Sep 27, 2026 · 39 min · 9 segments
Rolf Schrömgens co-founded trivago and helped build it into a multi-billion-dollar company. We talk about raising capital, keeping control, hiring, company culture, leadership, bureaucracy, and the…
I think like it's a similarity for a lot of the greatest companies who have been there, that they always were really good in keeping biocracy out of the company and keeping the decision-making team quite small.
Did you have any principles inside of the company that allowed you to do that, to basically push biocracy outside? If yes, how did this look like?
I think there is a size from which on you have a tendency to bureaucratize, to create structures and rule sets and so on and so on.
So it's not that I'm generally saying it's completely insane to build structures.
And I think that is something where I'm asking founders really to reflect first themselves.
So what of this building structures that you didn't need before, but now you think you need them? So what should they cover? Should they give you a feeling of control? Should it give you a feeling of transparency? how much really transparency really do they give it to you? You know, does this give it to you? Like, how much control really does it give to you? You know, what does this control? Like, does it mean that the other people are not able to take the decisions? You are the only one taking the decisions, right? So I think that it's important to ask yourself these questions.
if we would have really reflective founders at this stage, I think we would see way less structures.
Because I think that the general setup, like how you organize in a small team in a startup situation, I think that can carry you way further than you might think.
So like an organizational structure that is not like hierarchical, organized in many different layers, and so on and so on.
If you come across, like, I don't know, 100 people, you at least need so and so many levels.
You need to have, like, you know, exact job profiles and people should not deviate from it and so on and so on and so on.
I think that organizational structures could look today, also with the tools that we have, could look way more fluent.
Of course, they are more complex, but they could look way more fluent and they would be way more agile.
I think like it's a similarity for a lot of the greatest companies who have been there, that they always were really good in keeping biocracy out of the company and keeping the decision-making team quite small.
Did you have any principles inside of the company that allowed you to do that, to basically push biocracy outside? If yes, how did this look like?
I think there is a size from which on you have a tendency to bureaucratize, to create structures and rule sets and so on and so on.
So it's not that I'm generally saying it's completely insane to build structures.
And I think that is something where I'm asking founders really to reflect first themselves.
So what of this building structures that you didn't need before, but now you think you need them? So what should they cover? Should they give you a feeling of control? Should it give you a feeling of transparency? how much really transparency really do they give it to you? You know, does this give it to you? Like, how much control really does it give to you? You know, what does this control? Like, does it mean that the other people are not able to take the decisions? You are the only one taking the decisions, right? So I think that it's important to ask yourself these questions.
if we would have really reflective founders at this stage, I think we would see way less structures.
Because I think that the general setup, like how you organize in a small team in a startup situation, I think that can carry you way further than you might think.
So like an organizational structure that is not like hierarchical, organized in many different layers, and so on and so on.
If you come across, like, I don't know, 100 people, you at least need so and so many levels.
You need to have, like, you know, exact job profiles and people should not deviate from it and so on and so on and so on.
I think that organizational structures could look today, also with the tools that we have, could look way more fluent.
Of course, they are more complex, but they could look way more fluent and they would be way more agile.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
