Leah Hunter is a jounalist, author, speaker, founder and so much more – and on September 19th she is part of the jury of our Startups@Reeperbahn Pitch! In an extensive interview she talks about Hamburg, Austin, what kind of startups she’s looking for and why a great pitch should be delivered like jazz music.
On Monday, at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, it’s going to be Digital Media Women Day! Great female entrepreneurs und tech-visionaries will talk about the topics and ideas that matter most to women (and men) in the media. One of the speakers is the writer and founder Leah Hunter who was so kind to answer some questions for this interview.
Hi Brigitte! Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions.Can you introduce yourself in a few words to start off?
I am Brigitte (28), I come from the Netherlands and have lived in Hamburg since October 2015. I have degrees in History and Middle Eastern Studies and lived in Scotland, Tunisia, Turkey, Kuwait and Egypt during my studies. I ended up in Hamburg completely by chance. As many of my university friends were struggling to find jobs, I decided to be flexible about the job location.
Hamburg Startups: Can you introduce yourself in a few words to start off?
Thi Detert: My name is Thi Detert. I come from San Francisco, California. I moved to Hamburg because my husband and I really wanted to live abroad in Europe. We decided that sincegaming is a rather niche field, wherever I got a good job offer is where we would move.
Thi Detert
HS: What’s your role at InnoGames and how did you end up working there?
TD: I am the Team Lead of Game Design for the Forge of Empires team. I worked with a recruiter in San Francisco who helped me look for opportunities abroad. He told me about InnoGames, the opportunity sounded interesting, and the rest is history, as they say.
HS: What do you see as benefits from working for a start-up?
TD: I worked at several start-ups in San Francisco and always enjoyed it mainly because of the flexibility and fun culture. In start-ups, you usually have the opportunity to take on responsibilities not particular to your role, so you can learn a lot. Teams are smaller and work processes can move a lot faster. Every one works hard, but people don’t forget to have fun.
InnoGames
Even though InnoGames is a sizable company that is more professional and stable than any start-ups I worked at previously, the company still maintains many of the good things about start-ups I mentioned above.
HS: How do you like Hamburg as an expat?
TD: Since moving to Hamburg, many people here have asked me why I would ever leave San Francisco. True, San Francisco is one of the best cities in the world, though I may be a bit biased, but I really like Hamburg and I am having a great time living here. I love the lake, the canals and all the greenery you can find here in the spring and summer. The public transportation system in Hamburg is better than San Francisco’s. Hamburg is cleaner and prettier in a lot of ways, and, overall, it feels safer. Though it’s not particular to just Hamburg, I’ve really enjoyed experiencing the different seasons since California has mainly one season. It’s also really nice that Hamburg is a nice jumping off point for travel around Europe, and that’s one of the main reasons why I wanted to live abroad—to experience the world more.
I do miss the California sunshine and warmer weather sometimes, and I wish Hamburg had more diverse and authentic food selections from other cultures like in San Francisco.
HS: As non-native speakers of German, how were your first days in Hamburg?
TD: I didn’t have many difficulties getting along in Hamburg when I first moved here. There were some moments in the first few months where I found myself unable to communicate effectively with the staff at restaurants or shops, but mostly everyone can speak English to some degree, and as I picked up more German, it got easier. I’m embarrassed to say, though, that after almost 2 years of living in Hamburg, I’m only A2 level in German. InnoGames offers language courses that meet once a week, so that helped me get going with learning German. Since the official language of InnoGames is English, I don’t need to speak German, so I don’t get that practice. I know it’s up to me to improve my German, so given that it’s the New Year, this is one of my resolutions.
HS: Thank you for your time and your answers, Thi!
InnoGames
InnoGames is a Hamburg startup, founded in 2007. They are specialised in online games and have gathered millions of players. Check our Startup Monitor for more information about InnoGames and their job offers.
I’ve seen now fourteen startups going through our program since we got our accelerator started back in 2015. We are asked many times how we choose the companies that eventually join our program. What I have witnessed and learnt with the time is the importance of having the right partner to make something happen, therefore we invest some time finding out if the team behind the product is the right one to invest in. If you would like to deepen into the topic I recommend you to read Four Reasons To Invest In People, Not In Companies written by Ilya Pozin in Forbes.
What’s the next hot stuff in media? How we will be communicating in the upcoming years? Which social media channels are going to survive? Which tools are journalist going to use? How the role of the journalist is going to evolve? How are we going to be able to detect fake news? Are we going to be constrained to pay for good content? Is user generated video, 360, IA, VR, AR the next big thing? We still have no answer to many of these questions, however we can witness, learn and sometimes even foresee.
Let’s go back to 2012, the year I landed in Hamburg for the first time. I hope you can imagine or remember how international the city was at that time. Not at all. And I’m not particularly talking about a daily life level but from an entrepreneurial point of you. Weiterlesen
Marina Stechmann, née Sanchez, has been living in Hamburg for the past four years. The 30-year-old Frenchwoman was visiting a friend in Hamburg in spring 2012 who was getting married. She was only supposed to stay a few days to help with preparations but she „fell in love with the city and because I did not really have any perspectives back in France, I decided to do something daft. Let’s stay in Hamburg and see what happens!“ Weiterlesen
Du möchtest mehr über Hamburger Startups, Events und andere News aus der Hamburger Gründerszene erfahren? Dann ist unser Newsletter genau richtig für Dich!
Cookie-Zustimmung verwalten
Wir verwenden Technologien wie Cookies, um Geräteinformationen zu speichern und/oder darauf zuzugreifen. Wir tun dies, um das Browsing-Erlebnis zu verbessern und um (nicht) personalisierte Werbung anzuzeigen. Wenn du nicht zustimmst oder die Zustimmung widerrufst, kann dies bestimmte Merkmale und Funktionen beeinträchtigen.
Funktional
Immer aktiv
Die technische Speicherung oder der Zugang ist unbedingt erforderlich für den rechtmäßigen Zweck, die Nutzung eines bestimmten Dienstes zu ermöglichen, der vom Teilnehmer oder Nutzer ausdrücklich gewünscht wird, oder für den alleinigen Zweck, die Übertragung einer Nachricht über ein elektronisches Kommunikationsnetz durchzuführen.
Vorlieben
Die technische Speicherung oder der Zugriff ist für den rechtmäßigen Zweck der Speicherung von Präferenzen erforderlich, die nicht vom Abonnenten oder Benutzer angefordert wurden.
Statistiken
Die technische Speicherung oder der Zugriff, der ausschließlich zu statistischen Zwecken erfolgt.Die technische Speicherung oder der Zugriff, der ausschließlich zu anonymen statistischen Zwecken verwendet wird. Ohne eine Vorladung, die freiwillige Zustimmung deines Internetdienstanbieters oder zusätzliche Aufzeichnungen von Dritten können die zu diesem Zweck gespeicherten oder abgerufenen Informationen allein in der Regel nicht dazu verwendet werden, dich zu identifizieren.
Marketing
Die technische Speicherung oder der Zugriff ist erforderlich, um Nutzerprofile zu erstellen, um Werbung zu versenden oder um den Nutzer auf einer Website oder über mehrere Websites hinweg zu ähnlichen Marketingzwecken zu verfolgen.