Julia Kruslin: ‘Le Wagon was a great help’

16/06/2023
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Julia Kruslin has completed some time ago at tech training institute Le Wagon a fulltime intensive coding bootcamp. She learned from scratch all kind of programming languages. “Le Wagon taught me 98% of the coding and development skills that I have”, states Julia. She became co-founder and co-CEO of the investment app beatvest and was was named in the Forbes 30 under 30 in 2022.

Who are you?

I’m Julia Kruslin – an Austrian living in Germany, an ex-consultant turned startup founder and a spinning and crossfit aficionada. I love building new products and the iterative culture that comes with an early-stage environment. I’m a Le Wagon Amsterdam alumna, which is also where I learned Full-Stack Development – a skill that would later on have a big impact on my career trajectory.

What are you doing now (job, position, education)?

I’m co-founder and co-CEO of the investment app beatvest, with which you can easily and playfully learn how to build wealth with passive investing. My education has always revolved around management, business and consulting, which was interesting but at a certain point I knew I wanted to do more. Being a lifelong learner, I decided to move forward in the field of web development – and came across Le Wagon.

What training did you do at Le Wagon?

I did the 9-week full-time intensive coding bootcamp at Le Wagon in the Netherlands. You would be surprised about what you can do in 9 weeks. I learned HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, JavaScript ES6, SQL, git, GitHub, Heroku and Ruby on Rails – from scratch! I went from an interested beginner to a real developer in these two months.

How did you come to your choice?

Even though I had studied management for five years and worked in strategy consulting, I didn’t know where to start when it comes to investing. I just knew that investing for long-term wealth will be important for age provision and as a protection against inflation. I luckily got to know my co-founder Sophie who used to be a financial regulator and asked her about tips for investing. Long story short: With her financial expertise and me being able to feel the pain points of potential users personally, beatvest was born. We now help thousands of people getting started with investing - easily and playfully.

What important award did you win and why did they choose you?

I was named in the Forbes 30 under 30 in 2022. The award made me proud, but also I felt very honoured. I have always been passionate about company-building, startup life and agile leadership. The idea for beatvest came at the right time with the right co-founder, and after I had acquired the necessary skills to start the adventure. Being informed that you’re a “listmaker” by one of the most prestigious business media out there just one year after you founded your company is breathtaking.

What was important to you in this process?

You always have to follow your convictions. And this is only possible with the right team and common values, goals and directions to go in. I’m really happy with how the beatvest team has grown and how we’ve managed to get so many great people on board even during the labour shortage that was so present during the last months. By the way: If young developers are reading this: We’re always on the lookout for new talent to add to our great team!

What does this new development bring you and your environment?

The award was great, especially for getting out our message of financial empowerment. Age provision, inflation, finances – these are topics people often think about as being boring. Obviously, being listed in such a prestigious category gives you a lot of exposure.

How do you look to the future?

My look into the future is very optimistic. The beatvest app gets continuous inflow of positive feedback, we already made it into the Apple Store charts and are continuously growing. Our strong user-centric approach helps us prioritise different new features and – trust me – we have quite some exciting developments in the pipeline.

How has Le Wagon helped you get to where you are now?

Le Wagon was a great help. As mentioned earlier, Le Wagon taught me 98% of the coding and development skills that I have. Today I am leading our product and dev teams, and I am confident that I can effectively steer decision-making when there is a technical challenge in the app or the website. Le Wagon offered me the last missing puzzle piece of knowledge to start my own entrepreneurship journey – thanks for that!

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