Our alumna Ronja Hoffacker studied Business Administration at WiSo and completed her master's degree in Corporate Development in 2019. Immediately after graduation, she joined McKinsey as a strategy consultant and in August 2022, she founded equaly – a company that offers professional support for couples in the fair and equal division of household and care work. She left McKinsey in June 2023 to focus on her company full-time. In our alumni interview, we talked to her about her motivation to start equaly, how the Gateway Excellence Start-up Centre at the University of Cologne supported her, and why she is not afraid of failure.

Dear Ronja, after graduating from WiSo you went straight into management consultancy. Did you have a career plan from the start and did your studies prepare you well?

I didn't really have a career plan in that sense – I‘ve always had more short-term interests and goals that I‘ve set for myself. For example, during my bachelor's degree I developed a desire to work in sustainability, so I did an internship with REWE Group at their purchasing company in Hong Kong and then continued to work in their sustainability department back in Germany. I became interested in consulting through my participation in the case study course and an event organised by McKinsey and L'Oréal, which I attended during my master's degree. I have always seen my studies as a time to try out as much as possible, and the WiSo Faculty and the city of Cologne naturally offer a lot of opportunities for this.

During your time at McKinsey, you founded equaly with your business partner Louisa Plasberg. Your business model is to support couples in the fair and equal sharing of household and care work, such as childcare or caring for relatives at home, in a fair and equal way. How did the idea for equaly come about and what did you see as the business case?

Louisa and I were connected through a mutual friend. We were both interested in the obvious differences between men‘s and women’s careers, and the upheaval that so often occurs when a child comes into the picture. I was on parental leave at the time, so I was in the middle of that phase of my own life. And the people around me strongly mirrored how unusual it still is for couples to really share the care work between them equally. It's not that all couples still want a traditional distribution of roles, it's just that they often don't see any other way than the stereotypical one. Louisa and I were initially driven by the fact that we wanted to change that. Turning this into a business model was then the second step.

Could you give us a brief description of what it is you do at equaly?

At equaly, we have developed a digital tool to help couples better share their care work. When couples start using equaly, they are guided through a self-coaching session to come up with an initial division of their care work. It is important to split the actual responsibility for tasks – there is often a tendency to do so only with the execution of tasks, while one person continues to organise the household and childcare. With equaly we also distribute this stress factor, the so called mental load between both partners.

Couples then meet every one to two weeks for so-called check-ins, where they continue to improve their setup and also exchange ideas on other topics – for example, we have integrated a calculator for three different versions of the “3-account-model” for couple finances into the tool, or a playful discussion guide for planning the joint future together, a so called “playbook”. We also offer live sessions for couples to exchange ideas with other couples and experts, organise coaching sessions and work with companies on equal opportunities and equal care.

Our vision is to eventually cover all relevant stages and areas of life in an equal partnership.

You received support from the Gateway Excellence Start-up Centre at the University of Cologne. What was the support like and what was the biggest challenge in setting up the company?

Focusing was a big challenge in the beginning because our subject area has so many interrelated aspects and couples naturally need very individual solutions. And also later, there are of course always milestones where decisions have to be made without knowing all the information. That's why networking with experts or company contacts was and still is the greatest support. The second area where the Gateway continues to be extremely supportive is in the area of publicity. It's incredibly challenging to be heard and seen as a start-up – the Gateway has a great overview of the relevant events and networks in the region, which has helped us a lot on several occasions.

In June 2023, you left McKinsey, where had been employed for the entire time. How difficult was this step for you, and how much uncertainty did you feel about leaving a secure career path for the time being?

In my previous experience, a start-up needs your full attention when you leave the ideation phase and start working on a product launch. So it was just nice for me to have that clarity: This is what I want to do now, and I want to do it with all my energy. Of course it's possible to fail with a start-up idea – in fact, more start-ups fail than succeed. But then you can always go back to the ‘safe‘ career path of working as an employee. That's why I never felt it was an existential risk to take this step. I think if you have an idea that you believe in, you almost have to try it – otherwise you're always asking yourself ‘what if?‘. And a professional life is so long that you can take a detour, even if it doesn’t work out in the end.

You've already hinted that you‘ve recently become a mother. Do you have any advice: How do you organise your own care work?

For me, or rather for us, the key to less stress was building a ground structure of responsibilities. We regularly define responsibilities for different areas (shopping, paediatrician, cooking, etc.), as provided for in the equaly system. We also have fixed days on which we are responsible for childcare, i.e. taking our daughter to and from daycare and standing in if our daughter or childminder is ill. And we involve friends and family in the childcare - fortunately our daughter is quite easy-going in this respect.

Could you complete the following sentence: When I think back to my student days in Cologne, I...

You always remember the most recent times best, so I think a lot about my bib routine during the master's thesis phase, with long coffee breaks at the coffee stand. But also just exciting discussions, for example on corporate social responsibility, where I took several courses and did a business project. In general, I would say that the group work in my master's programme was extremely instructive, beyond the pure content.

In closing, would you share three tips with our students?

I think I would rather provide three questions that I ask myself on a regular basis:

1. What is easy for me, what energises me and what doesn’t? This could be an exam format, for example. I always found exams very stressful, so I wanted to write as few as possible during my masters.
2. What interests me? Sounds obvious, but I have always chosen internships or working student jobs according to my interests – it made my CV a colourful bunch, but nobody ever bothered me about it.
3. What am I doing this for? Of course, it’s not all fun and games – so I‘ve always had a goal in mind to carry me through the current examination phase. The goal can change, of course, but I have always found it helpful to have one in mind, such as a job, a semester abroad or a holiday.

Dear Ronja, thank you very much for your time and for the interview.