Founder Bylines and Stage Time in German Business Media

This work succeeds when the founder holds a position that costs them something: a claim a competitor would publicly dispute. The first three hours are spent finding out whether yours does. Twice we have ended that interview, told the founder there was no position yet, refunded the balance and stopped. The alternative is a ghostwritten opinion that collapses in the first interview when a journalist asks the second question. How a position becomes a body of work: One anchor argument, stated plainly enough that someone can disagree with it. Beneath it, three subsidiary pieces that each defend one part of the argument against the strongest objection, and one piece of evidence the founder owns — an operating number, a customer pattern, a decision they made and can explain. Without that evidence the argument is opinion, and opinion from a company nobody has heard of does not travel. Where these land: Guest pieces in Handelsblatt, WirtschaftsWoche, Capital and manager magazin; sector opinion in Automobilwoche, electrive or fvw; t3n and Sifted for software and venture audiences. The rules matter more than the list. Handelsblatt will not run a Gastbeitrag that has already appeared on LinkedIn. Most desks want exclusivity for a defined window. None accept a piece written by an agency and signed by a founder who cannot defend it in a follow-up call. Stages and microphones: Conference programmes are decided four to seven months out — IAA Mobility, ITB Berlin, OMR Festival, Bits und Pretzels, DMEXCO, Hannover Messe — so a submission in March is for next year's stage, not this season's. Podcasts move faster and, for B2B software in DACH, often work better: an hour on a show your buyers listen to on the commute outperforms a byline nobody finished. What the founder has to give: Four hours a month, on the calendar, in their own voice. Two are interviews with us; the rest is answering journalist questions inside a working day, because a business desk on deadline will not wait two. Founders who cannot hold that should not buy this. We do not post on LinkedIn as the founder. The account stays theirs. We supply the argument, the structure and the objections; they write it. Media training before the first interview: A recorded session on bridging, on what a German business journalist does with an off-record remark and why unter drei and unter zwei are not interchangeable, and on the three uncomfortable questions your specific position invites. If the founder cannot answer those three on camera, the placement work waits. Measurement: Inbound requests from journalists who found the founder rather than us, speaking invitations that arrive unsolicited, and whether the argument gets restated by other people without attribution — the clearest sign it landed. We do not report impressions, follower growth or engagement rate on posts. None of them predict whether a head of procurement takes the call. Not included: Paid contributed-content networks: Forbes Councils, Entrepreneur Leadership Network and the German equivalents. Award programmes with an entry fee and a sponsor's logo. Bought engagement. Ghost-posting. Buyers in DACH recognise all of these, and being seen to have bought a platform costs more than the platform returns. Not for you if: The founder wants profile without argument. The company's story is that it is growing. Or the person to be profiled is not the person making the claims: a CMO's byline about the CEO's convictions reads exactly like what it is, and the desk that runs it will not run the next one.