Meet Nadia Boegli, Communications Manager at Tweek.
Interviewed by Nora-Vanessa Wohlert, Managing Editor at Gründerszene
How was your day like so far? 3 new things you realized today, please.
So far it has been a rather relaxed day mainly working on marketing issues and waiting for some new developments to be ready so I can start with the copy.
Three things I discovered today: First, I am apparently not able to circumvent hey-fever this year. Second, that my blogging might be rather biased sometimes, but some movies like “Piranaconda” are just not worthy writing about. Third, I think I might actually be the only one in the office who has not used the table tennis for actually playing a game. Only had meetings on it :)
When I first met you some time ago you loved working for NGOs and you still design the most wonderful handcrafted jewelry (pretty girly) - why are you in love with start-ups now?
I am not in love with startups per se, I generally love to learn new things and to widen my horizon especially also when it comes to economics and tech. I would still like to work for NGOs, but right now I am trying to experience a whole new area, an area that is more concerned with investments, consumers and finding the right people to work with. I think these are learnings that will always help me in every kind of job, especially in a NGO that often lack people who know a bit more than methods of conflict management and the entire human rights declaration. I think for me it was important to gain a more realistic view on life, a view that is often more concerned with financial matters and selling your pitch. For me this is one of the most important areas to learn and work in, because it helps me try to find my way, establish my jewelry business further and still keep engaged with the NGO scene.
I could simply claim your love for start-ups is connected to your boyfriends profession - true?
You could certainly claim that, and I would probably not judge you for doing so. However my boyfriend is not the main reason why I became interested in the Berlin startup scene, he was the triggering factor for me to find out more about the scene and to meet people that work on very interesting ideas, but he did not help me to get a job, he was actually kind of against it even.
For those of our readers who don’t know about Tweek, what is it and what does your day look like working in communications?
Tweek is your social TV Guide for the iPad. Basically Tweek helps you to discover great movie/series content by showing you what your friends have already liked via Facebook or recommended on Tweek. You can discover, share and watch your favorite TV Shows and movies. My day usually starts with the daily stats oversight - I am not only doing communications but also a bit of marketing, then I start checking the latest Tweets, articles and posts regarding Social TV or TV innovation in general. Reply to emails, write blog posts and improve our copy in the App. I pretty much do everything that has to do with writing and talking :)
If I take a look around at tech conferences I almost never see women and if I spot one they do PR or journalism - why is tech so full of cliches?
I think one of the reasons for this has been discussed several times in our scene: women tend to start working for a startup before they found their own. I have met so many women in tech who told me that their job in the communications sector or PR is just serving as stepping stone to found their own business at a later stage. Women tend to try out the areas first maybe in order to gain enough expertise (for themselves) to have the courage and confidence to start their own thing. That is one of my theories. Another view is also that women tend to be very good in communications and PR and maybe just enjoy a job like that more than the tech ones.
What advice would you give to young women all over the world who are considering a career in an internet start-up?
Start coding! Not only because you will get paid very well, offers you amazing jobs, but also because you can build everything yourself and have control over the whole product. I think that is such an amazing part about coding, you are the one building the whole thing. I have been doing code-academy for a couple of months now and it has already helped so much in understanding the process that our developers go through and how to talk to them :)
You can follow Nadia on twitter @nadiaboegli
