-in-cologne-germany-hes-two-years-younger-than-his-older-brother-marc-and-three-years-older-than-his-younger-brother-alexander-/slidelist/48589648.cms2021-07-26T12:47:51+05:30

The insanely successful career of Rocket Internet cofounder Oliver Samwer

Jul 26, 2021, 12:47 IST

Oliver Samwer was born in 1972 in Cologne, Germany. He's two years younger than his older brother Marc and three years older than his younger brother Alexander.

Both of Samwer's parents were lawyers. Their father, Sigmar-Jürgen Cologne Samwer, was fairly well-known in Cologne, having represented literature Nobel Prize Winner and Karl Carstens, who later became President of Germany.

Marc, Oliver and Alexander aren't the only founders in the Samwer family. Their great-grandfather Karl Samwer created German insurance company Gothaer Versicherung.

From a young age, the three Samwer brothers wanted to be entrepreneurs too. They were fascinated by the rise of low-cost airlines, and thought of Virgin's Richard Branson and Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary as heroes. But they were missing a few important things — experience in the airline industry, and a plane.

So Samwer decided to study Business Administration at the WHU Otto Beisheim School of Management, which is near Koblenz in Germany. Afterwards, he worked as a trainee for investment bank Sal Oppenheim.

Even at this point Samwer was starting businesses. He launched his first startup, the Ego International Trading Company, with some classmates. The company imported alpaca wool slippers from Bolivia.

In 1998, the three brothers were living in San Francisco and studying many of the companies emerging from Silicon Valley at the time. Inspired, Oliver co-authored a study called America's Most Successful Startups. It was at that point that the brothers noticed that a lot of Americans were starting to buy and sell things using a marketplace called eBay.

The brothers decided to replicate eBay's business model in Germany. They moved back in 1999, and launched auction site Alando in March. The company took off, selling to eBay just 100 days later for $43 million (£27 million). After the sale, Samwer acted as eBay's managing director in Germany.

Even though Samwer names the quick sale as one of the biggest mistakes of his career, it turned out to be a blueprint for the next few years. In 2000, the Samwer brothers founded Jamba!, which let people buy extra content like games and ringtones for mobile phones. They sold it to Verisign for $273 million (£174 million) in 2004.

The Samwers then started a VC fund to help back startups. European Founders Fund (EFF), which was later changed to Global Founders Capital (GFC), backed StudiVZ, a German version of Facebook.

In 2007, the brothers launched Rocket Internet, intending to help build companies rather than just investing in them. The plan was to take proven online business models — from companies in e-commerce, marketplaces, finance-tech and travel — to other markets.

One of the first companies Rocket Internet helped launch was Robert Gentz and David Schneider's Zalando, which was based on American online shoe retailer Zappos. Germany-based Zalando had its own €5.3 billion (£3.8 billion) IPO in 2014.

After selling their shares in StudiVZ, the Samwers made a smart investment of $10 million (£6.37 million) in the real Facebook in 2008, but sold their stake when Facebook was worth just $50 million (£31.8 million).

In 2010, Rocket Internet launched CityDeal, which had a similar model to Groupon. It grew so quickly in Europe that Groupon ended up buying it out just five months after its launch.

Rocket Internet has come up against criticism for helping clone existing companies, rather than coming up with new ideas. But Samwer argues the technology industry has romanticized innovation. He sees Rocket as a "platform" that makes it more likely that new startups will succeed.

This obsession with succeeding has caused problems in the past. In a now-infamous email published by TechCrunch with the subject line "when is it time for blitzkrieg," Samwer told one of his teams they should confirm a plan by signing "with their blood." He probably meant it figuratively.

But that aggression has worked off. Rocket Internet completed a €6.5 billion (around £4.6 billion, $8.2 billion) IPO in October 2014.

Since then, Rocket Internet has held on to most of the companies it has backed, often launching them less than 100 days after their inception. Most of them are active in markets that are under-served by the American firms that inspire them, from the Philippines to Brazil.

Rocket Internet has helped launch 70 companies, including Jumia, Foodpanda and Home24. But that's not enough for the company's CEO. Now 42, Samwer told Wired in a rare interview that he intends to keep his nose to the grindstone for the next 25 years.

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