Gert Christen: Building New Businesses and Incubators for Markets that Badly Need Them

It takes knowledge, skills, and experience for a startup to succeed in today’s business environment. Bringing in a consultant with extensive business knowledge and business-building expertise can be invaluable for helping startups get up and running.

Gert Christen is an entrepreneur and business building expert from San Francisco. He helps companies incubate and grow through design thinking. This involves identifying problems that people are experiencing, as well as finding gaps in the market. He then determines how to use technology to solve these problems by providing services that are currently lacking in the market.

Who is Gert Christen?

Gert’s first job was in Singapore, building and selling RFID solutions. While working there, he realized there were many issues that he didn’t understand,  so he went back home to Switzerland, where he earned his degree in Business Administration. 

Gert continued to gain experience in the RFID industry. He helped automate factories using RFID chips and traveled worldwide, selling millions of RFID chips. This allowed him to sharpen his sales, manufacturing, system integration, project management, and business skills.

Nokia then recruited Gert to be its rollout manager in charge of building two cell phone networks in Switzerland. He learned how to put processes in place, create business structures, focus on creating revenue, and optimize cost savings. In his last job at Nokia, he launched their  app business and scaled it successfully in North- and Latin America.

Helping a Business Grow Through Incubators

Any new business begins as a startup, and needs help to create its first product and find its first customers. This is facilitated through incubation, which should be based on design thinking and other agile methods. Once the first product is successful in the first market, companies need to shift their focus to growth by creating new products and expanding into new markets.

 This is where Gert’s latest venture brings value. At USA Launching Pad, he helps foreign companies who want to expand their business to the USA in an innovative, methodical way. His method focuses on testing five different strategic areas to define the marketing, sales, product, back-office setup, and funding needed to succeed. 

Gert uses his business knowledge and skills in startups and business building to help large companies reinvent themselves and the way they work. This enables them to adapt and keep up with current technology and business trends. He helps them find new and innovative ways to reach, convince, and serve new customers.

As an entrepreneurship lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, Gert helps shape young minds on the importance of having an entrepreneurial perspective in business. He shares his experience, knowledge, and skills in developing start-ups and incubating new companies through design thinking. He’s passionate about using technology to solve ecological, social, and civic problems.

To create a successful startup, one needs to identify a need in the market and find a way to get paid for filling this need. Gert firmly believes that startups ought to tackle problems, fill gaps in the market, and find innovative ways to make people’s lives more convenient.