Three years ago, working as a Head of Marketing, Claudius discovered his passion for Marketing and working with people. Back then, he started acquiring clients but the more inquiries he had, the less time he had to work on single projects. That's when he started hiring freelancers to help him. Now, a few years later, some of these freelancers are his full-time colleagues at LAUDO - his own design agency – and they sit next to him at their Team Desk at betahaus | Neukölln.

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Claudius is the person that takes care of talking to clients, building strategies, and putting the team together. By its team, he’s described as - ‘’The Ambitious’’ - because of the extreme care he puts into every project, paying attention to the smallest details.

Joey is the Frontend Web Developer of the team. He develops websites and apps, cooks amazing food, and can give you insightful tips on how to homemake the perfect dairy-free pesto. If they had one word to describe him, the team would call him‘’The Knowledge’’  because they feel like he knows everything in his field. He's super curious, he finds things out fast, and make things work in seconds.

Alex, the newest member of the team, is ‘’The Ambitious 2’’. Why? After studying Medicine for 3 years, she realized that it was not her true passion. She had the courage to drop out and follow her path as a designer. She did an internship at LAUDO and for the last two weeks, she’s officially working with them.

Orietta is the UI and UX designer of LAUDO joining the team in October. She's been around betahaus for some time now and is the ‘’The Multifunctional’’ member of the team. Other than UI and UX, she does illustrations and brings the jokes to keep up the team spirit up.

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LAUDO says their team spirit animal would be a tiny leopard, lying gorgeously on their team desk. A dog would be too distracting, but they're talking about buying a labradoodle if this will increase their Instagram following. If they had to bring something over lunch it would be Joey's homemade brownies.

Claudius: Design is the core of what we do and what we’re all passionate about, but hardly our only focus. Design, at LAUDO, stands more for designing a whole strategy, often very close connected with marketing. We’re developing websites and apps for our clients, but also help them reach their target audience through SEO, Google ranking developing newsletter systems, print brochures etc.

Claudius: A lot of other companies are seeing themselves as a service provider and don’t really question what their client wants and why. We pay very close attention if the work we provide for a client is in line with our personal values and vision. It’s not just delivering a product to the client, getting the paycheck and leaving, but also building relationships with clients and collaborating. Because they are often our doors to new opportunities

‘’We see LAUDO as an airport, where the clients are our gates to new guests, new perspectives and new potential clients. It happens all the time that whoever we’re working for, from there we get a new project, which wasn’t planned before. So we open up a new gate. That’s how we were able to grow and why good connection with our clients is so crucial for us.’’

Orietta: I think one thing that makes us stand out on the market and our number one strength is the team. We’re a small team and we all look in the same direction and have the same approach and vision. That makes the communication go smoothly.

Joey: Another thing is that we have a very hands-on approach. We are the guys, who say: ‘’Okay, let’s do it’’. That’s our culture.

Orietta: When we started looking for a place I was already involved in the betahaus community. Working from previous betahaus locations and attending the community events, I already knew a lot of people in the 'haus ...

Joey: Yes, I remember on the first day we came to betahaus Orietta was like ‘’Oh, hey! Hi! Hey, how are you doing? Hi!'' giving high-fives to everybody and we were like: What is going on, why does she know everybody?!

Orietta: Well, the vibe in betahaus is just super easy going. You directly feel that you can meet people easily. If you go to the kitchen for example and just ask ''Hey how are you, what are you working on?''. We made many new contacts too.

Claudius: What makes it nice here is that people are enjoying being here and working on their projects.

Claudius: The truth is, we could probably afford an office for the same price, but that would put us between these four walls, which put you into a box, much harder to exit and to connect with new people. We went for a Team Desk because here we have so much more space and everything seems much more connected. You can easily meet people.

Orietta: And it’s just so spacious here. We have this super nice garden.

Claudius: I like being focused on my work but I also like if someone disturbs me from time to time. It helps when the door opens. In an office we would work in a whole different way. Here Gillord (Coworking Manager) is coming in everyday, giving me a hug, telling me about his workout .. that’s the main reason - the personal connection.

The day in betahaus starts with a hug and ends with a hug. The time in between is pretty much spent on doing what you love.

Orietta: The korean BBQ mmaah and Sahara Imbiss are absolutely our go-to places. Sahara is rather for the days, where we don't want to spend so much money on food. And the peanut sauce there is a must-try.

Alex: There are a lot of nice places in the area. We love to take longer walks in our lunch breaks and just exploring. (See our favourite places around betahaus | Neukölln here)

Claudius: We’re working very hard on a side project called talentefinder. It’s an app which connects career fair events and aims to help young professionals with finding a good (or even their first) job. We really see quite a potential in there and this is going to be our most important project for the next couple of months.

''People in beta’’ is series of blog posts, in which Vihra - our Marketing Manager - is interviewing teams and members to understand who they are, what they’re most passionate about and brought them to coworking. Read more here and become a part of the coworking tribe.