Markus Schaarschmidt - RBC Pro: "In Silicon Valley, they are in no hurry to make money"

Co-founder and CEO of the Frankfurt company Lost and Found Software, which developed software for finding missing things. The system, which automates the matching of lost and found claims, is used by 54 airports, including those in Frankfurt, Munich, Brussels, Amsterdam and other European cities, as well as in the United Statesand Australia. The company does not disclose financial performance. Schaarschmidt is also the founder and CEO of Neosulting (also a platform for finding missing items). As a lecturer, he speaks on the topics of fear of technology and conservative thinking. He graduated from the Technical University of Applied Sciences Middle Hesse, where he studied computer science. In 2003-2006, he was a programmer at the travel company Thomas Cook, developing applications. Then he worked as an IT consultant in several companies.

— People often do not trust new technologies and are afraid of them. Why?

- Fear of new technologies is primarily due to the fact that people are afraid of not being able to cope with them. In this sense, there are two different types of people. For some, when they start using something new, there is inspiration, they want to figure it out. And others are afraid of the new, because they feel that they can not cope. For twenty years they used the same system, they got it right. And then they are told to switch to a new system. The first thing they think about is that they will fail and lose their jobs.

How to convince people to accept new technology?

— I look at it in terms of sales, which I do every day. It is important to explain that technology will help to carry out daily work, getting rid of the routine and allowing you to focus on something important. We convince people that our technologies will not completely take away their work.