Fabian Pfortmüller on Why to Prioritize Community Trust Over Business Network Size

In Chapter 16 of 19 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, community builder and entrepreneur Fabian Pfortmüller shares what he has learned by building the young professional Sandbox Network.  To create more effective network opportunities, Pfortmüller focuses on establishing trust within the community.  Whereas networks are more about adding contacts, Pfortmüller sees communities as platform to use trust and diversity to create foundation upon which to build out the network.  He also notes the power of informality and what it can do to close the gap between trusting communities and actionable networks.  Pfortmüller is co-founder of Sandbox Network (www.sandbox-network.com).  He also co-founded an innovation think tank, Incubaker (www.incubaker.com), and is part of the group's first spin-off, Holstee (www.holstee.com), an apparel brand for people who would like to wear their passion.  Pfortmüller graduated from Columbia University and its School of General Studies. 

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: How can networking and community building improve?

Fabian Pfortmüller:  I believe that for me the two terms you said, networking and community building, there is a gap already. Because I feel that networking is about gathering contacts and community building, in the way that I understand it, is really about building a community. Now what does it mean to “build a community” I believe in an ideal form community building is about creating a family feeling and creating kind of trust between a somewhat random selection of people and I believe there’s a lot of improvement in a lot of communities to be done there because in the end it’s not about how many contacts you have and how far the network is, it is really how trusted it is and I always say the currency of networks and of communities is trust.

In an economy you pay yourself with money, in communities you pay yourself with trust and what do you do to help each other usually are introductions and I know you are a master of this and kind of helping each other out with introductions, that’s kind of the bill form or that’s one of the form of that currency of trust where you say ‘I spend some of that trust in connecting you two’ so I believe more focus on trust is very important. I believe that informality is a very important aspect. I believe that a lot of networks and communities have, have too formal procedures when in the end it’s about relationship building. Where build best relationships?

When you have a tie on and a big sticker on that says ‘Hey, I’m Fred? Or are… are you better to build relationships sitting on your couch with a beer in your hand? Obviously the later - the second one and knowing that why not implement it in community building? Another thing that I would say for communities to consider is diversity. I think there is a lot of value in having expert communities and you have fifty cup makers who come together and they exchange best practice.

Good, but I think the really good stuff happens in diverse groups and I think it’s proven that diverse groups tend to create better results and very often communities are not just about meeting like minded people but it’s really getting inspired and kind of personally developing and moving on, so less of a classical professional development but more of a personal development and for that I think diverse communities are a must.

Fabian Pfortmüller on How to Build Trusting Relationships

In Chapter 15 of 19 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview with host Erik Michielsen, community builder and entrepreneur Fabian Pfortmüller notes why being genuine and realistic are two cornerstones of buliding trusting relationships.  He tries to live by "say what you mean and mean what you say" in daily interactions and continues to learn about his limitations on what he can do to fulfill promises.  Pfortmüller is co-founder of Sandbox Network (www.sandbox-network.com).  He also co-founded an innovation think tank, Incubaker (www.incubaker.com), and is part of the group's first spin-off, Holstee (www.holstee.com), an apparel brand for people who would like to wear their passion.  Pfortmüller graduated from Columbia University and its School of General Studies. 

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: How do you establish trust when building relationships?

Fabian Pfortmüller: For me it has a lot to do with being genuine, I believe building trust in a relationship has a lot to do with just being genuine of who you are and what you want to do and what drives you and most people can relate to other people if they realize they are honest. I try to live by ‘Say what you mean and mean what you say’ in daily interactions with people and being – not promising something I can’t fulfill, I used to have the tendency of always wanting to help someone even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to fulfill it, and that has been one of my big learnings is also that even though that is a good thing, right?

You want to help someone and you want to really be… be helpful and do things for that person that is only helpful if you can actually fulfill it. If you don’t it hurts that relationship more that it does otherwise, and so I try to learn now to be very realistic but at the same time also very – trying to be helpful whenever you can and I think on of the beautiful things of running something Sandbox is always trying to help other people with the community of people you have around you.

Fabian Pfortmüller on How to Rethink Rules of the Startup Game

In Chapter 14 of 19 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, community builder and entrepreneur Fabian Pfortmüller shares how his experience starting multiple businesses has compared and contrasted with his initial expectations.  He learns how his atypical career approach translates into creating a nontraditional startup.  Location independence, especially encouraging his Holstee and Sandbox teams to work abroad and take trips, becomes a centerpiece in creating company culture.  Pfortmüller is co-founder of Sandbox Network (www.sandbox-network.com).  He also co-founded an innovation think tank, Incubaker (www.incubaker.com), and is part of the group's first spin-off, Holstee (www.holstee.com), an apparel brand for people who would like to wear their passion.  Pfortmüller graduated from Columbia University and its School of General Studies. 

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: How is life as an entrepreneur different than you imagined it would be?

Fabian Pfortmüller: My feeling was that entrepreneurs have a lot of holidays [laughs] yeah for some reason I thought that, I thought being your own boss means you can take holidays whenever, turned out not to be true… but having said that you know I believe that it is possible to make that happen and I feel also we talked before about standard careers and doing the atypical way, it seems also a little bit as if there is the standard entrepreneur model, like working extremely hard and kind of not taking holidays and after five, six years you have your exit or not but it’s really crazy a lot.

I believe you can shape that and what we do at Holstee for example is be very dedicated to say that we want to you know spend maybe several months a year working from somewhere else and be very open to go and take breaks if that’s, if that’s what it is for us, we say if you don’t feel like coming to the office, don’t come, either don’t work or kind of work from a café or somewhere else because in the end we didn’t become entrepreneurs to kind of end up in the same situation where someone else will kind of tell us what to do and the same thing goes for Sandbox that we – our team has moved for two weeks in Berlin, work two weeks in Berlin, now they were two weeks in London and really moving a little bit around, that is possible… but it’s not maybe how I originally imagined it to be.

Fabian Pfortmüller on How to Apply Sustainable Design to Build an Ecofriendly Brand

In Chapter 13 of 19 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, community builder and entrepreneur Fabian Pfortmüller shares how his company Holstee applies sustainable design to build ecofriendly products.  He prioritizes values and sincerity to create positive impact across people, planet, and product.  He contrasts traditional definitions of "green business" with the Holstee focus on sustainable design, including products created by India-based NGO companies.  Pfortmüller is co-founder of Sandbox Network (www.sandbox-network.com).  He also co-founded an innovation think tank, Incubaker (www.incubaker.com), and is part of the group's first spin-off, Holstee (www.holstee.com), an apparel brand for people who would like to wear their passion.  Pfortmüller graduated from Columbia University and its School of General Studies. 

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: Given what you do at Holstee running a marketplace for sustainable products, what does it mean to be green?

Fabian Pfortmüller: We think about that a lot and we actually don’t call ourselves a green company because it’s a very fuzzy term, what does it really mean to be green? Nowadays every single big company has something on it’s logo that says ‘We’re green’ or ‘We care about the environment’. I believe to be truly green or to be sustainable is to be genuine and to really - you as a brand not just say like ‘Oh, we going to recycle some stuff’ but to be really caring about those values.

The way we treat it in Holstee is that we say whatever we do needs to have a positive impact on all stake holders involved and we summarized it in people, planet, product: the people who work on it, the planet that kind of gets the resource and the product itself needs to be something that’s not going to fall apart after five days or so, that needs to be sustainable as well and… in terms of is that green or not, we have a lot of products which are not recycle material, so they’re not green in the classical sense but they were done with an NGO that hires some of the poorest women in India and gives them like jobs and treats them well and gives them fair wages, we think that’s just as important.

Fabian Pfortmüller on What Makes Leadership Impactful

In Chapter 12 of 19 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, community builder and entrepreneur Fabian Pfortmüller frames impactful leadership as results driven and sustainable.  Fabian notes leadership is not only emotional nor is it temporal.  He shares insight from a friend that we totally overestimate what one can achieve in one year and underestimate what one can achieve in five years.  Pfortmüller is co-founder of Sandbox Network (www.sandbox-network.com).  He also co-founded an innovation think tank, Incubaker (www.incubaker.com), and is part of the group's first spin-off, Holstee (www.holstee.com), an apparel brand for people who would like to wear their passion.  Pfortmüller graduated from Columbia University and its School of General Studies. 

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: How do you define impactful leadership?

Fabian Pfortmüller: I think there are different levels to that question. The first level that comes to my mind is I believe leadership is impactful if it’s not just about talking but if there’s an end result if there’s a bottom line and I see a lot of leaders who have – who run organizations or projects which are really good in stirring up emotions and getting people excited about something but they don’t get the work done and I believe impactful in the end has to do with getting the work done.

The second aspect of that is… length, is time. I believe impactful has something to do with just keep doing it for a long time and not just do it in one shot. I believe very little impact is done with just doing something once but if you something over a certain period of time and you keep doing it I believe that’s where the real impact comes and I think that’s also important for leaders to drive that and to be the example of that. One friend once told me that you over estimate how much you can get done in one year but you totally underestimate how much you can get done in five years, I think it’s very true, you know?

Impactful leadership has to do with driving the five-year boat not just the one-year project. And I believe in my very personal opinion impactful leadership has to do with realizing and trying to better understand what the larger impact is of what you do, because we all don’t live in a bubble and we all don’t live in a little microcosm, we’re are all somehow connected in the bigger world and so what we do at Holstee or at Sandbox hopefully has ripple effects into third, fourth, fifty degrees and I think leadership requires to… you can’t know that but you can try to understand it and you can try to make sure that all the different stake holders involved are treated fairly in a positive impact.

Fabian Pfortmüller on How Learning to Fail Educates Entrepreneurs

In Chapter 11 of 19 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview with host Erik Michielsen, community builder and entrepreneur Fabian Pfortmüller notes how accepting and embracing failures provides great entrepreneurial education. The process helps learn from failures and better anticipate future failure signals. Personally and professionally, he finds value reviewing failures, including with his co-founders at Sandbox Network. Pfortmüller is co-founder of Sandbox Network (www.sandbox-network.com). He also co-founded an innovation think tank, Incubaker (www.incubaker.com), and is part of the group's first spin-off, Holstee (www.holstee.com), an apparel brand for people who would like to wear their passion. Pfortmüller graduated from Columbia University and its School of General Studies.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: Where has failure been most helpful in your education as an entrepreneur?

Fabian Pfortmüller: Learning to fail is one of the most important aspects of being an entrepreneur. Some people do that very naturally and they just fail and it’s kind of – it’s easy and they go on and move on, I’m not that person. When I fail, you know, it’s hard and it’s like, it’s a failure, right? But learning how to deal with that, anticipate it, kind of be like ‘yeah, if you try out things, certain things are not going to work out, that is totally normal’ and accepting that has been one of the most important aspects of my life and I believe that what you can really learn is to make that part of your life as an entrepreneur to take the time and really reflect on failures, and I believe there is failure which is total failure and you just went into insolvency or have bankruptcy, that’s a very extreme version of failure, but there are many small failures which are easy to over look.

And I give you one example which, how I for example tried to deal with that. With one of my co-founders at Sandbox, very close friend, which I know for a long time, we meet every half year for a full day where we not just debrief our projects but we debrief out lives, we write down everything that happens and we systematically go through what was good, what was bad, what worked, what didn’t, what learnings can we take out of it? And because we know that lots of things fail and it’s totally normal and being able to really take that seriously, invest the times to take learnings out of that in a project environment as well as a personal environment is very, very valuable.

Fabian Pfortmüller on How Ambition Enables Aspirations

In Chapter 10 of 19 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, community builder and entrepreneur Fabian Pfortmüller shares what he has learned about the value of ambition and its role shaping aspirations.  Over time, Fabian learns to embrace ambition and its intended outcomes to better understand his own aspirational path to working with others to create positive change.  Pfortmüller is co-founder of Sandbox Network (www.sandbox-network.com).  He also co-founded an innovation think tank, Incubaker (www.incubaker.com), and is part of the group's first spin-off, Holstee (www.holstee.com), an apparel brand for people who would like to wear their passion.  Pfortmüller graduated from Columbia University and its School of General Studies. 

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: How has your aspiration changed as you’ve gotten older?

Fabian Pfortmüller: I hope I know better who I am and what I want over time and one of the things that I realizes is what I do actually doesn’t matter that much as long as I can be in control of things and can kind of design my own life and at the same time also work with the people that I really love.

And that has changed because at the beginning I would say my aspiration over time has shaped my ambition and at the beginning I was very ambitious and very driven to do something but there wasn’t much beyond being ambitious and I didn’t know why to be ambitious and now I think I start to slowly recognize why it’s worthwhile to be ambitious, it’s worthwhile to be ambitious to be surrounded by beautiful people and work with them. It’s worthwhile to be ambitious to realize ideas and it’s worthwhile to create something because someone else is going to profit from that, you can actually create value in it. And so as I get older I hopefully start to better understand the why of things and why I do stuff.

Fabian Pfortmüller on How an Entrepreneur Creates Rules for Success

In Chapter 9 of 19 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, community builder and entrepreneur Fabian Pfortmüller shares how he is learning to define success and failure. He finds failure is about delivering mediocre results or doing something irrelevant or mismatched to what someone wants. This frames his view of success, which is less about quantifiable success and more about surrounding yourself with those you love. Pfortmüller is co-founder of Sandbox Network (www.sandbox-network.com). He also co-founded an innovation think tank, Incubaker (www.incubaker.com), and is part of the group's first spin-off, Holstee (www.holstee.com), an apparel brand for people who would like to wear their passion. Pfortmüller graduated from Columbia University and its School of General Studies.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: How do you define and measure success in what you do?

Fabian Pfortmüller: I really believe that as I get older I start to better understand what success really means to me. Success used to be very easy quantifiable in terms of numbers, you know? And that was the first measurement of success but as I start to gain a little bit of experience step by step I would say I get a better grasp of what success means and success obviously has to do with motivation, what really motivates you in the end and for me, right now it is really about being my own boss, being able to shape my own environment.

Being able to say ‘Okay, I designed my life and how I run my life’ and then be surrounded and be with the people I really love that’s really what counts and if what you create actually is valuable and it’s being used and [laughs] and is in that way successful that is great, but right now that for me is even secondary.

Already having that environment and living like that is worthwhile in itself and I believe when it comes to success on a project level there’s two things which I can say what is failure for me, maybe that kind of as the contrast to success is delivering something that is mediocre and delivering something that people don’t want and don’t need. And as a consequence success is delivering something that people really need and want and not just doing a good product but doing really the coolest product and the best product out there, whatever it is, I believe that’s success.

Fabian Pfortmüller on How High School Teaches Future Entrepreneur Business

In Chapter 8 of 19 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, community builder and entrepreneur Fabian Pfortmüller shares how high school student government experience in Switzerland taught him fundamentals he uses today as an entrepreneur. He learns critical thinking, project planning and the perils of volunteer accountability. These experiences all contribute to Fabian's actions as an entrepreneur. Pfortmüller is co-founder of Sandbox Network (www.sandbox-network.com). He also co-founded an innovation think tank, Incubaker (www.incubaker.com), and is part of the group's first spin-off, Holstee (www.holstee.com), an apparel brand for people who would like to wear their passion. Pfortmüller graduated from Columbia University and its School of General Studies.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: How has your student government experience benefited you as an entrepreneur?

Fabian Pfortmüller: So I started in high school doing student government stuff and first of all, we didn’t achieve anything. We didn’t achieve anything what so ever at all. We talked a lot, we organized big things and there was no output out of it. Doesn’t matter. I think what we learned was… first of all I think we really developed a good feeling of how much we can rely on people, very, very important aspect that I’ve seen throughout my project is that, you know once we started out we were like, ‘Oh, could you help us do this? Oh, you said yes, that means he’s going to do it’. Of course he’s not going to do it and realizing that… I don’t want to say that that’s generally true that this person’s not going to do it but my experience has shown me it’s where I’ve had to be critical.

Rather putting good project management place to ensure that person really does it and put pressure on that person, recurring pressure on that person to actually do it, I think that was one of the learnings. Second, I would say had a lot to do with planning in the sense that I just met people who could plan and there were other peoples who could not plan and I was one of the second ones who could not plan [laughs] and being able to see other people who would do their stuff not in the last minute but had a project plan and would lay out their things and would reach out to you two months before, that was really good to see, that was very interesting to see what they could achieve and I believe one of the biggest things that I realized while I was doing student government was that voluntary work is very hard to work with, in my opinion. I think if you don’t pay someone and you don’t have a very clear contract or somewhat of a transaction with someone it’s very hard to really plan with that person and to get to the output that you had in mind.

Fabian Pfortmüller on What is the First Step to Living Your Dream

In Chapter 7 of 19 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, community builder and entrepreneur Fabian Pfortmüller shares how he encourages others to take the first step to living their dream. The first step is that taking action on a dream means you cannot fail. He finds the fear of failure holds back people from acting on dreams and pursuing their respective passion. He lives his own dream by asking himself often what is success. Pfortmüller is co-founder of Sandbox Network (www.sandbox-network.com). He also co-founded an innovation think tank, Incubaker (www.incubaker.com), and is part of the group's first spin-off, Holstee (www.holstee.com), an apparel brand for people who would like to wear their passion. Pfortmüller graduated from Columbia University and its School of General Studies.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: When you advise others to live their dream what do you advise they do to take the first step?

Fabian Pfortmüller: So, I meet a lot of people and I always encourage them to live their dream and I think many people say ‘Yeah, you know I’d love to’ I mean who wouldn’t want to live their dream, right? And what I try to convince them of as a first step is that they can’t fail. I really believe so that – I think that especially applies to us being here in the US and in Europe and… the fortunate environments that we have that we have many people we have to do with and that might not apply to someone who is in India and has nothing to eat but most people I deal with in my daily life, they can’t fail, they have food, they have shelter, they have good education, usually they have enough money, there is no struggle for survival and seriously realizing that, incorporating that and acting upon that I think is one of the most important first steps, because I believe that’s what holds a lot of people back is kind of a very deep down sense of ‘I’m totally utterly going to fail and I’m going to end up on the streets’. If you tell them, ‘Look, you’re not going to be that successful in the first few years and so-‘ I think people can deal with that, people can deal with that but deep down they have to have the fear that they always dreamed of being an artist but perusing that is going to bring them out in the streets and I believe that’s wrong.

Erik Michielsen: How are you living your own dream?

Fabian Pfortmüller: Asking myself very often what I want and what really drives me, what is success? Having that question very close to me and asking it very, very regularly that helps me to live my dream. Because in order to live your dream you need to know what your dream is and one of the qualities of life, maybe in general but particularly in my life, is that it goes on very fast and things come up and they’re very noisy and they speak to you very loud voices that sometimes the important things get pushed backwards you know? And keep them very close to… the forward part of your brain so to speak I think that’s what helps me to live my dreams. In a practical sense it is by doing what I love kind of working on Holstee, working on Sandbox and being here in New York you know, that’s my dream right now.

Fabian Pfortmüller on How to Rethink Career and Find Fulfilling Work

In Chapter 6 of 19 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, community builder and entrepreneur Fabian Pfortmüller shares why he challenges traditional career planning thinking.  He feels careers are built upon societal norms and ways of thinking.  He offers instead non-linear options built on modular experiences and a stronger embrace of uncertainty and the unknown.  Pfortmüller finds this approach more fulfilling and in line with his passions and interests.  Pfortmüller is co-founder of Sandbox Network (www.sandbox-network.com).  He also co-founded an innovation think tank, Incubaker (www.incubaker.com), and is part of the group's first spin-off, Holstee (www.holstee.com), an apparel brand for people who would like to wear their passion.  Pfortmüller graduated from Columbia University and its School of General Studies. 

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: Why do you encourage others to investigate nontraditional careers?

Fabian Pfortmüller: I really believe in nontraditional careers because I don’t believe in careers. And already saying ‘Do a nontraditional career’ means do not the thing that you should be doing or the normal thing and I believe that’s totally wrong. You know the career that is laid out for you and has the several modules where you start at school and you go to university and you have a job and you have a better job and you go from there… I’m not sure if that’s what life’s about.

I encourage myself to really think hard, is that something that I actually want because career the way we know it and I think that’s very prominent here in the US is not defined by yourself, it’s defined by society. And I’m not sure if I want to have my life for the next thirty, forty years laid out by society values, I’d rather have them laid out by my own values. And I can see – I can give you an example that I believe being at Columbia I’m surrounded by lots of really smart kids who – they have the talents the skills to do anything in the world.

So, my question is why should they do exactly that, why should they go and go into classical ibanking, and consulting careers and legal and medical if they have the skills for everything? And I believe it has a lot to do with stability. Career has to do with stability, it’s kind of a widely accepted way of leading your life and I just, I’m willing to take the instability of not knowing exactly what’s coming next and looking at it in modular ways of ‘Well you do first this and then maybe this and then this and then maybe something else afterwards’ and it might not be linear of just going up, it might be up and down and sideways and so on, I think that’s more fulfilling for me personally.

Fabian Pfortmüller on How to Avoid Information Overload and Find Inspiration Online

In Chapter 5 of 19 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, community builder and entrepreneur Fabian Pfortmüller talks about how he finds inspiration by pursuing information beyond the obvious.  He finds it easy to quickly get overloaded with general information - too many tabs - and too little knowledge gained.  As a result, he pushes himself to go beyond general news and information consumption and find more challenging content and story.  Pfortmüller is co-founder of Sandbox Network (www.sandbox-network.com).  He also co-founded an innovation think tank, Incubaker (www.incubaker.com), and is part of the group's first spin-off, Holstee (www.holstee.com), an apparel brand for people who would like to wear their passion.  Pfortmüller graduated from Columbia University and its School of General Studies. 

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: What do you mean when you say that your interests lie at anything beyond the obvious?

Fabian Pfortmüller:  I believe we live in a world full of information and you know when I open my computer in the morning and I make up a browser, I suddenly have opened twenty tabs, I’m sure you know what that feeling is and I think the interesting information today, at least for me, are the ones where I learn something, where I kind of get inspired and where it goes a little deeper, it goes beyond the obvious information where you read it and it’s kind of ‘Oh, okay I consumed that information’, but I haven’t taken anything out of it.

And I think the obvious takes the information that far but I feel that the good – the gold nuggets can be found in… especially people who are willing to take some risk when they write stories and are willing to really go deeper and kind of push it a little bit the ball further and that’s what I really love.

Fabian Pfortmüller on What to Consider When Choosing a College Major

In Chapter 4 of 19 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, community builder and entrepreneur Fabian Pfortmüller shares his approach to choosing a college major.  He advises others to consider non-practical approaches, focusing less on choosing based on career path and more on learning from a diverse array of subjects.  Over time, typically two years, the diverse experiences allow for a more personalized and fitting choice.  Pfortmüller is co-founder of Sandbox Network (www.sandbox-network.com).  He also co-founded an innovation think tank, Incubaker (www.incubaker.com), and is part of the group's first spin-off, Holstee (www.holstee.com), an apparel brand for people who would like to wear their passion.  Pfortmüller graduated from Columbia University and its School of General Studies. 

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: What should college students consider when choosing a major?

Fabian Pfortmüller: I personally believe that they should not go for practical output for practical reasons such as ‘This is going to allow me to do X, Y and Z in my career’. I think having the courage and the guts to disconnect your studies and especially undergrad but I personally believe even grad studies, from a practical, applicable knowledge for your career is a great thing.

Because in the end, you know look at how people recruit, yes they like to recruit – like if you want to go into business, yes they like to recruit business people but at the same time this is not what going to really matter afterwards in the job. And so I can only recommend for people to try and try out as many things as possible, most diverse as possible in first one, two years, don’t settle too easily for something, be critical to yourself, try totally random stuff and then go for what you really feel most passionate about.

In my case, I had a class on music in the Middle East and India and I realized that’s cool, that’s interesting but it was music. I had a class on philosophy, I had a class on social inequality in China and from all those things in the end you have to kind of also start understand what is a good professor? What is a nice department? I mean obviously the major and the topic itself matters but I think there are also departments and departments. And I am at the department which is called Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures and people are just very relaxed and people are very open and I believe that makes a big difference.

Fabian Pfortmüller on How Columbia General Studies Educates a Nontraditional Student

In Chapter 2 of 19 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, community builder and entrepreneur Fabian Pfortmüller shares how getting into Columbia University comes about after not getting into his first school. Applying only after taking several years to work after high school, he finds comfort at Columbia University's School of General Studies. The program is designed for nontraditional career paths, including incoming students coming from performing arts and the military. Pfortmüller is co-founder of Sandbox Network (www.sandbox-network.com). He also co-founded an innovation think tank, Incubaker (www.incubaker.com), and is part of the group's first spin-off, Holstee (www.holstee.com), an apparel brand for people who would like to wear their passion. Pfortmüller graduated from Columbia University and its School of General Studies.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: Why did you decide to attend Columbia University?

Fabian Pfortmüller: The honest answer is I originally wanted to study in the UK and no school accepted me, that’s the honest answer and I started applying in the US kind of as a consequence of that and suddenly schools started to accept me and really good schools started to accept me and I just realized that I was not an extraordinarily good student from my high school grades but I had something to show, not good grades but I had a lot of extracurricular activities.

And apparently that can be clearly seen with the process of my applications, this was valued much more here in the US than it was in the UK. But in the end it was very clear New York was the place to be, I’m a big city person, Columbia seemed like a really amazing place and Columbia has a special program which it calls the School of General Studies, which is a normal college degree you do but you have all kinds of, they call it atypical students. Students who have been entrepreneurs, students who have been in the army, who have been professional artists or have been in sports to have a college for those people to go back and make a degree and I couldn’t be happier than being there really, like it’s a fantastic place.

Erik Michielsen: Tell me more about the general studies program and how have your peers in that program inspired you?

Fabian Pfortmüller: You know I always felt little bit like a freak, especially when it comes to education but as a young entrepreneur I guess at large you’re a little bit like a freak, you decided not to go for that classical career and that’s a hard decision to take if everyone else goes straight to university becomes a banker or a consultant goes off he makes his career, does an MBA goes into middle management and then he has kids and family and that’s pretty much it and not doing that feels kind of cool but at the same time it also needs quite a lot of courage.

And I felt a freak until I came to Columbia and I saw that there’re lots of people like me and it feels really good to see that it’s absolutely normal to have an atypical education way and I would recommend it to anyone. And I think that gives me self confidence, that gives me self confidence with saying ‘I’m twenty-eight, I’m just graduating with my bachelors in May’ and it’s totally fine, it’s totally normal, you know? And I think that’s great.

Fabian Pfortmüller on Why to Work in Between High School and College

In Chapter 1 of 19 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, community builder and entrepreneur Fabian Pfortmüller shares why he chose to work after high school and wait until turning 25 to enter college. Upon graduating high school, Pfortmüller pursues an entrepreneurial passion until he builds an intellectual curiosity in the college experience. Only then does he choose to attend Columbia University while continuing to build upon his passion for bringing startup ideas to life as an entrepreneur. Pfortmüller is co-founder of Sandbox Network (www.sandbox-network.com). He also co-founded an innovation think tank, Incubaker (www.incubaker.com), and is part of the group's first spin-off, Holstee (www.holstee.com), an apparel brand for people who would like to wear their passion. Pfortmüller graduated from Columbia University and its school of General Studies.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: How did holding off a couple years on attending college impact your professional development?

Fabian Pfortmüller: I think for me this has been one of the best thing ever, I tell you what was the source of my entrepreneurial desire: being bored at school, okay? Like the reason I become an entrepreneur was that I was so bored at school and that it drove literally into trying entrepreneurial things and I realize that when I was going out of high school that I was suddenly free and that I could do whatever I wanted that why should I go back to school at this point?

And I believe it was a great experience to use that energy and that curiosity then for doing work and trying out different things, especially coming out of high school you have nothing to lose, right? I mean what do you have to lose? You know I felt that working was a very fulfilling experience but it wasn’t the most intellectually challenging one. It took me to be twenty-five to feel that intellectual curiosity and I felt that it was a much better moment to go then back school.

And the same time also being at school having all that experience, having managed your own company, built complex projects and I don’t know managed teams, that helps you to deal with the hustle and bustle of school life and I’m sure I have no idea how I would have managed through school being twenty and I’ve very impressed with the others who do that, I would have just kind of collapsed probably.