4 noise zones and a product hub

With its fragrance-based drinking bottle system, which only gives drinking water a taste through fragrance pods, Air Up has managed to find its way into many family kitchens in the last four years. The company already offers the drinking systems in ten EU countries and in the USA, with sales of 159 million in 2021.

Now the Munich-based start-up has grown so much that they have even moved into new premises in the Munich Werksviertel, a former industrial area near the Ostbahnhof – a proud 3,600 square meters of space in the head office for a total of 140 of the more than 300 employees who work in eleven countries serve over five million customers.

Such an office at the rental prices in the Bavarian state capital is indeed amazing – and causes immense running costs and investments. Co-founder and Chief Evangelist Lena Jüngst explains in the t3n interview that they have therefore thought carefully about the best way for their own HQ. “In the end, however, we came to the conclusion that we needed a common contact point that breathes our team spirit and offers enough space for workshops, spontaneous encounters, creativity and focus work.”

Up to 140 people can be accommodated in the new office, but not all employees come there regularly. “Nevertheless, it is important to us to create a central meeting place and space for creative development, cooperation and entrepreneurial spirit with a permanent office. Because this common home is of course also identity-forming.”

In this way, the aim is also to specifically pick up those employees who can not or only rarely be in the head office – with regular digital workshops on the topic of mental health or fitness (e.g. meditation, resilience, healthy back and much more), further training courses and team events . “We work with Office Vibe, an online tool designed to provide a deep understanding of team members’ feelings,” explains Lena Jüngst.

At the same time, the decision was made to pursue a continuous growth course with the scale-up, but not to forego the remote-first approach. Even if you take a look at the startup’s job advertisements, you will quickly see that most of them are country-specific, but advertised remotely. “We enable hybrid working and there are paid coworking options depending on where our employees live.”

A lot of time was taken to plan and design the office space: In order to offer employees the greatest possible flexibility in organizing their working day, the building was divided into four different noise zones for creative but also concentrated work. Means: Depending on whether team members need places to concentrate, want to telephone remote colleagues, or want to meet for creative brainstorming sessions, they will find the right area.

The heart of the new office is the so-called product hub. Here you will find international talents in the research and development area, including experts from product and flavor development, a laboratory kitchen, a hackathon area, a kitchen for quality tests and a product manufacturing area.

Incidentally, Berlin was never an option for the founder as the location for the head office: “For us, going to Berlin or to another city was actually never an option. Munich was obviously exactly the environment that we needed as a team to be successful with our product, and of course that creates a bond.”

Ben Curwood, Head of Human Resources at Air Up, also sees some points in which the company differs from other comparable startups or scaleups. In this way, fixed and regulated working hours are avoided. The time for meetings can be freely arranged and all team members can and should set personal blockers for sports or the daily walk. “For us, it’s about freedom for individuality, time for yourself and the compatibility of work and private life. If this is not implemented everywhere, we have to improve it through communication and coaching.”

This flexibility is indeed an important element in the battle for specialists and executives – and Curwood emphasizes that this is also lived at Air Up and does not just work in theory. “I wish that as managers we would be as flexible as possible. It’s always about the result, not the effort. We don’t count the hours he or she has worked. We manage our workload and make sure we meet our agreed targets.”

Nevertheless, Air Up should not be able to avoid the mandatory time recording. Whether the result-oriented work in practice suits the employees also depends on their mentality.