🟠 BrandLand #05. Xavi Rius, co-founder & CEO of CitySens
🟠 BrandLand #05. Xavi Rius, co-founder & CEO of CitySens
Shift from academia to entrepreneurship 🔬 - Why is he paying himself the minimum salary? 📈
Welcome to BrandLand 👋: We tell stories about impactful brands from around the world.
🎙️ Let’s go with interview #05
Today’s e-com BrandLand guest is… 🙌 Xavi Rius!
He is co-founder and CEO of Citysens 🌿, a brand founded in 2012 in Spain that specialises in self-watering systems for indoor plants. The brand has an important focus on sustainability, transparency and social impact 🤝 . Xavi has a PHD in analytical chemistry and is also the co-founder of NT Sensors. Follow along to discover how his academic background has shaped him into an entrepreneur.
Topics at a glance:
💬 Conversation topics
✍️ Key learnings from the interview
🕑 Time stamps and topics
💬 Conversation topics
From academia to entrepreneurship 👉 how does a background with a PHD in analytical chemistry serve Xavi nowadays in entrepreneurship? A part from explaining his career shift, Xavi also explains…
…the sustainability and social impact from CitySens
…if the company is profitable
…how he was introduced to technology development
…what salary he pays himself
…his biggest fuckup and what he would do different
…their product pipeline 🪴
…the USP of the brand
…the marketing set-up (organic reach)
…the financial set-up (crowdfunding campaigns & investors)
And much more!
The brand's commitment to innovation, environmental consciousness, and making living spaces greener 🌱 has gained our admiration.
Kickstarter campaigns - aiming to raise funds or product validation? 📈
❗Before watching the interview! First, answer this short question, then watch the interview to check if you were right 😜
You can find the answer at the beginning of the video (00:00). Let us know in the comments what you think about it 👇💬
✍️ Key learnings from the interview
Our personal key learnings from the interview are the following:
The importance of focusing on values and having a social impact: CitySens places a strong emphasis on values and on making a social impact. They collaborate with social organisations to provide work to people with functional diversity. This is core to their brand identity and it’s crucial that the team shares those values.
Our company has all these values of sustainability and social impact... We need to build a team that really believes in that. - Xavi
Balancing his personal and professional life ⚖️: Xavi discusses the challenge of balancing personal and professional life, especially since he became an entrepreneur. He explains a past experience when he had to choose between attending a fair and being with his newly born baby. He also states that now he would handle this situations differently.
"Balancing personal life and professional life when you're an entrepreneur is not easy." - Xavi
Citysens financing strategies: Xavi explains his approach to financing the company 👉 using public loans and bootstrapping. He also mentions crowdfunding campaigns as a way to validate products rather than just raise capital.
“I prefer to keep my salary low so I can invest more... We design more for product validation, rather than for financing." - Xavi
Their focus on sustainable products and innovation: The company's focus is on creating sustainable & innovative products that have a positive impact on the environment ♻️. Xavi emphasises the importance of communicating this message to customers.
“When you buy Citizens, you buy much more than just a planter... all this sustainable strategy, this social impact, this innovation that is behind." - Xavi
Importance of a customer centric strategy: Xavi discusses the importance of creating value for customers. He believes that bootstrapping forces a company to prioritise customer needs and create products that customers find valuable. Therefore, he prefers bootstrapping to external funding.
"I like bootstrapping because I think that bootstrapping forces you to add value to the customer... if the customer does not find value, does not buy the product, then that's it." - Xavi
Our personal highlight from the interview is the strong values-driven mindset, which comes along with sustainability, transparency and social impact. Watch the full interview here 👇:
Below you can find the exact times when discussing a specific topic. This allows you to move back and forth where you find the most interest. Enjoy it! 👇
🕑 Time stamps and topics
(00:00) Snippet
(00:30) Intro and Xavi’s academic background
(09:16) Importance of Product Validation
(17:06) Academia vs entrepreneur
(23:16) Yes or no questions
(25:02) Marketing (channels, traffic, B2C vs B2B)
(31:21) Product pipeline
(34:39) Crowdfunding campaigns, financing, profitability
(39:56) Personal questions (salary, biggest fuckup and favourite brand besides CitySens
Thinking about bringing your e-com brand to Switzerland? 🇨🇭
Do you have an impactful brand and want to bring it to Switzerland? Book a meeting with our founders to get to know each other 😃
Jens Bergermann: Working in purchasing & sales of consumer brands for over 8 years.
Previously helped to scale DeinDeal.ch and Amorana.ch until exits. Passionate about branding and distribution strategy. Let’s talk!
Nicolas Huxley: Building brands on Shopify for over 9 years.
Previously founded Elephbo.com and Tauschtoni.com. Love to build and support brands with purpose. Happy to jump on a call!
👈 Previous interview
On interview #04 we had a chat with Sander de Klerk, co-founder & Chief Rolling Officer of The Good Roll 🧻, an impactful brand based in Amsterdam that makes the world a less shittier place one wipe at a time 🚽. The company produces toilet paper out 100% of bamboo & recycled TP. 50% of the profits are allocated to building toilets in Africa.
If you missed it, you should check it out here:
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