René Seifert - Entrepreneur & Global Citizen

Yesterday, also after quite some time, around 3 years to be precise, I met an old and highly estimated colleague when I used to work for Bayern 3 as Head of Marketing as well as a radio presenter. The guy is certainly less known under his given name Markus Walsch, but much more for the various successful radio-comedy formats he has developed, like for instance Karl Auer from Rottalmünster who always misunderstands something in the notion of a word and calls people and confuses them to oblivion. My favorite, however, was his “Keksi & Bussi”, with more than 300 series on the “problems of the rich and super-rich.” And since a few years Markus has chartered also into live performance of Karl Auer, too. The best thing with this guy is that he is totally crazy and mad (I know I can say that about him and he will take it as a compliment). This is one of his idle, well say, even normal face ex-pressions yesterday during our dinner:

On the other hand, this guy is hyper-intelligent and super-smart, a Master of Economics who had also spent some time in Singapore at Deutsche Bank and is like me an outspoken fan of Asia. Likewise, we always had a high level of mutual respect for professionalism, reliability and delivery when we had been working together. And we share the passion of entrepreneurs. And Markus is not just on the creative, but also on the business level an undisputed pioneer in what he does. So I remember when 5 years back he was hosting workshops on sound editing software and MP3-formats for the “Do-it-Yourself”-reporters when many editors in mainstream media (MSM) were still cutting plastic tapes manually.

But he did not stop there. He is pretty much aware that what he does is unique, to speak with Thomas Friedman “special and specialized” (read my article on that), can at no point be outsourced to India ;-) but this does not put him into any form of complacency. Constantly looking out how to take fat out of the system, he is proud to be able to run his entire production on a notebook and with software like Magix Music Maker for altogether EUR 200.-. And the best thing, with that equipment is has also moved into top-notch TV production: Getting back to his editorial roots, he is producing and reporting on a TV format “Mehr Wahnsinn” (=More Madness”) on the Bayerisches Fernsehen which drags companies with consumer cheating and administrations with excessive bureaucracy to the light.

Since 2003, he is married and father of a lovely daughter Lilly, but he still is always on the move. In a very analytical mindset he does perceive that blogs and user generated content in general, who at the end can also buy the same equipment for littlemoney, might in its sheer aggregated mass, pose some threat to MSM - albeit in a very, very long run. Out of his genuine curiosity he is always looking out for new opportunities in adjacent fields of his core competencies; a few very exciting things he shared with me but requested confidentiality.

In the essence, Markus is very much following the “Blue Ocean Strategy” in how he develops: Instead getting head-on onto a widely fought-over market with bloody “Red Ocean”, he always steps into a new niche where he is so unique that he fundamentally makes competition irrelevant.

Cheers, Comrade!