Hi Claus, thanks for taking time to have a chat! To start, please tell us a bit about your background.
Claus: Growing up in Germany I wanted to get into aerospace but was too restless for that education, other than learning to fly later.
Instead I traveled and made a living as an artist, eventually settling in Australia where I started B2B ventures in Film & TV, marketing and engineering.
Mostly they were successful and I learned a lot, but I eventually became disenchanted with just helping blue chip corporates sell more. I wanted future ventures to make a positive difference and not just money.
That sounds great! How did that influence you to come up with the ideas for SkedGo and TripGo?
Claus: Playing football, 20 guys from each team showed up in 40 cars, there was no coordination despite all games being known months ahead. That led me to visualise a calendar which includes travel between scheduled events making it possible to coordinate between attendees. 
The technical challenge was too great for the first team I put together, but eventually Tim cracked it and we built our current fantastic team. As we developed the SkedGo calendar, Adrian proposed TripGo based on our multi-modal routing.
What’s your role at SkedGo?
Claus: Founder, Chairman & Financial Controller. What I love most is defining our vision and strategy and setting priorities with the team. I find that highly inspiring and critical to maintain a top down perspective of what’s really bottom-up incremental engineering. 
My latter two roles are to keep our corporate, HR, legal & financial wheels oiled. Less inspiring but happy to use my experience to cover the team’s back and for our venture to be sustainable and ready for partnerships.
What’s your best productivity hack?
Claus: I like to deal with tough problems last thing before I go to sleep. Almost without fail I wake up with the answer. My tip: only one problem per night, so choose wisely!
What’s your best tip for traveling smarter?
Claus: When I don’t ride or drive I tend to use every minute to read, message or make calls.
If you have good reactions and situational awareness, motor bikes and scooters are great, you get there faster, parking is never an issue and they are more resource friendly than cars.
I also find the focus required to stay safe is invigorating and re-centring.
Where do you find inspiration?
Claus: Nature, friends, science and SciFi. Nature doesn’t waste much, so I believe we’re given the privileged lives many of us are living to make a positive difference.
SciFi inspires possibilities, and as Abraham Lincoln said: “The best way to predict the future is to create it”!
What are you most excited about coming up for TripGo in the future?
Claus: Short term I’m super excited to see how users will use the TripGo Agenda. There are so many further benefits we can deliver through that!
Routing has become commoditized with users spoilt for free choices. The next value add is predictive transport personalization, to serendipitously serve trips that match where, how, when and with who a user wants to go. That will open the gates to deeper online-offline coordination socially and professionally, save time, money and carbon.
Exciting days, I wish I could speed up the clock, but the journey is lots of fun too!
It certainly is. Thanks Claus!
