“Experiences are more important to me than owning things”

The ETH alumnus and company founder Cédric Waldburger owns only a few things, but he has plenty of ideas. One of them is offering internships for ETH students.

Cédric Waldburger
Cédric Waldburger: Company founder with plenty of ideas and few possessions (Photograph: Daniel Winkler)

Cédric Waldburger only drinks water, always showers cold and owns just 64 things, all of which are black – and he freely admits that plenty of people see him as a little eccentric. In recent years, the digital entrepreneur has never spent longer than four days in any one place. Moving between California, Berlin and Hong Kong, he realised it no longer made sense to have his own apartment, so he moved out. From then on, he sometimes slept in hotels, and sometimes on a friend’s sofa. And, like a snail carrying its shell, he carried a rucksack containing all his possessions everywhere he went.

The 30-year-old’s lack of interest in material things contrasts sharply with his wealth of ideas and projects. He has already founded several software start-ups and also invests in carefully chosen fledgling companies run by others, always with the goal of learning as much as he possibly can. “I love experimenting – and experiences are much more important to me than owning things,” Waldburger says.

Having few possessions is something he sees as liberating rather than limiting. He prefers to call himself an “essentialist” rather than a minimalist, arguing that what matters is not the number of things you own but rather the ability to focus on what’s important and what makes you happy. Every 90 days he takes stock of his life. He analyses 12 areas including business, relationships and fitness, striving to keep his life constantly optimised.

Fascinated by the complex subject matter

His parents, neither of whom have an academic background, noticed his talent for logical thinking when he was very young. By the time he was six, he was already writing his first computer programmes with his older cousin. Waldburger explains that he was something of a nerd when he was a kid, an introverted child who preferred to tinker with things on his own. In his third year of primary school he abandoned regular maths classes and spent his time giving lectures and attending special courses for gifted pupils instead. He continued to make rapid progress and skipped year six of primary school altogether.

He had very little in common with his fellow pupils and preferred to spend time with older students. One acquaintance he made was studying electrical engineering at ETH and took Waldburger along to one of his lectures. This proved to be a pivotal moment in the young boy’s life. Waldburger was fascinated by the complex subject matter and immediately sensed how much he could learn there. He promptly decided this was the degree programme for him. Business administration also interested him, but – unlike electrical engineering – Waldburger felt that this was a subject he could teach himself later in life.

“At ETH, I learned not to shy away from big problems.”Cédric Waldburger

He ended up missing the first few days of his ETH course because he was busy at the notary’s office setting up his first company, mediasign. He created the web agency together with a friend from scouts, and the company is still in business today. During his time at ETH he met fellow students who had an edge over him when it came to mathematical abilities, and he found himself having to really knuckle down for the first time in his life. In the first week of the course, his professors predicted that only 50 percent of the class would pass their first-year examinations. Waldburger took that news on the chin, though he admits he would have perhaps appreciated a rather more benevolent approach.

His company, where he often worked until midnight after lectures were over, provided a counterbalance to a degree programme that sometimes struck him as too theoretical. “I have no idea how I managed it all. It was incredibly intense, but somehow it worked,” says Waldburger with a hint of pride.

Close ties to ETH

The most valuable thing he learned at ETH was to teach himself complicated subjects and not shy away from big problems – a skill that continues to be hugely useful to him as an entrepreneur. He also became aware of another ETH quality when he started hiring people himself: “ETH graduates tend to approach tasks calmly and confidently and then pose very clear questions. That’s a quality I don’t see to the same extent in graduates from other universities.”

Waldburger has always maintained close ties to ETH, and it looks like they are set to become even closer in the future: last autumn he opened an office in Zurich for the start-up DFINITY, and he now spends most of his time on this project, which is using blockchain technology to develop decentralised infrastructure for a new type of applications. He is already examining the option of collaborating with professors and hopes to start offering internships for ETH students soon.

Cédric Waldburger has also become more settled in his private life: he recently moved into an apartment near Zurich with his fiancée and has been doing a lot less travelling. His list of possessions may be getting a little longer, but it would still be difficult to find anything superfluous in his apartment. He regards the guest bedroom as a particularly important part of his home, a space for other digital nomads that reminds him just how grateful he was when friends offered him a place to sleep.

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