Introducing Taledo Talent: Julius Cichon

Why did you join Taledo?

"I joined Taledo well before it was StartupCVs, and have been along for the ride ever since."

‍At that point in time I was working in private equity. After 4 years, I had become, “Head of Secondaries” and there wasn’t much room for me to develop further. Therefore I decided to look for a different challenge. I wanted to do something where I could have more of an impact and that’s when I found StartupCVs through my university’s career page. I created an account and uploaded my CV. That same evening, Mel, the CEO, called me. We had a long chat about opportunities, and over the next couple of weeks we talked several times and I also got to know other team members. I decided to visit the team in Berlin and had a wonderful meeting. We settled on a trial period of two weeks, which turned out very well, and the rest is history.

What do you like the most about our company culture?

I like the familiarity of it. I have been here since we were only 5 employees, and now we have 35, which is a very different atmosphere. The one thing we have kept, in a way, is that it still doesn’t feel corporate. We have maintained a family feel, a unity between people. We don’t just come to work and leave, we go out with our colleagues and spend a lot of time with each other in our private lives, which is different from most other company cultures. I also like the atmosphere - not much of an elbows out mentality. We have a common goal we want to achieve. We value the importance of being performance driven while also retaining a human component that we all adhere to. To put it simply, there are lots of intelligent people at Taledo whose primary goal is to achieve something in life.

What does a day in the life of a Head of Operations manager look like?

“Building organizations one day, chairs the next.” There is no typical day for a Head of Ops. As I always say, in a startup it can be anything from building a chair or repairing a broken laptop, to making huge transactions or drawing up billing systems. So it’s a huge variety of things, whatever comes up that day is most important. Recruiting people is also a big part of it. Perhaps the most important is taking a survey to find out everyone’s favorite ice cream for office snacks.

What is the future of your field?

This is probably a cliché, but operations is becoming digitalized. Back in the days, there was a breadth of physical tasks and physical organization. Everything is moving into the digital sphere. We used to have files and folders and papers - now that’s all online. Having an understanding of online tools and how they can help to improve performance is imperative to stay up to date as we see more and more advanced technologies inundating the startup ecosystem.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

“On an island spending the millions I will have made at Taledo.”I don’t see myself leaving Taledo. I want to build something to be remembered, something I can tell my children and grandchildren about. Today everyone knows Facebook, and maybe one day everyone will know Taledo. I’ll be able to say that I was there since the beginning and I helped to build it. So in 5 years, I will still be here - hopefully with thousands of employees in a very successful company and with my five year old dog, Willi.

What is your biggest quirk in the workplace?

I don’t know if people always get my humor.

What is your favorite book? Favorite song?

Book: “The Buy Side:  A Wall Street Trader's Tale of Spectacular Excess” by Turney DuffSong: “Willst du” by  Alligatoah

If there was a soundtrack to your life, what would it be?

“Lose Yourself” by Eminem

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