At A Glance

Malte Häusler is the Founder of Timeless, the leading real world asset investment platform in Europe. Through Timeless, customers can invest through the blockchain in products that are rare, unique, or otherwise highly valuable. Tokens of items from famous people like Picasso and Andy Warhol or companies like Ferrari and Porsche, are available on Timeless, for anyone to invest and join in the experience of owning a part of something special.  

Who is Malte Häusler

Malte Häusler is the Co-Founder & CEO of Timeless.

About Timeless

The company launched in 2018 in its original iteration, as a blockchain that revolved specifically around classic cars and premium cars. Investors and customers were able to own a piece of these special tokens related to high end cars, but over the next several years, Timeless evolved into even more markets and now offers tokens related to all forms of high-end, luxury items, in areas outside of just the car market.

Malte’s Journey

Malte’s journey began in business economics, which he studied in college before jumping into management consulting in the business sphere. Over the next 10 years he worked in fields such as finance, process management, reorganization, and controlling before deciding that he wanted to spend some more time with his young children. That was when he decided to leave consulting and jump into E-Commerce, starting with Zalando in Germany.

At the time, he jumped into finance and controlling for the private label business and continued to grow the business over time, which is where he learned even more about E-Commerce and KPI’s and all of the aspects of business that would someday help him with his own. But he still wasn’t done.

Next, Malte was brought into an online pharmacy business to work as the director of business development & commercial director, growing this business and also helping through the restructuring of it. But by then, Malte had decided that it was time to start his own business.

It was 2018 and he started speaking with his co-founder, Andreas, about a discussion he had been having with Porsche about a new idea revolving around blockchain and the automotive marketplace business model, specifically in the realm of classic cars and premium cars.

It took time, and evolution for Timeless Investments to become what it is today, which is a blockchain system that tokenizes reward assets and precious luxury goods rather than the blockchain for digital car profiles that it started as. But by 2020, the new system was live and Malte has taken over the CEO role of the company in 2023.

The Team at Timeless

While the business itself is still relatively new, Timeless currently consists of approximately 20 employees, including a large share of outsourced and therefore remote team members. In fact, the entire product and IT team is outsourced and generally considered freelance. Also, there are remote workers throughout Europe and even more in-person workers located in Berlin, where the majority of the team is sourced.

Creating a Productive Strategy

From the very start, marketing tactics that targeted younger profiles and experimental profiles to help understand the process and the logic behind it were instrumental to Timeless. They targeted these profiles specifically because they are attracted by precious assets and find it very cool to invest in these unique products like sneakers worn by Michael Jordan or art pieces by Picasso or even a rare Ferrari.

By jumping right in with these younger groups, it was simple to earn mass adoption and get the first several thousand users quickly. It was also easier to get external credibility, influencer marketing and performance marketing, to help gain even more users as the original ones continued to market the product for them.

Fostering Customer Retention

With Timeless launching during COVID times, it was actually a good and a not-so-good time. It was good because people were bored and looking for new opportunities. But not-so-good because the investment was a bit higher pricewise. But things have since corrected downwards and people were still quite interested in jumping in.

From that beginning, Timeless looked at growth strategies that would help improve marketing and brand retention as well as media for equity. In fact, it was 2023 when they got their first TV stint. But they were already using different channels to draw in people, like social, podcasts, TV, and performance ads. This is something Malte credits with helping to bring in more customers, because they are seeing the company on several channels.

Timeless also created a referral program to get current customers to draw in new ones and also, the loyalty program. This helps to keep even more people engaged once they’re already started to invest and work with Timeless.

Overall, these different strategies have helped to keep customers coming back and continue to draw in more.

Innovation and Adaptability

Timeless was the first business to launch with a completely new approach in how they treated assets. By tokenizing and selling direct ownership in the assets in Europe they were able to create a niche for themselves and to set up the regulatory and compliance aspects of the business with authorities.

On top of this, Malte credits the fact that they have always looked at the idea from a customer experience side of things. Their goal has always been to make it as easy as possible for their customers to get into a new asset class and to understand what is happening and what the company really does.

They were able to create an appealing system and to also create a low regulatory hurdle for people to choose to join in. Rather than requiring the IDENT process, which often reduces conversion, they created a system that made this entire process easier, so that registration happens before the IDENT process.

Setting New Goals

One of the biggest goals Malte currently has is to bring this asset class to even more people throughout Europe. Expanding into new countries and other customer segments are two ways to continue bringing in new people.

Another big way that the company is looking to expand is through semi-automized ways of buying into products, where they’re looking into profiles that are investment savvy but don’t necessarily want to do active management on their profiles.

By creating a system that is easy, frictionless, and educated from someone else so the customer doesn’t have to think about it all the time, it’s possible for Timeless to continue fostering innovation and growth.

Helping the New Entrepreneur

What does it take to start your own business? First, Malte says, resilience. You have to be resilient and not get impatient when things aren’t moving the way you expected.

Second, it’s important to be persistent when it comes to improvement measures and anything that you’re working on for your plan. Being too short-minded and looking for something faster and higher and quicker could actually hurt you in the long run.

It’s important to recognize that building a business is a long journey and the earlier you realize this, the faster you’ll be able to adapt your behavior and your judgement.

Finally, it’s important to never be afraid to make mistakes. When you’re starting out you won’t always get it right, but you can fix things and correct those mistakes. Not only that, but by analyzing what went wrong and learning from mistakes you can avoid them in the future, improving the business day by day.