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Darja Gutnick

Co-Founder and CEO at Bunch, specializing in professional growth and leadership

Darja Gutnick is an entrepreneur and psychologist who is currently a Founder in Residence at Significo. Here are some key details about her background and experience:

Professional Experience

  • Co-Founder and CEO of Bunch (2017-2021): Darja co-founded Bunch, an AI leadership coach app that aimed to make professional growth and leadership accessible to all.1

  • Founder of DGC Consulting (2014-2016): She ran her own consulting firm focused on organizational and personnel development for startups and corporate clients.1

  • Academic Background: Darja has a PhD from the University of Groningen, where she conducted research on organizational behavior, creativity, and innovation.1

Current Role

Darja is now a Founder in Residence at Significo, a health tech company that recently acquired Bunch.34 This acquisition brought Bunch's expertise in AI, coaching, data, and psychology to Significo's mission of building technology to make healthcare more human.

Areas of Expertise

  • Organizational psychology
  • Leadership development
  • Startup consulting
  • AI and technology applications for professional growth

Other Activities

  • Host of the "Teams at Work" podcast
  • Author of "The Weekly Briefing" newsletter, reaching over 50,000 millennial and Gen Z professionals weekly2

Darja combines her background in psychology with entrepreneurial experience to focus on innovative approaches to leadership and professional development, particularly leveraging technology and AI.

Highlights

Jun 26 · linkedin

We founded BUNCH because we wanted to ensure that every team has support and healthy work dynamics, and we also wanted to make sure that no new manager feels alone, unprepared or anxious when facing 1:1s or needing to resolve tricky conflicts. We built Bunch in order to be there for the teams and their leaders, 24/7.

Today we’re excited to announce that we have officially joined forces with Significo, a digital health company that is on a mission to make healthcare more human. Together with Significo, we are in a good position to tackle two of the most significant threats to workplace well-being in the coming decade: work-related stress and its adverse effects on mental health and are excited to integrate our knowledge about leadership, management and AI coaching and Significo’s capabilities to deliver health technology at scale.

On a more personal note - if you have ever been part of a startup journey, you know it takes all you’ve got and more and we poured everything we had into it. This journey made me grow more than anything else before in my life, I think.

Here are a few, but not all, crucial learnings we made along the way:

  1. Team is everything. And I don’t just mean finding A-players etc. I mean people that believe in a mission and their ability to make it happen together. If you manage to build a team, you did half of the job already, but only half.

  2. From there on as a founder and a leader its your nr. 1 job to ask good questions and understand where everyone on your team is at. Over and over.

  3. When things go up and to the right its great, but be ready to also face times when they are stagnating or going down and to the right. Have a plan for when that happens and talk about it in good times, together with your team.

  4. Yes it is true that building something that people want is your first prioritiy, but often times we founders underestimate how hard it is to ‘build commercialization on top’ if you did not develop your product with answers to the question of ‘how do we get to profitability with this?’ So don’t push the commercial aspects of your startup out for too long, think it through from the very beginning.

  5. Any founder will tell you this is a hard one but try and enjoy the journey. When its hard, remind yourself of the bigger picture. I struggled a lot. More than a lot. There were times when all that was left to do by the end of the day is to lie on the floor and cry. But I would remind myself, you get to do what you love, with people you admire and respect, you have autonomy AND you are building something that is hopefully solving problems for people. If that isn’t worth it, not sure what is.

I look forward to this new chapter and the doors it opens. Stay tuned for more updates and learnings as we continue to grow and build Bunch!

https://lnkd.in/eP3xvkag

We founded BUNCH because we wanted to ensure that every team has support and healthy work dynamics,
May 31 · linkedin

Dear LinkedIn family, I am looking for an Eng > Ger translator (who is ideally also a German copy writer) for a larger project in the next 2-4 weeks. It’s mental health related content.

Do we know anyone?

Dear LinkedIn family, I am looking for an Eng > Ger translator (who is ideally also a German copy wr

Related Questions

What inspired Darja Gutnick to transition from psychology to entrepreneurship?
How does Darja Gutnick's background in psychology influence her approach to leadership and team building?
What are some key takeaways from Darja Gutnick's podcast, Teams at Work?
How has Darja Gutnick's experience at BMW Group DesignworksUSA shaped her career?
What are the main goals of Bunch, and how does it differ from Darja Gutnick's previous ventures?
Darja Gutnick
Darja Gutnick, photo 1
Darja Gutnick, photo 2
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Experience

Co-Founder (Product & Tech), CEO at Bunch
Co-Founder (Business & Operations) & CEO at Bunch, CEO and Founder at DGC Consulting

Education

PhD in Organizational Behavior Studies from University of Groningen; Diploma in Psychology, Industrial, Organizational Psychology & HR Management from Julius-Maximilians-University; Certificate in Lea

Location

Berlin, Berlin, Germany