#Interview
“Today we have over 300 customers – from scale ups, medium-sized companies to corporations. In the next twelve months we want to more than double this number and at the same time increase sales per customer,” says Jonathan Kurth, founder of calltime.
At the Cologne startup calltimefounded in 2024 by Jonathan Kurth and Malte Hendricks, is all about optimizing sales calls. “We tell employees whether the information is still up to date and when it is best to call to reach the customer – this makes their work much more relaxed and successful,” says founder Kurth.
In an interview with deutsche-startups.de, he presents calltime, which has so far been completely bootstrapped, in detail.
How would you explain calltime to your grandmother?
Imagine you want to call someone and they never answer because you always answer at the wrong time or have an old number from 10 years ago that is no longer current. This is exactly what happens thousands of times every day when company employees call their existing customers or potential new customers. We tell employees whether the information is still up to date and when it is best to call to reach the customer – this makes their work much more relaxed and successful.
How exactly does your business model work?
calltime is largely a classic SaaS and is billed per user.
How did the idea for calltime come about?
I never thought I would end up working in sales or even developing software for sales. Of course, with my previous startups, customers didn’t come on their own – so I had to learn sales. My current co-founder Malte was in the process of selling his previous startup when he showed me a technology that allows calls and other tasks to be prioritized much better: It was clear to us – there was something in it. We built an MVP and tested it in a pilot with Finn Hollander, then Head of Sales at Gertrud Digital (now boardwise.io). The result: more than twice as many touch points with decision-makers with the same number of activities. Finn immediately became our first paying customer. We had decided not to set up the GmbH until sales exceeded the start-up costs – this was achieved after two months.
What were the biggest challenges you have had to overcome so far?
The change from founder-led sales to team-led sales. At the beginning, we simply didn’t understand how long it takes to build structured sales – and what the processes have to look like in order for the whole thing to scale profitably. We will probably never get out of sales completely, but the company has to function independently of us founders. We work on that every day.
Where will calltime be in a year?
Today we have over 300 customers – from scale ups, medium-sized companies to corporations. Over the next 12 months, we want to more than double this number while increasing revenue per customer. calltime becomes a suite of solutions that all have one goal: to take the frustration out of working with customers and new customers – for salespeople, account managers and customer success teams.
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