Alexander Piutti

What were your early years like?
I grew up in a tiny town in Germany called Meerbusch, close to Düsseldorf, for the first 16 years of my life. We had a four-digit telephone number, so you can imagine how small the place was. Then we moved to Asia for my dad’s job and I finished my high school in Hong Kong. Picture the culture shock—going from a very small village to a city with millions of people. That transition had a massive impact on my life. I was exposed to diversity for the first time, and I totally loved it. That’s part of what drove me to later get my MBA in entrepreneurship at Wharton in the United States after finishing my university studies in engineering. I wanted to find out more about other countries and cultures and ideas—and how to crack problems with an entrepreneurial approach.

What sparked your entrepreneurial spirit?
It was always a gut feeling I had. I knew I wanted to be creative and have freedom in what I did. In the 18 years since I left Strategy&, I’ve been founding several digital businesses. I’ve also helped other people to found and scale their ventures. I’ve seen successes and I’ve seen failures. I’ve made good money and I’ve lost companies. Overall, it’s been great and I’m still passionate about innovation. As an entrepreneur, you know, there’s no guarantee. But it worked out for me and I’m grateful I followed my gut.

How did your time at Strategy& help you as an entrepreneur?
Working as a consultant was a major piece of my development. I joined Strategy& (then Booz) in 1996, just after finishing my MBA, and I stayed at the firm into 1999. I have worked in many cities for Booz, including a long assignment in New York. What a great experience. My time there gave me awesome opportunities to really try out what I had learned at business school. It was really where I learned the majority of skills that I still use every day in my life as an entrepreneur: analytics, presentation, and communication. Strategy& taught me how to break down a major challenge or “vision” into manageable steps and execute on those steps, to really think and work in phases and milestones, because that’s the way to reach major achievements.

Of your many successes, what do you consider your greatest accomplishment?
First and foremost, my family is everything to me. My wife and my two-year-old daughter keep me going. On the professional side, one of the bigger things that I worked on was an early paid-search business, the first digital performance marketing firm ever. The company was called GoTo.com and it later turned into Overture.com. You could argue we gave Google Search a business model at the time, which sounds a bit crazy today. After we sold the business to Yahoo for $1.6 billion, I ran Yahoo Search Products out of London for Europe between 2003 and 2006. It fired me up as an entrepreneur, and it gave me the confidence to know that success is possible. After that, I founded the first digital game distribution company back in Germany, also as a performance marketing firm tailored to the digital game industry, which was also pretty successful. For example, we were one of the major distributors of “Candy Crush,” bringing it to millions of gamers across the globe. With my newest social venture, SirPlus, which is aimed at massively reducing food waste, we’re starting from scratch again. But I have the strong belief that we will grow it to be a huge purpose-driven success, to achieve lots of impact.

Have you faced any major challenges or setbacks?
In 2014, after just getting married, I became really sick. The doctors diagnosed me with cancer. I thought I was going to die. So, that was a major turning point in my life. Ultimately, I was very lucky because the doctors were wrong: I didn’t have cancer, but instead had an autoimmune disease called sarcoidosis. Once I was properly diagnosed and treated, I recovered very quickly. Still, the experience made me reevaluate everything in my life and I realized that I wanted to refocus my work on something that could make a real impact on society. I realized I want to leave a footprint and decided to become a social entrepreneur.

What kind of footprint?
My goal is to radically reduce food waste on a global scale, based on a high-tech approach. That’s the mission of our impact venture, SirPlus (https://sirplus.de/), which was founded in February 2017. It is designed as a secondary market for surplus food and uses a new high-tech approach to connect supply partners (namely, places where excess food becomes available along the food value chain and then typically gets thrown away for the wrong reasons) with marketplace demand channels (such as consumers, NGOs, businesses, etc.) to redistribute that food back into society. We’re trying to create a blueprint by having opened our first store in September in Berlin, which is like a mini-supermarket stocked entirely with rescued food sold at significantly lower prices. We’ll also have delivery services, whether someone shops at the store or online. Then over the next several years, we plan to expand the number of stores and our digital interface to rescue and distribute more surplus food across Germany, throughout Europe, and eventually around the world.

That’s an ambitious goal.
Yes, it is. But I believe it can be done. My cofounder, Raphael Fellmer, lived without any money for five and a half years to demonstrate how much surplus food is available. Now on a larger scale, we want to save food physically first and later trade surplus food in a digital fashion via our marketplace approach. In parallel, we want to educate and empower people to save food and reduce the overproduction of food, which also contributes to the waste of other important resources like land and water.

How would you describe your leadership style?
I think people would say I’m a good problem solver. I try to think creatively to find solutions, while bringing in the best talent and partners to execute the vision. I also like to empower people and bring out the best in them. Those are my strengths. On the less positive side, I’m probably not the best day-to-day manager.

What do you look for when you hire other people?
I look for motivation first, skills second. I want to know what really moves people. What inspires them? Where do they want to be in five years? I also want to know what people don’t like doing, so I can understand where they’re comfortable and where they’re not—to find the best possible role for them. I look for people who will stick together as a team, who believe in our mission, and who want to work hard to really move the needle of the company.

What do you like to do outside of work?
I love sports. I’m an avid kite surfer. I’m also a passionate angel investor. I have my own small portfolio of companies, and I like to give back to founders around the world. But mostly, I try to spend as much time as possible with my wife and my daughter. They’ve completely changed my life. Before my daughter was born, I basically lived on planes. I travelled all the time for work. But when our daughter was born, I took a break for a full year. It seems like a miracle, after my illness. I am so grateful.

Who or what do you most admire?
People who are purpose-driven, with super high levels of energy, enthusiasm, ambition—and, of course, strong values. Take Professor Muhammad Yunus, for example. He’s an incredible guy. In 2006, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for founding the Grameen Bank and pioneering the microcredit concept. Fintech and disruption we like to call it today, I guess. He was way ahead of our time. A true lateral thinker and visionary. And an amazing entrepreneur. I first met him in 2008 at the Vision Summit and again, almost 10 years later, I was so pleased to see him again at the Q Berlin Questions conference in October this year!

Is there anything else you’d like to say to your colleagues in the alumni network?
Our mission with SirPlus to combat food waste is to really build something that becomes self-sustaining, scales beautifully across borders, and involves a ton of people. So, if people who are reading this have any ideas about ways we can collaborate or if they want to share their feedback, I’d encourage them to reach out to me via piutti[at]gmail.com.

This interview was conducted and edited by Jen Swetzoff, founder of CLOSEUP, a creative content studio in Brooklyn. She was formerly the deputy managing editor at strategy+business magazine.