Starting an agency: personal fulfilment, pure and simple

Simeon Atkinson recently established his own agency on the Achtung! start-up platform: Achtung! InnoHealth, which has its headquarters in Düsseldorf. The young communications agency for healthcare start-ups has already acquired a number of clients. Atkinson explains why entrepreneurship is a joy for him.

Simeon, how fulfilling is it for you to manage your own agency?

For me, having my own agency is personal fulfilment, pure and simple. I have always been fascinated by building something of my own – not just as an end in itself but as a meaningful endeavour. By setting up this agency I can help to shape and contribute to innovation in healthcare. That is a challenge that motivates me.

Can you perhaps describe in quite concrete terms moments that have made you particularly happy?

When an idea really proves to be popular, when an action is particularly effective – these are the moments in the everyday life of an agency that motivate me. When our clients or our agency take a major step, for example bringing in a valuable new team member, that is a highlight for me.

You are a very young founder. Does a person need to have entrepreneurship in their DNA or can they acquire it?

Entrepreneurship is never a predefined path. So I don’t think that it is genetically determined. But anyone who is very curious and has a desire to discover certainly has an advantage when it comes to starting a business. At the same time, I think it is never too late to start something. Years of professional experience can also be a good basis. Ultimately, starting a business is a question of attitude. And that has nothing to do with age.

The advantage of the Achtung! start-up platform is that Achtung! can look after many aspects of the business for you. Can you give us an example of how it can help in this regard?

Starting a business is not just a question of flooding your LinkedIn feed with a series of success stories. Below the surface, it involves communicating with authorities, generating invoices, completing the formalities and much more. Sound administrative processes are key to these tasks. They also entail a huge amount of work, almost all of which I have been spared, thanks to the start-up platform. This certainly helps me to sleep well at night and to focus on the core area of Achtung! InnoHealth: communication for healthcare start-ups.

So, in concrete terms, how does it work with the other units and specialists at Achtung!?

It’s very straight forward. There are contact people for each issue, and they are experts in their respective field. The best thing is that everyone is easily accessible over Zoom. So the right support is always nearby, digitally speaking. If more than a quick question is needed, there are established processes, for example when it comes to accounting and financial control. It is really great to see how all Achtung! staff support start-ups in this way.