What a year!
2021 was a really exciting, versatile and above all eventful year for us as a company, but also as humans. A year full of challenges and changes — but despite everything (and we want to remember this especially), full of growth and good experiences.
Many of these, of course, are related to SQIN for us. Therefore, we want to look back on 11 months of SQIN with you. Sit back and enjoy a very special ride!
February
Yes, you did see right: our year-in-review starts in February! In that month, the SkinTech Corp. UG was founded – the foundation for our further journey. SQIN then also moved into a great, modern office space, where we are to this day.
Another highlight this month was Maria’s interview with WirtschaftsWoche, as part of the report “Gründerinnen-Nation Deutschland?” (Female Founder Nation Germany?). We are grateful for this opportunity, and glad to be able to inspire young female founders and other aspiring women.
March
In March, our young company was slowly getting off the ground.
At the same time, we were able to start a campaign with GLAMOUR. A very special experience for us!
A special experience and great honour for us was our pitch at the START Summit — through which we were able to win in the category “Consumer Goods”.
April
Finally, the time had come: the first people joined team SQIN! In April the onboarding was started. Since then, many people have come and gone — but many have also stayed. We are very grateful for that! #SQINfamily
We have also launched our website. This step has opened up many opportunities for us — and was also a great learning opportunity for some team members.
The biggest surprise this month was definitely the day the Forbes 30 Under 30 list was released — and Martin was on it. Once again, congratulations to you!
May
In May, the day had come for us to reveal our new logo: the SQIN flamingo. It not only has a special meaning, but has also really become dear to us this year. Simply #flamazing!
Also in May, we were invited to participate in the Kiyomi Festival — an online event celebrating diversity and self-love. Thank you for letting us be a part of it!
June
In the middle of the year, we had our absolute highlight: the SQIN app was finally launched! Since then, we’ve been watching a growing community getting to know their skin better and better, defining the future of dermatology and skin care with us!
This was also a good moment to look back at our history: At the born-digital leaders roundtable by Google Cloud, Maria talked about SQIN’s pivot — and why rock bottom might be the best thing that can happen to you!
July
The starting signal for an exciting journey was given in July: we started the German Accelerator South Korea Market Discovery Program.
K-Beauty was already an interesting topic for us beforehand. Now our interest in the Korean market was also strengthened — which continues until today.
August
The core feature of our app was finally added in August: the dermatology feature. There, the users have the opportunity to consult professional dermatologists with their skin health issues – quick, easy and shameless.
Today, we already have five licensed dermatologists on board who are working with us to make healthy skin accessible for everyone.
Read more about why this is important: here and here.
But that was not all: also in August, Maria won the TiE Women pitch competition for the Chapter Germany for us. This not only opened up a fantastic network for us, but also a unique opportunity: Maria was invited to Dubai for GITEX!
September
In September, we were finally able to attend a live summit again: THE GROW Summit! There we met really exciting people and got inspired in many ways.
In addition, the pre-Christmas spirit set in slowly for us: our SQIN Advent calendar was delivered and waiting to get to our users.
October
October was the month of great travels. First, Maria went to Dubai for the GITEX Global. But not only as a visitor: she was allowed to pitch there. What a unique opportunity!
Afterwards, Maria and our social media manager Sara visited the MakeUp in Paris fair. There they gathered a lot of inspiration for our community and got to know exciting new brands.
November
Back in Germany, we went straight on to Asia in October — at least mentally. Once again, two exciting start-up programs began for us: Market Discovery India and the Bridge2Korea program. We are grateful to be able to get to know these exciting markets so intensively!
In addition, Maria was invited to createF — The Female Founders Show at the Google Office in Berlin to share her own experiences with the young founders.
December
There could hardly have been a better end to the year for us than together with our #SQINfamily! With (almost) all our investors, the whole team and some of our advisors we had a fantastic hybrid Christmas party this month. Thank you for going on this journey together!
So many things to look back on — and yet those are just the really big highlights of this year. Of course, many more things happened — we welcomed new team members, developed features, published lots of app versions and much more.
We are beyond grateful for such an incredible year. But where would we be without every single person who has been with us and supported us along the way? Thank you for being part of SQIN!
2022, we are ready for you!
