A day in the life of a Berlin Tech Entrepreneur: Tom Gardiner

In this article I explore the life of my friend and tech entrepreneur Tom Gardiner

About Tom

Tom is an entrepreneur and technologist with a background in High Performance Computing and Artificial Intelligence. His previous company, RefME, at which he was co-founder and CTO, grew faster than both Twitter and Pinterest in their first year. Having seen first-hand the problems that a lack of data transparency can bring to an organisation and, in contrast, the huge benefits that a data-driven approach can bring to business, he was convinced there had to be a better way. And that’s when Trevor was born.

Trevor is a powerful query-builder that gives analytical people all the power of SQL, without the learning curve

Tom Gardiner – Founder of Trevor

Why did you choose to live in Berlin?

I had been living in London for the last 7 years.  I absolutely loved the energy of the city (everyone is very driven and focused on their career or their start-up), but I wanted to try somewhere new.  I was in the process of building Trevor (https://trevor.io) and wanted to go somewhere where my budget would go further, but also where I’d be surrounded by like-minded entrepreneurs.  

The most developed start-up/entrepreneur hubs in Europe at the time were London, Paris, Berlin and Barcelona (although these days I increasingly hear good things about Lisbon, Amsterdam, Dublin and Stockholm).  In Paris you really need to speak French, so that was unfortunately a no-go for me. I couldn’t decide between Barcelona and Berlin, so I decided to spend a week in both.

Barcelona was, of course, amazing.  The food, the weather, the beaches and mountains.  What’s not to like.  

But Berlin, well… there really is nowhere else like it.  When you meet someone in London, the first thing they’ll ask you is “what do you do?”.  In Berlin, the question is far more likely to be something like “what is your dream/focus/passion?” (as cheesy as that sounds!).  The reason is, people don’t move to Berlin in search of a career. People move to Berlin to get away from one. People move to Berlin to be the Musician, Writer, Artist, Designer, Entrepreneur that they’ve always wanted to be.  I instantly felt at home.

What do you like about the IT/start-up scene in Berlin?

Berlin has Meet-up events every single night (everything from Javascript meet-ups and co-founder match-making, to Salsa and Radical Honesty workshops).  There are co-working spaces around every corner, with thousands of like-minded entrepreneurs building their (machine-learning/blockchain/IOT/you-name-it) businesses of the future.  And despite being the capital city of Germany, the whole IT/start-up scene is run completely in English. You’ll be trying to order a beer in German, and quickly realise that the bar staff speak less German than you do.  

Don’t get me wrong, I think everyone should try to learn German when they come here, but importantly, your success in the start-up scene here will never be hindered by your language skills.

What does a typical day look like for you?

In Berlin, everything runs later, so I typically start later.  At 08:00 I have breakfast at home, read my email and tick off a few small items just to kick off the day.  By 09:00 I’m in the Gym and by 10:30 I’m in the office. My walk to work takes about 15 minutes, along the canal, and we work from a co-working members club called The Factory. They run regular events and feed us lots of free coffee.  At 10:30 we do our team stand-up meeting and make sure everyone is in sync on our plan for the day.

Days vary, but tasks include everything from team meetings, helping customers and replying to emails, to planning and taking part in software development and marketing sprints.

Most days I try to finish work by 19:30 and in the evenings I’ll meet friends, play sports or go dancing.  I’m usually in bed by 01:00.

Any last thoughts?