BIT still gives me plenty to learn, but I missed building something of my own. I founded The Corner Factory SA to stay close to new technology and build useful products with AI and agentic systems.

Lessons learned

• Keeping up with technology takes more than reading about it. I need to build with it, break things, and find out where it is genuinely useful.
• Starting a company on my own has shown me how much work surrounds the product: incorporation, finances, sales, delivery, and all the small decisions that keep a business moving.

After years of being my own boss, I was curious to join a larger organization and be the new person again. BIT felt like a good fit because I liked its technical choices and support for open source.

Lessons learned

• I like teams where people can disagree honestly, find a compromise, and keep moving.
• Rest is part of good work. Time away from the screen makes me a calmer person and a better developer.

When the time felt right, I sold my shares in the company, which now operates as by Attitude AG. I was proud of what we had built, but I missed spending more of my time creating products.

Lessons learned

• Companies are built by people, not job titles.
• Automating development and delivery gave the team more time for useful work and reduced the mistakes that happen when repetitive tasks are done by hand.
• Moving between product, sales, planning, and customer conversations made me a more thoughtful developer and manager.
• Being CEO made me less certain and a better listener. That was a good trade.

We built custom websites and hybrid apps. I led the front-end work, while my colleague looked after the PHP and MySQL back end.

Lessons learned

• I tried a lot of development and collaboration tools. The best ones were easy to forget about because they simply helped.
• Working directly with clients taught me more about project management than any process diagram could.
• Hard deadlines taught me to deliver under pressure. They also taught me that ignoring your health always catches up with you.
• Hiring and mentoring apprentices showed me how much I enjoy teaching.

The company was going through a difficult summer, so I joined a 36-hour hackathon to remind myself what I could do. Finishing first gave me the confidence I needed.

Lessons learned

• Building a product in 36 hours leaves no room for work that does not matter.
• Pressure can bring clarity. It also helps to know when a tired brain needs to stop.

My first role in technology was mapping the first steps toward digitizing and automating production processes.

Lessons learned

• New technology can make people nervous. Explain how a change helps before asking anyone to adopt it.
• The people closest to a machine usually understand the real system best.
• The job also pushed my German from classroom knowledge to everyday fluency.

I moved to London to improve my English and found a job in a nightclub within a week. Even in a loud room, people notice when you really listen.

Lessons learned

• I learned to deal with small problems before they had time to become large ones.
• Living independently at 21 gave me confidence and made English part of my everyday life.

I studied IT fundamentals and business for two years. I was already working at Ultrastark, and eventually chose the company over the classroom.

Lessons learned

• The course gave me a useful grounding in finance and the business side of a company.
• Work suited me better than school. It also taught me to look beyond formal qualifications when giving someone a chance.

Military life never felt natural to me, but I chose to finish my service.

Lessons learned

• Sometimes a team needs you to support a decision even when it was not yours.
• How you explain an idea often decides whether anyone listens.

I started my career in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, even though I could barely speak German at the time.

Lessons learned

• Choosing the harder path is still the quickest way I know to learn.
• Teaching apprentices showed me how much I enjoy helping someone grow.
• Being trusted early gave me real responsibility for my own projects.

I was young. I learned plenty about life, but I'll keep those lessons off the internet.