Company: Heidi Pharma GmbH
Founders: Nina Braun (founder and CEO) and Dr. Thomas Haffner (founder), Katja Sulzbach (CEO)
Date of foundation: December 5, 2022
Industry and company: Health

What drives you? What is your motto?
"Don't sit down and wait for opportunities. Get up and get going." Madam C. J. Walker.
You can only realize your dreams and make a difference if you have the courage to take responsibility.

What is your company about and what is special about it?
We develop and sell natural nutritional supplements for the special needs of children's bodies. We attach great importance to high-quality and mostly plant-based ingredients, child-friendly and individual dosage and good taste. The advice we provide in pharmacies should also give parents more security.

What are your initial successes?
Without the help of external agencies, we have developed a high-quality brand with a strong design, set up a functioning online store, successfully launched pharmacy sales and received our first media attention. We are incredibly happy about it and very proud of what we can achieve ourselves.

What is your professional background?
Nina: Physiotherapist with recent sales experience in the pharmaceutical sector
Katja: Design engineer, most recently gained a lot of experience in the product development of food supplements
Thomas: PhD in chemistry with a focus on the development of over-the-counter and herbal health products

What prompted you to set up your own company?
The charm of self-employment lies in the combination of personal freedom, professional opportunities and the chance to actively and creatively shape our own future according to our own standards. After many years as employees, we were ready to take this step and have not regretted it so far.

Who has advised you, who are your helpers and mentors?
We always support each other, give each other the necessary freedom, but always decide together in the end! We receive a lot of encouragement and support from our individual networks, from our families and now more and more independent supporters are joining us, who think we and our Herby Family are great and support us.

How did you experience the first few days as founders?
We didn't have that one day when we founded the company. It was more of a fluid time between leaving our old jobs and starting our own company. Nevertheless, this initial period in particular was a time of learning, planning and then taking action. We knew there would be countless challenges, but we also had the feeling right from the start that we had a real opportunity to build a really good company.

What was your biggest challenge and how did you overcome it?
Building a start-up is actually characterized by one challenge after another. The brilliant business idea is probably the smallest. The official requirements have to be mastered, funding has to be found, a suitable infrastructure has to be created, etc. These are all issues that you don't actually come into contact with as an employee, or only rarely, but which are of significant importance.

How do you draw attention to your company? What is your best marketing idea?
We use all possible channels, from social media to classic content marketing, ad placements, inserts in relevant magazines, face-to-face acquisition in pharmacies, trade fair visits, press work, participation in competitions ...

How did you finance your start-up?
Equity and traditional bank loans. As we trade in products, we need larger amounts at regular intervals. In the beginning, this is often not possible on our own.

What dream would you still like to realize?
We want Heidi Pharma to become a real company that our employees will enjoy working for in the future. We would also like to make a lasting contribution to making the healthcare market for children in Germany attractive and at the same time be a point of contact for questions and development.

Please complete the following sentence: If we had more time, we would ...
... travel more.

What is your special tip: What would you recommend to founders?
Especially at the beginning, you should perhaps not be too romantic and in love with detail, but rather test many distribution channels for your product in a very pragmatic way and build up a strong network. Because without a stable business model, self-employment quickly stops being fun.