“You eat breakfast, lunch and dinner in front of the screen”: Scalable boss on Goldman Sachs

From the outside, Erik Podzuweit appears calm, thoughtful—almost academic. But anyone who speaks with the CEO and co-founder of Scalable Capital quickly realizes that beneath the surface, an engine has been running at full speed for years.

“Without obsession, you won’t achieve peak performance – and you won’t be able to sustain it for long,” says Podzuweit in an interview with Gründerszene.

A sentence that reveals a lot about him and his company. Scalable Capital aims to establish itself in the European fintech market long-term – and has now completed its largest financing round to date.

Erik Podzuweit is nominated for THE POWER LIST – Germany's Top 50. BUSINESS INSIDER, together with POLITICO and WELT, is profiling Germany's business leaders. The final Top 50 will be published on June 5 and is presented by BCG, Mercedes, Visa, and Vodafone. You can find all the profiles and interviews here in advance.

The Munich-based fintech just raised €155 million ($175 million). The round is led by investors Sofina and Noteus Partners. This is an important step for Podzuweit.

Podzuweit wasn't always a founder. His career began in investment banking at Goldman Sachs. A recommendation from a friend got him there: "A friend of mine was doing an internship there and said, 'You'd love that.' So I applied – and was hired." The man who hired him back then is now his co-managing director at Scalable Capital. "That's how it can go sometimes," he says dryly.

Goldman was a school of discipline for Podzuweit. "You learn to work hard – and that doesn't shock you later." But above all, he learned there how important it is to work precisely under pressure: "Ideas had to become concrete products – and mistakes were expensive."

Scalable Capital

Working there had "something athletic about it," he recalls. "You sit on the trading floor, noise everywhere, hundreds of people. You eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner in front of the screen. I liked that."

He never experienced the much-cited excesses of investment banking. "The behavior—drugs, partying, and the like—like in the movies? That was absolutely not there. It was too strict and professional for that." At least, that's what he says.

Then, in 2014, the cut was made. Together with co-founder Florian Prucker, Podzuweit took a weekend to brainstorm business ideas. After that, the plan was set: "On Monday, everyone who wanted to join had to give notice to their employers. I also immediately gave notice on my apartment to save costs and ended up living in a kind of room with my brother for four years."

Why so radical? "You need this naive belief that it will work. If you had known beforehand how bumpy it would be, you might not have done it," says Podzuweit. "You can plan for 50 percent, the other 50 percent is a leap into the deep end."