Profile

Christoph Trost

CEO & Co-founder of UNIspotter
Transforming higher education student recruitment
Education & Edtech
Forbes 30 under 30 (2017)
Emerge Education Alumni

 

Key data

Job description: CEO & Co-founder
Company: UNIspotter
I work in: Vienna/London
I’ve worked here since: 2014 (Company founded 2016)
My contact

What I do

Connecting the right students with the right universities. Universities spend €3.4b on agent commissions (doubling by 2024). UNIspotter is transforming a broken industry and ending the education agent marketplace by digitising 80% of the agent process and adding super high level human touch where necessary. UNIspotter is a mobile app for students for the international university application - adding ease, accessibility and transparency.

Why I love my job

  • Working on a problem I had myself
  • Helping young people to set them up for a better life

Important skills in my job

  • Sales/Marketing
  • Product Development
  • Leadership
  • Building a performing team (hiring, company culture, team management…)
  • Fundraising / Investor relations
  • Strategic planning

The best experiences in my job

Getting positive feedback from students using UNIspotter is everytime a great experience. I also love to create a team around our mission and a positive and challenging work environment. In 2017 I was very honored to be on the Forbes 30 under 30 list (as it’s one of my favorite business magazines). All together we were able to raise €1 million from international angel investors & venture capitalists. We now have 5 offices across the globe in Vienna, Tallinn, London, Sydney and Coimbatore (India). All those successes were only possible through a great team effort.

How I found my current job

Created it ;)

What I learned for this job during my studies at FH JOANNEUM:

  • Fundamental understanding of different business aspects (coming from a technical school / HTL before)
  • Cultural understanding and awareness (probably the biggest one with currently a team of 7 people from 5 very different cultures)

Job prospects in my field

I think entrepreneurship is not the right career choice for everyone but I want to encourage everyone who is interested to take the step to at least try it out!

I am

  • Strategic thinker
  • Efficient
  • Resilient
  • Positive thinker

About my job

As the CEO my main roles right now involve strategic planning, hiring & company culture, investor relations and sales. Still I’m involved in product, marketing & other areas and as we are small team I’m still spending 70% of my time executing things.