A blog post about her experience by Ophélie Cabanero
‘An inspiring talk with tech entrepreneur Jonas Felix’ – I am curious what expects me at my first WE SHAPE TECH event. Melanie Kovacs, Founder & CEO of Master21 Academy and member of the board of WE SHAPE TECH Basel, interviews Jonas Felix, a young entrepreneur from Basel, more about him later. The evening takes place at the really cool Launchlabs in Basel, thanks to Postfinance.
A glass of prosecco in one hand, I find a spot at the top of the stairs. The interview starts with a presentation of Jonas and his amazing projects, followed by Melanie’s 10 non-tech questions so that everybody can understand including a non-techie, like me. It goes from: ‘What is the best advice you have ever received’ to ‘What is the best investment you made’ (to which he answers : ‘my wife’). Without further ado, this is what I got out of it, plus some post-interview snippets.
The business owner/ writer/ programmer/ soon-to-be-dad Jonas Felix, started in the world of entrepreneurship at a really young age. His very first business had little to do with the world of tech though.At 9 years old, he found bags of seashells in his granddad’s basement and sold them for 1 CHF each on the streets of his village. He spent all the profits on candy! It was only later in life that he learnt about the concept of ‘saving money’. At the age of 14, he started working with computers and later at 17 he was doing some IT security stuff. His chaotic childhood woke up in him the urge to get independant and gave him the drive to thrive. He first wanted to do industrialised espionage but realised it’s easier to sell web development 😉 He liked the immediate feedback of coding.
Nowadays he does different things:
- His current focus is Sidekicks, the online marketing ninjas, where they empower businesses to be successful online, with ads, social medias, content, analytics, processes, customer interaction, etc.
- On the side, he has a SaS startup fossilo.com, where they want to help people to archive web content.
- To share what he learnt, he founded a coding school for programmers who want to learn Javascript: letsboot.com.
- Also he is part of the initiative Powercoders Basel where they teach refugees to code and help them find an internship after the course.
- Last but not least : he writes fiction books like Ayden’s choice that I can’t wait to read! More goodness here : nelevonlanthen.com
When Jonas is not working, he likes to go skydiving or swimming. He spends 30 to 60 min per day learning about new things like innovation in science but also marketing, finances and machine learning, mostly watching Youtube und reading Medium articles.
When asked ‘What would you do with a 1 Million $?’ he replied : ‘Not much different, a lot of projects need time rather than more money’. He believes that it’s not about adding more things but about reducing and doing less. As a business owner he tries to always rethink things to go towards something that makes sense for everybody (his team, clients and business partners).
If he could meet anybody, he would want to meet JFK and ask him about the political system or an Egyptian Queen to know how pyramides were built.
In 5 years from now, he sees himself being a part-time-stay-at-home-Dad, coding more himself as well as writing more.
A couple interesting quotes and advices I took home
A quote from Steve Jobs: ‘Real artists ship’
You have to be faster than the stream to decide where you are going.
There are 2 kinds of people in the world : the doers and the non-doers. BE A DOER!
As well as a couple of good books, in addition to the books written by Jonas
The Art of the Good Life, 52 Surprising Shortcuts to Happiness, Wealth, and Success, by Rolf Dobelli
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
While part of the magic happened during the interview and the Q&A session, the other big highlight of the evening is during the apéro, not only because of the delicious food sponsored by Adobe but because everyone shares about their own work/ life/ passion and we had the chance to ask more questions to Jonas.
I go home feeling energized, inspired and grateful for those kinds of outside-the-box-thinkers & visionnairy communities.
Thank you WE SHAPE TECH, I will be back for more!
