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MeetFox Makes Managing Your Client Meetings a Breeze (Bonus Episode)

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This blog post first appeared first on old medium publication (https://medium.com/startuprad-io), and was moved to this blog with the relaunch of our website in summer 2024.


MeetFox Makes Managing Your Client Meetings a Breeze

We are Calendly meets Zoom with payment processing.Susanne Klepsch, CEO and co-founder Meetfox

First, this is one post, but two episodes. This is our Columbus Day Special and we bring you the introduction of Johanna, the new lead of our female entrepreneurship track. We then get right on to her first interview with Susanne from MeetFox.

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We experienced a very big spike [in new clients] right at the beginning of the pandemic.Susanne Klepsch, CEO and co-founder Meetfox


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With our video solution you just need one click and not to download and software.Susanne Klepsch, CEO and co-founder Meetfox

The Female Entrepreneurship track

This is a bonus episode for Columbus Day 2021. It is also the first interview Johanna will do for our new female entrepreneurship track. She will take turns with Joe to interview great female startup founders, investors, and executives. Join us in welcoming her to the Startuprad.io team! Johanna is currently the CEO of her own business, before that she headed the US expansion of a startup from New York, where she lived for some time. When you listen to our radio slots on female entrepreneurship, you will also hear her in the audio snippets between interviews. If you want to reach out to her, you can do so here:

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Originally, we started with a platform for coaches, where we found the need for our current project. So we pivotedSusanne Klepsch, CEO and co-founder Meetfox

The Entrepreneur

In this interview, we talk to Susanne “Susie” Klepsch (https://www.linkedin.com/in/susanneklepsch/, https://twitter.com/susanneklepsch) CEO and co-founder of Meetfox. The startup is headquartered in New York City, since the user base is largely in the US. Originally the company was founded in Vienna. Susanne one of the Forbes Next1000 (https://www.forbes.com/next1000/)


The Startup

Meetfox (https://meetfox.com/) provides a simple one-step solution for freelancers and companies to schedule and monetize their online meetings with clients. They combine an online scheduling tool, with video conferencing and payment processing. Jokingly Susanne said We are Calendly meets Zoom with payment processing.

Originally the company started as a marketplace for coaches and realized the need for the current tool. Soon after they realized that they are much better at building this software instead of a marketplace, so they pivoted. They found investment in the US and moved eventually to New York City.


The Video Interview


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The Interviewer

This interview was conducted by Johanna Joch, she is the new co-host of the female entrepreneurship track at Startuprad.io. Reach out to her:


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Transcript

[0:00] Music.


[0:08] That I owe you were podcast and YouTube blog covering the German startups.With News interviews and Live Events hi everybodythis is Johanna from startupradio your startup podcast and YouTube blog from Germany as well as the world’s first internet radio station dedicated to startups and tech companies today I welcome our wonderful guest Susie.She’s founder and CEO of meetfox hi Suzy how are you today and where are you.


[0:43] Hi Johanna thank you so much for having me today.I’m actually in Vienna right now I’m originally from a while but I’ll be back in New York in a week where I currently live,so that’s super exciting going home for a while yeah today we are talking about meetfox.It’s the platform to manage online business meetings from start to finish can you explain us a little bit the details how it works.


[1:11] Sure.Yeah so meetfox offers individual service providers a simple one-step solution to schedule and also monetize declined meetings what we do is we combine online scheduling with video calls and payment processing,into one productthis can be simply plugged into any existing website or any Marketplace or any public profile and allows for clients to book meetings with you have video calls and pay for your time,mmm that’s what we do.That sounds super convenient super nice when you compare it to other video conference tools what what makes meetfox different or better let’s say that way what makes meetfox better.


[1:58] Yeah so I hear that question all the time because of course everybody’s using the big ones like Zoom Mikus of teams.What size is a pod from the existing Solutions out there is that we have a complete scheduling system in place.I shouldn’t probably be saying that but we have a calendly meets Zoom its Payment Processingall in one so we have much more than just a regular video solution because we have the whole scheduling piece and included as well and in terms of the video solution itself and its also it also has some USBS,for example you can completely brand the entire videosexperience to your own branding so you can add your own logo to the video call you can run the video call under your own domain,and therefore provide a very seamless and professional customer experience to your clients and on top of that you can also just join any video call with a click so it’s much easier without having,download apps and any plugins but you can just,simply drawn a call on the website where your client may find you that’s super super impressive since when or when did you start developing all of that because it’s yeah,if I think of Zoom meet calendly and all of that together that it’s seems like a big pig software.


[3:19] Yes it’s definitelyisn’t it we put a lot of time and effort into this into building this company and this product we actually started alreadyfour years ago with a Marketplace Marketplace for coaches to connect with clientsand that is where we found the need of making that into action more seamless so we decided to build a video solution we decided to build a scheduling solution so we started building more and more things until we at some point realized,then we were really good at building products and,less so it building a Marketplace and so we pivoted into creating a standalone as SAS product that is now being offit’s now offered to any kind of individual professionalsnot only coaches but now we are serving Consultants lawyers financial advisors therapist so many diverse professionals are using allies system and.


[4:16] That is what we started really doing in 2019 so right before the pandemic is when we started with meetfox andcurrent shape of form and then of course developed photo inverter and I was aadded a lot more features scheduling always sounds so easy but when you think about the complexity of everybody’s calendars and.How everyone has an individual preferences and how do you want to midnight manage to calendars it becomes really complex to cover all these different preferences and.Requirements and so it became a much bigger product than would be,originally plant but it’s fun you just mentioned the pandemic how was it for meetfox because everyone was more using other platforms as well and how was it for meetfox did the numbers,went up and yeah can you can you show your experience with the doing the pandemic what happened sure and so,we actually felt a really strong Spike right after the pandemic because suddenly people were all looking for a solution to the video calls to do scheduling online because,suddenly they needed to cover all of the.


[5:31] The process is that they used to do in person and physically suddenly to have to move them all online so we really saw a great curve especially in the beginning,but then at the same time there was so many more competitors coming into the market the market became a lot more interesting for a lot of existing companies thatsuddenly started offering similar features to us and so even though there was a suddenly much bigger Market available to us,there was also much more competition fighting in this market so it became a challenge but it’s it’s a good challenge to have I think because the market is continuing to grow and,because of the pandemic,digitization accelerated so much Dad we at least believe it’s not going to go back to all the old-fashioned ways of working of course people will.


[6:25] Meet in person again and there will be changes but I think that especially with covering the scheduling piece,and making that digital I don’t think that people will go back to scheduling the meetings with a pen and paper just because the pandemic is over so hopefully not that hopefully not yeahhopefully not do you have like one can you share like one of your biggest video conference fails.Because we saw also doing the pandemic all of this funny videos we’re like kids were on the screen or something did you also had like a fan in a way.


[7:06] Oh yeah I had many I think I because I’m literally in video calls all day long selling a video solution you really can’t ever switch off your videos so you always have to be on video and the.


[7:20] One of the funny things was when I was in New York during the pandemic my husband and I were,in a tiny apartment in New York and we were both on calls all day long and then sometimes one of us had to go to another room and we have to alwaysarranged and who is allowed to have meetings when because it was very difficult to be talking at the same time and soI had to have many calls sometimes in the bathroom because it was not a place to go and so I was likesitting like next to the toilet on a chair with like holding my computer making sure that nobody realizes that I’m actually sitting in the bathroom so those kind of things happened a lotsay and then one time I was in my husband left the shower and walk,behind me without realizing that I was on video because he was also not used to somebody else being on video calls I’ll lay down in the beginning who was on the other sidedoing that we liked me at that time it was only my team but it was still embarrassing enough that I blushed and and turned red because so yeah so really strange to have.Your husband run around half naked in the background.


[8:27] That’s yeah we know all of these funny little stories during the pandemic especially.As you said before you you are now in Vienna and but you live in New York City and meetfox is also based in Vienna and New York City.What is your background and what inspired you to found meetfox form how did you end up there.


[8:51] Chest and right after my University I had to.


[8:59] Join and take over my father’s company because my father unfortunately passed away so I was suddenly in a situation where I was.Running a hundred and twenty people Plastics production company.And I was completely overwhelmed but I had no idea how to manage people how to manage your company I did not know anything about Plastics I was just like,I didn’t know what I was doing and I really desperatelyneeded a coach and I was looking for a coach and even though I needed one in that instant it ended up taking me five weeks until I finally found one,and schedule an appointment with and I just could not understand why in an era where you can literally book everything at the push of a button why it would have to take five weeks to,get access to Professional Services and that is true not only for coaches but I’ve had similar experiences with lawyers but financial advisers with therapists doctors you name it and so.


[9:59] I just really wanted to make professional,Professional Services more accessible which is why I then decided to besides my job to start this coaching Marketplace because it was like okay let’s start with coaching that’s my coaching more accessible,and out of that is how it and meetfox turn into what it is today and so we start off with Coach Fox and Marketplace and then we turned it into meetfox and.I started doing it in Vienna and it was a great place to start it in because you get a lot of.Probably Grand you get a lot of support but,at some point we also realize that we really want to scale the company and we started looking for investment in the US,and that is also why I then decided to move to the us because we got investment in the US and because it made sense for us and Ella,and use a base was largely in the US and that’s why we decided to kind of split our team and now we are just remote team and living and working in many different places in the world,but all working remotely so it doesn’t really matter where we are right now but that’s what in the in the very beginning who was there your biggest support.


[11:11] You mean in terms of business I mean it does in both ways like in terms of business but also personal support.I mean definitely my family without my family I couldn’t have,Tanner whatever friends my husband was definitely then every.Up and down of the business like it’s always a roller coaster and if you don’t have people to lift you up when you are really down it’s becomes very challenging so I’m super thankful that I had all these amazing people around me.I think one of the things that have helped me the most was also getting surround a surrounding myself without a Founders especially around us that are.


[11:53] Willing to share their experiences in a very transparent and open way and it’s sometimes not so easy to find those kind of found us because a lot of.People in the in the saddle World tried to show the best of them in the best possible way all the time and so it’s sometimes difficult to get into what’s behind the scenes where did you find these people.I think that so I spend a lot of time in like start of events its co-working spaces talking to just a lot of founders,and then sometimes I think the moment you start opening up and talking about some problems that you’re facing you suddenly realize that everybody else is facing the same problems,but that’s something you really have to start doing the have to start being open and transparent and also get rid of that like shiny face in the that you tried to show all the timeand instead yeah talk about what’s not going well and if there’s any problems with the team with the founders would with.The investment we Define this is with anything it’s just super helpful to talk to out of Founders and realize that,everybody’s struggling and everybody’s going for the same up at ups and downs and that’s.


[13:05] There are always ways to learn from each other and to.By talking to you to other people who have had the same experiences in the same mistakes that they could that really,gives you a shortcut as well to avoid certain mistakes orget out of them quicker so and looking back at what kind of problems where like the biggest or yeah the ones where you were really struggling with there’s so many.


[13:32] I think one of the biggest problems is really finding a great team that you can rely on and I’m so.Glad that I did find it in the end but it took a while to really finds a good grade people that you really want to spend every day day and night with because it is a very.


[13:52] Challenging job and you do spend way too much time usually.On on your drop that if you are spending it around people to TV not like or data frustrating you that it becomes very draining and frustrating and it really is distracting so I think in the beginning I did some like.Wrong hiring decisions and.I was a little naive with like getting everyone to to join the company just because it was so motivated about the cause.But realizing way too late it actually doesn’t not the right people to match maybe that the team at a culture orthe the responsibilities that we needed to cover and so I think that is one of the big learnings that I had was to really figure out okay,even if people are always nice and you’ve always find amazing people that you could.Have join your team really being a little more strict of who you actually let in because oftentimes.Being in a start-up is like having a marriage you like so close together that if it doesn’t work out it can be really.Really bad for a company and it can kill a company how would you describe the marriage to your team.


[15:09] That’s a good one I mean I think that the most important thing is that I can really trust my team.Especially also my co-founders I know that if there’s a problem in the middle of the night I can call them and stay awake up just as much as I would.To fix problems to talk to customers to do customer support such a really due to the hard work whenever it’s needed but also.I think it’s always like a two-way street right that I was a we have to make sure to do all the doing that and you also make your also supporting them in any way you can and of course in.Especially in situations when there’s a lot of pressure and when there’s a lot of.Speed needed it’s difficult to look at the others and see it and figure out how you can help others.When you actually only want to get the tasks done so I think that’s something with it it’s really important to always think about okay I can rely on them then I have to also be reliable and.Yeah I’m figuring out that balance and making sure that this marriage on that sense always works if you can always rely on each other.


[16:20] That’s amazing that you found such a such a good team that is such a good fit and finally a good marriage not.Like the marriage and the very very beginning yes sometimes to have to you have to change the partner exactlylet’s think about a world where everybody is using meetfox.


[16:43] What would be better I’ll and I think people if everybody was using meetfox.I think people would have a lot more time available because they would not have to,look into the calendar of again they I mean they would have to look into it and just see what they are up to today but they wouldn’t have to ever schedule meetings ever figure out evertalk to anybody about like oh when are you available and going back and forth so all that communication that is really.Really unnecessary would be,completely eliminated and replaced by meaningful interactions add that I happening for the meetings itselfand I would have bet it I personally even use meetfox from my personal meetings which is kind of strange and my friends always laugh at me but because I do have a schedule a busy schedule and I have friends.In many places around the world.It’s just so difficult to me sometimes to think about different time zones up to figure out when to meet and where to meet and whatsoever so what I do is I simply also share my booking link with mymy friends and they booked themselves into my calendar until that works really well for me and I imagine that.


[18:02] Hopefully in the future and everybody gets used to using meetfox for my business pod that it would also help them manage the day-to-day even on the personal side.


[18:12] Mmm sounds sounds totally interested in better so.We talk now a little bit about like a better world with meetfox if you could choose a TV or Netflix series to live in,which one would it be and also why if I could choose a Netflix series okay.


[18:39] I would I mean I recently started watching Silicon Valley.The show which is all about like a startup that is struggling in this Silicon Valley andI think first of all it sounds like they are going for the exact same roller coaster just in a different scale and so I would love to be part of that just because I love being in a start-up and I think that.The roller coaster that you in on a day-to-day is,part of the game and it’s fun and so yeah I feel like I would fit right into that they are can’t chaotic life of a start-up founder and real life you are living in Vienna know you’re living in New York right.Exactly but at the moment you are in Vienna.


[19:25] And yeah I would like to know which parts of you are Vienna and which are New York City huh.


[19:35] I think that on a personal side I’m very much a Vienna I love classical music I love museums and culture and I love.Having like a,relax life and bien is very relaxing and has a very high quality of living and it’s really a beautiful place to be in but on the.My business side on my business self is more,definitely more happy in New York just because I like the high pace of the content of the city I like that everybody’s hustling I love being surrounded by,by so many people that are all fighting to to achieve something so I find it very motivating to be in.In New York for that reason and so that’s why I feel more home when it comes to business that I feel much more home in terms of personal life and I’m in Austria so it’s a fun mix do you have favorite places when you’re in Vienna where you go.In Vienna I love going principle Austrian food I’m a big fan of Austrian food I love schnitzel and everything that is comes around it and so whenever I’m in Vienna I go.


[20:54] Each little like almost all the time so definitely not Austrian restaurants is where you can find me I also mean now independent make it’s a little more difficult but I love as I said classical music I love the Opera I love going to balls,the very Viennese and weird thing that we do but we actually go to balls where you dance classical like bald the groom Dances all night long and so that’s what I love about it.In New York I really just enjoy walking around on the streets I love seeing like skyscrapers in stillamazes me every time I’m in New York and I look up and I see those beautiful buildings and and those beautiful streets and just like walking around with everyone in this like New York Vibe is just really energizing and.That is where we where I love being just on the streets walking around and all the beautiful parts of New York like no like Soho and.Yeah it’s amazing I also really love it so much I really like our last questions for today.Okay first and serious schnitzel or bagel.


[22:07] I’ll cool or Jay-Z — definitely Empire State or schonbrunn Palace.


[22:18] It’s important it’s funny I’m apparently more Austrian that I’ve had yeah it sounds like it where can we find you after work.I love cocktail so in a cocktail bar early bird or night owl.


[22:34] Night Owl I love working till like 4:00 a.m. that’s where I’m the most productive your me time slots during the day.Breakfast I love just eating breakfast and not being disturbed and I need a good meal in the morning to wake up.Best way to relax and I love dancing.


[23:00] Me dancing is the most relaxing thing because that’s when I can really switch off what Disney character would you like to be.


[23:10] Hm Tinker Bell because I would love to.Fulfill everybody’s wishes make everybody’s wishes come true which superpower to fly or to be invisible.To fly I loved I loved flying and I would love to do it without a plane thank you Susie thank you.


[23:43] Music.


[23:50] Www dot start a friend that I oh remember sharing is caring.


[23:57] Music.


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