Founding a firm is straightforward – but keeping it afloat is less easy, says Sarah Fleischer. Her Munich-based startup "tozero" plans to become Europe’s leading recycler of lithium-ion car batteries. The objective: recovering 80% of raw materials.
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00:00You don't listen to music, there's no podcast, there's no secret Netflix.
00:07I don't have underwater headphones.
00:12It's just purely me, my breath, my strokes, and just seeing that line on the bottom.
00:18And that's really meditative, and that actually unlocks a lot of sparks in me.
00:25And in those moments, things come rushing through my head in a creative manner, or I
00:30solve problems in that manner.
00:33Hi, I'm Sarah, I'm the co-founder and CEO of 2ZERO, where we recycle lithium-ion batteries.
00:41I'm 32 years old, this is my third company, and we are here in Munich, in Germany.
00:48I would say the traditional word of work-life balance does not exist for a founder.
00:53We live and breathe startup.
00:56I think what I have to remind myself is, hey, I still have a body, hey, I still have a mental
01:03health in a way that I have to take care of.
01:06There are so many dozens of tasks every single day, which is firefighting, things go wrong,
01:12you have to step in, you have to make those calls with those customers, or with those
01:17suppliers.
01:18There are f***ups, which are very normal in a startup life.
01:25My co-founder, Xenia, and I, very early on, we united with this, we have to fight climate
01:32crisis.
01:33She has been researching on quite many topics on how to decarbonize industries.
01:40She developed the breakthrough technology that allows us now, at 2ZERO, to efficiently
01:46extract lithium in a very high recovery rate.
01:50So what we do is, we take waste batteries and get the critical raw materials out through
01:56a chemical process.
01:59We're not using aggressive chemicals, so this is kind of like the magic trick, we're using
02:03organic additives that allows us to avoid any source of chemical waste.
02:13We're invited in quite many startup competitions.
02:17This one is meaningful, and it's got us a lot of international attention.
02:21This is a global competition, just for deep tech startups around the world, and we got
02:26the final prize.
02:33It's my third company, so what has helped me is a lot of company failures in my past
02:38lives.
02:39Failure is hard, right?
02:43Who do you blame?
02:45Usually founders blame themselves, so that's what I went through, right?
02:47So I start blaming myself, I was not good enough.
02:50You start doubting yourself, your self-confidence goes down.
02:54So I must say, definitely, I landed in that hole.
02:58How did I get out of that hole?
02:59I went back to school.
03:03So my mom, she never understood what I was doing back then.
03:07She's like, why are you struggling so much trying to do your own company, just work?
03:12So she was pretty happy that I went back to my master's degree, and that is a safe zone, right?
03:23Especially with all these student initiatives here from the Technical University, we won
03:27so many awards around the world, versus other top engineering schools.
03:31I think it definitely gave me back self-confidence, A, as an engineer, but also B, as a team player,
03:39and C, having fun again, and not caring if you fail or not.
03:46I studied Mechanical Engineering, so since day one, I faced this gap between men versus
03:53women in a way.
03:54We were 11% female in my Mechanical Engineering degree.
04:01And the very first day, the men would say, hey, why are you here?
04:05They did that?
04:06Yes, they did that.
04:08But funny enough, it was the women who did not fail the exams.
04:15Some even remember from school who was the best in class in Maths, who was the best in
04:19class in Physics, in Biology.
04:21In my situation, it was the girls.
04:26Not to generalize it too much, but where I observe where a lot of women basically hinder
04:33themselves or block themselves is thinking too much.
04:38I think we are fantastic human beings that are able to understand complex things, and
04:44thinking sometimes too complex in a way, to having all the scenarios outlined, how everything
04:51could fail.
04:52And that actually stops us doing it in the first place.
04:57I would say where most people struggle to start a company is actually starting it.
05:03It's a very scary process.
05:05I myself, I quit my job to start fundraising, not even knowing if I'm going to do the company
05:10or not.
05:11And I think having that will and that detrimentation is super important, and there's self-belief.
05:26In Germany, if you fail, that's the only thing that people talk about.
05:30So oh, why did you fail?
05:32Oh, you didn't have the skill set.
05:33Why did you start that company?
05:36You can start a company once you're 40, you're not experienced enough.
05:40And then when you fail, all of those arguments are slapped into your face, like, we told
05:46you so.
05:47I'd rather try to hire someone who has failed than someone who hasn't failed, who really
05:53has that resilience factor in themselves as well.
05:58You cannot plan your life.
06:01Take serendipity as kind of like your guidance.
06:04Take an opportunity where your gut feeling says, hey, this is cool, and ignore what society
06:11tells you and just go for it.
06:14If I would meet myself in a younger version, I think one thing I would tell that person
06:19is don't be too harsh on yourself, and anything that you do in life is good enough.
06:26I would say I personally have this pressure to outperform myself every single day.
06:32But to whom?
06:33For whom?
06:34Why am I doing that?
06:35And I think reminding myself, anything that you do, be aware this is your best, and appreciate
06:42yourself, and anything that you do is actually fine.